Chris MacDonald Posted April 25, 2016 Share Posted April 25, 2016 Hey chaps, We've been buying our render nodes via Workstation Specialists for a while, but our IT chap is kicking off about how expensive it is vs building it ourselves - which is fine, I've always been more than happy for us to build our own to build PC's. Anyhow, we're looking at a ~£4,000 budget for a new node which will likely be rack mounted in our server room. My question is this; if you were going for a dual xeon setup for that price, what would offer the largest bang for your buck, and similarly if you were building a single xeon setup for that price what would you choose? I'll be requesting 64Gb RAM as a minimum (can't see us needing more in the foreseeable future). It doesn't need a graphics card as GPU rendering isn't what we're about yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Schroeder Posted April 25, 2016 Share Posted April 25, 2016 I'd take a look at Jens post and the link in the first post. http://forums.cgarchitect.com/80150-cheap-16core-xeon-node-pros-cons.html Quite honestly, that rig looks pretty damn slick for as cheap as it is to build. You could probably swing 4 of them for the 4k budget. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris MacDonald Posted April 25, 2016 Author Share Posted April 25, 2016 Yeah I was following that, it's a great build - but I know this IT chap won't settle for old Xeon's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TomasEsperanza Posted April 25, 2016 Share Posted April 25, 2016 (edited) Hey chaps, We've been buying our render nodes via Workstation Specialists for a while, but our IT chap is kicking off about how expensive it is vs building it ourselves - which is fine, I've always been more than happy for us to build our own to build PC's. Anyhow, we're looking at a ~£4,000 budget for a new node which will likely be rack mounted in our server room. My question is this; if you were going for a dual xeon setup for that price, what would offer the largest bang for your buck, and similarly if you were building a single xeon setup for that price what would you choose? I'll be requesting 64Gb RAM as a minimum (can't see us needing more in the foreseeable future). It doesn't need a graphics card as GPU rendering isn't what we're about yet. Generally the uppermid-range is were he best value is. So you could look at the intel Xeon range on the Intel website, navigate halfway down the list, and choose a model number. Then go online for prices, you probably get better value with two in one machine. Why would you be considering single Xeon set up? I bought a node a few years ago for about £2800 and it has been great value: Render Node - "Workstation Specialists RS-D2600" (Stackable) CPUs: DUAL Intel Xeon X5650 Six Core 2.66GHz (Intel® Turbo Boost @ up to 3.06GHz) RAM: 48GB Ram PSU: 500W 92%+ OS: Win 7 Pro on SSD Edited April 25, 2016 by TomasEsperanza Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris MacDonald Posted April 25, 2016 Author Share Posted April 25, 2016 Our IT bloke reckons that a really fast single socket xeon is quicker than the equivalent price dual socket xeons - I totally disagree. His argument is that the software spends more time working out which processor to send the information to; which again I would have thought is either handled on the motherboard or at the very most in the operating system - and any speed reduction because of this would surely be absolutely miniscule. My understanding of task scheduling within a processor is that things simply go to the first available free core. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TomasEsperanza Posted April 25, 2016 Share Posted April 25, 2016 (edited) Does this guy know anything about rendering? Because we all know that more slower cores are better than fewer faster ones, when it comes to rendering. I'm getting red flags about your IT guy tbh. Maybe he just likes to think he knows more than he does ;/ I'm moving over to GPU, it's the future! (I'm still using CPU workflow mostly, but am buying more GPUs as and when I have the money, once I have a handful.. CPU will be left for dead. One of these: https://www.scan.co.uk/products/4-gpu-netstor-na255a-xgpu-external-pcie-gen3-to-gpu-desktop-enclosure And four of these: https://www.scan.co.uk/products/6gb-evga-gtx-980-ti-sc-gaming-pcie-30-7010mhz-gddr5-gpu-1102mhz-boost-1190mhz-cores-2816-3x-dp12-hdm That's about £4k and you're properly into the GPU game. Just an idea for while your thinking about investing. Edited April 25, 2016 by TomasEsperanza Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris MacDonald Posted April 25, 2016 Author Share Posted April 25, 2016 HA! My sentiments exactly! He loves to over complicate an otherwise simple issue. I'd switch to GPU but the limitation/bottleneck is still memory. 16GB just isn't enough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Francisco Penaloza Posted April 25, 2016 Share Posted April 25, 2016 Our IT bloke reckons that a really fast single socket xeon is quicker than the equivalent price dual socket xeons - I totally disagree. His argument is that the software spends more time working out which processor to send the information to; which again I would have thought is either handled on the motherboard or at the very most in the operating system - and any speed reduction because of this would surely be absolutely miniscule. My understanding of task scheduling within a processor is that things simply go to the first available free core. That's BS man, renderings is controlled by the render software, and they are more than optimized to use all the cores available. The only argument would be an OCi7 with 4 cores competing with a 6 cores Xeon at lower speed. but at the end to Total Ghz is the winner no Matter what. I think the sweet spot for you will be any V3 gen of 6 cores, they'll give you better balance price/core speed for the Xeon series. You could get 10 cores too, but if you are asking balance, then IMO the V3 @6cores will works fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nikolaos M Posted April 26, 2016 Share Posted April 26, 2016 Yeah I was following that, it's a great build - but I know this IT chap won't settle for old Xeon's. If you have to buy a brand new render node, then just wait a little (a couple of months) for the new Broadwell-E Xeons and i7's to be released and see how they perform in rendering. The i7 6950X seems very interesting and promising. If it oc's well too, then it could be the new king in rendering among cpus of its price range (~1500$). Of course, if used parts were under consideration, then the E5 2670 v2 would be an incredible vfm for ~60-70$ a piece. Nothing could beat that right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris MacDonald Posted April 26, 2016 Author Share Posted April 26, 2016 (edited) If you have to buy a brand new render node, then just wait a little (a couple of months) for the new Broadwell-E Xeons and i7's to be released and see how they perform in rendering. I've just spotted the new lineup and the Xeon E5-2696 V4 looks spectactularly good. 46.2 GHz in a single processor for $2,300/£1,600. ECC RAM isn't necessary for rendering, is it? Surely that is just for computational/scientific stuff? Edited April 26, 2016 by Macker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nikolaos M Posted April 26, 2016 Share Posted April 26, 2016 ECC RAM isn't necessary for rendering, is it? Surely that is just for computational/scientific stuff? No, it isn't, but if you build a dual Xeon system based on a 2P server motherboard then you'll have to install ECC RAM to run it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris MacDonald Posted April 26, 2016 Author Share Posted April 26, 2016 What about buffered/unbuffered/registered? Does that matter? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nikolaos M Posted April 26, 2016 Share Posted April 26, 2016 What about buffered/unbuffered/registered? Does that matter? Buffered=Registered http://stores.ebay.com/GeeK-NoiZe-Memory-and-More/ECC-Memory-Types.html Usually, ECC RAM is registered these days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
numerobis Posted April 26, 2016 Share Posted April 26, 2016 (edited) I've just spotted the new lineup and the Xeon E5-2696 V4 looks spectactularly good. 46.2 GHz in a single processor for $2,300/£1,600. Yes, the new v4 Xeon lineup looks very good. I'm preparing a price/performance chart and it seems that for the first time dual Xeon systems could be cheaper than overclocked i7's. Even without including licences into calculation. Edited April 26, 2016 by numerobis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris MacDonald Posted April 26, 2016 Author Share Posted April 26, 2016 Sounds fantastic, can you post that as soon as possible? I'd like to stick that under the nose of our this IT guy - to prove a point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nikolaos M Posted April 26, 2016 Share Posted April 26, 2016 Personally, I'll wait to see the 6950X's overclockability first. 10c/20t combined with slight improvement in ipc (2-4%) and a decent overclocking boost could give impressive results. It's too early to predict, but I wouldn't be surprised if a slightly overclocked 6950X gives a Cinebench R15 score of 2000cb or more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris MacDonald Posted April 26, 2016 Author Share Posted April 26, 2016 We won't be overclocking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nikolaos M Posted April 26, 2016 Share Posted April 26, 2016 We won't be overclocking. Ok, my friend, that's expected. I understand it. I just expressed my thoughts about nomerobis's comment above I'm preparing a price/performance chart and it seems that for the first time dual Xeon systems could be cheaper than overclocked i7's. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris MacDonald Posted April 26, 2016 Author Share Posted April 26, 2016 Ok, my friend, that's expected. I understand it. I just expressed my thoughts about nomerobis's comment above I'm more interested in a price performance chart than I am in comparing it to overclocked i7's - that's why I'm so keen to see the results Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nikolaos M Posted April 26, 2016 Share Posted April 26, 2016 (edited) I'm more interested in a price performance chart than I am in comparing it to overclocked i7's - that's why I'm so keen to see the results If you really want to evaluate cpu rendering performance it's better to compare results of real application benchmarks, like Cinebench or the new Corona benchmark. Here I found some results coming from the new v4 Xeons. I guess these users had access to ES chips that have already hit the market. I suggest you take a close look at these results and try to find the best vfm. There are some minor scaling issues in rendering (depends on the software of course), so comparing [Cores (or threads) x frequency] isn't always the safest method, although it gives a rough idea of how well processors of the same architecture would perform. Real apps benchmarks give the ability to compare cpus of different architectural families too. Edited April 26, 2016 by nikolaosm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris MacDonald Posted April 26, 2016 Author Share Posted April 26, 2016 Great find! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris MacDonald Posted May 3, 2016 Author Share Posted May 3, 2016 Any news on when the new Xeons are likely to released? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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