I'm going to be running a lot of finite element analysis for PhD work the next couple of years, and I am about to choose my computer. Unfortunately, the computer program I will be primarily running is 32-bit and single threaded (right now); however, and I can (and will) be running multiple instances of the program.
I have a $4k budget for hardware and have been looking at the 980x and Xeon W3680 (both 3.33 GHz). From Dell, with 12GB of RAM, I'm looking at around $3.7k for the Xeon system (w/ ECC memory) and $2.7k for a 980x system. Any thoughts as to what the smart move might be?
I've also considered dual Xeon processors, but it looks like they might be out of my price range unless I go with the individually slower E5507s (2.26GHz).
I have a $4k budget for hardware and have been looking at the 980x and Xeon W3680 (both 3.33 GHz). From Dell, with 12GB of RAM, I'm looking at around $3.7k for the Xeon system (w/ ECC memory) and $2.7k for a 980x system. Any thoughts as to what the smart move might be?
I've also considered dual Xeon processors, but it looks like they might be out of my price range unless I go with the individually slower E5507s (2.26GHz).
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