Xeon for workstations

[Artician]

I searched! I really did, but did not find my answer. Still, I expect this has been asked a thousand times.

I work in special effects. I desperately need an upgrade as my PC is 5+ years old. The only time that I really notice my PC's shortcomings are when I'm working with fluid dynamics and explosion effects.

I have come to believe the bottleneck here is floating point process. I don't have too limited a budget, so I'd like to know if a high-level Xeon would be better for someone like myself, or if an i7 is just as comparable for this type of work.

Thank you in advance for any advice!

 

[imported_PowerHouse]

I would suggest going with a Xeon just to get support for ECC memory which it sounds like you should be using if you do that sort of work on your machine.

 

[Cerb]

Exactly. It's all about RAS. You pay extra for the Xeon mostly to get a handful of platform features turned on, and verified working, that's not done on regular consumer hardware. It would be cheaper if everyone demanded such features, but they don't, so it's a smaller market, and thus you get much higher costs, instead of only slightly higher.

If your budget is in the range of a few thousands bucks, go with a Xeon E5 series, registered ECC RAM, and be done with it. You might be able to save money using the Dell outlet (get a fast CPU, then upgrade it a little, because most are lacking in RAM, and sometimes GPU), depending on performance/flexibility wants, if your budget is a bit too tight for a brand new one.

 

[Artician]

Thank you for the advice!

 

[NTMBK]

One option- does your application have the option for GPU acceleration? You could potentially get a Quadro or Firepro to upgrade your current workstation, instead of replacing the whole thing. It's worth investigating.

 

[tweakboy]

Hey NTMBK why haven't you unlocked your 2 cores ?

 

[Artician]

I don't actually know if it would benefit from GPU upgrades, but I'm also against that whole Fire/Quadro line of products. They're drivers always seem substandard for anything but video/rendering, and since I do a lot of real-time game development type work, I've had a hell of a time with them in the past (editors crashing, games that don't run well).

More than likely I was going to invest in a Titan card for this system.

 

[Artician]

Oh yeah.

Anyone thing this would need watercooling? I'd really rather avoid that, but I'm looking at 2 xeon e5's + a GTX Titan... Would love some opinions on that as well.

Many thanks to all the helpful folks here.

 

[imported_PowerHouse]

There's no reason to do watercooling. My dual Xeon E5 box runs quietly and stays cool on air.

 

[SocketF]

If you dont overclock you dont need it with modern intel CPUs (meaning anything with 32nm or below). These chips are running very cool at stock settings.

22nm Xeon CPUs (Ivy-E) will be launched sometime later this year ( I think it was Q3), then it would be even better. But if you cant wait, dont wait ;-)

 

[NTMBK]

Just make sure you get a well put together workstation and you won't need to worry about watercooling.

We got in Dell T7600s at work, and they're some very nicely put together pieces of kit. They're closer to servers than desktops in terms of layout- purely focused on front to back airflow, with inline processor coolers, RAM shrouds with fans, etc. (Makes sense, because they're designed to be rack mountable.) It was a very, very quiet machine- until I chucked in a GTX 580 for CUDA work, and the acoustics were ruined by it's non-standard dual-fan open cooler. Sigh. The Titan is actually meant to be a very nice, quiet machine, and its blower fan design will fit very well with the general front-to-back airflow ethos of a machine like that.

 

[snoylekim]

The E3-124* is the Xeon equivalent of the I7-3770 ( a hair lower clock speed) ..understanding is these don't dual processer, though .. It is an Ivy and a quite capable processor .. If you go single 1155 , I'd consider this .. pricing is comparable to I7-3770 ( except 3770K seems to be on sale more at certain chains) ..

 

[j3SeCh6d]

System specs? Since it's a 5+ year old machine, does it have a SSD? Many data intensive programs/softwares are choked by the mechanical-limitation of hard drives.

 

[crashtech]

The OP hasn't given a budget, nor revealed what software is being utilized, but I would guess it could make use of more than 4 cores.

And I would expect he would be aware of hard drive thrashing.

At any rate, an LGA 2011 (possibly dual CPU?) system with plenty of cores, RAM, and of course an SSD should probably satisfy his needs, unless the budget target won't allow it.

 

[Denithor]

Umm...isn't Haswell supposed to launch in like a month? Whole new socket, that's going to be with us for the next 2 years most likely.

Buying a S1155 right now just doesn't strike me as very intelligent. Especially since design software is likely to be some of the first to be updated to take full advantage of AVX2/TSX.

I say wait for Haswell and pick up a pair of E5 chips from the next generation. You'll likely be happy you waited...

 

[colonelciller]

Umm...isn't Haswell supposed to launch in like a month? Whole new socket, that's going to be with us for the next 2 years most likely.

Buying a S1155 right now just doesn't strike me as very intelligent. Especially since design software is likely to be some of the first to be updated to take full advantage of AVX2/TSX.

I say wait for Haswell and pick up a pair of E5 chips from the next generation. You'll likely be happy you waited...

OP, my suggestion is you visit the Creative Cow forums.
That site is focused like a laser on what you're looking for.

This sub-forum in particular is great for hardware advice... there are several system integrators there who seem to give great advice for VFX, CAD, Video Editing builds.

 

[crashtech]

LGA 2011 has a ways to go yet, that is my recommendation. Unless the release of Haswell will bring a workstation solution with more than 4 cores, which if it does I failed to notice.

 

[colonelciller]

LGA 2011 has a ways to go yet, that is my recommendation. Unless the release of Haswell will bring a workstation solution with more than 4 cores, which if it does I failed to notice.

I'm hoping LGA 2011 has a decent future life because I've just invested in that platform

 

[Artician]

System specs? Since it's a 5+ year old machine, does it have a SSD? Many data intensive programs/softwares are choked by the mechanical-limitation of hard drives.

Heh, would you believe I can't even remember, it's been so long? (and I built it!) After having to look everything up, here it is:
Athlon 64 X2 5600+
8GB RAM
Can't recall or find the info for the motherboard, but it was something from early that generation.
ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2

And I just bought the SSD, my first one. Was my first purchase because it was something that I knew would be useful and increase performance without the rest of the system.

The OP hasn't given a budget, nor revealed what software is being utilized, but I would guess it could make use of more than 4 cores.

No budget, really. Currently I'm looking at a system that's roughly $2500, not including the cost of the already-purchased SSD:

Xeon E5 2630 - $550
Xeon E5 2630 - $550
Supermicro MBD-X9DRL-3F-O - $340
G.Skill 32GB F3-1600C9Q-32GSR - $220
nVidia GTX Titan - $1070

I regularly use Maya Fluids and Houdini for effects, with 3DS Max, photoshop and Unity for my realtime work.

isn't Haswell supposed to launch in like a month?

I wouldn't have thought of that, so I'll keep an eye out prior to jumping in on one thing. That's part of the reason I post here, because my life is so chaotic that I can't keep up with the industry news *at all* anymore.

OP, my suggestion is you visit the Creative Cow forums.
That site is focused like a laser on what you're looking for.

Perfect! Thank you very much!