Recent content by officerping

Thanks for the information. I'm probably going with the i7-3820, due to the lower cost and some more comparisons (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-3930k-3820-test-benchmark,3090-9.html) which show that it gives improved performance for single threaded processes. When Ivy Bridge-E...

Based on your recommendations, I'll be going with Sandy Bridge-E. I'll mull over whether to spend $200 extra on the 3930K; extra cores are nice. :) Thank you all for the good discussion!

Yes, that definitely makes sense. If I understood you correctly, the chipset (X79) does not support USB 3.0, so the motherboard's manufacturer must provide a separate USB 3.0 controller. Thanks!

I see. :) Yes, I'm familiar with distributed computing and my current research group founded one of these projects (Folding@Home). Thanks for your donations, they've been incredibly helpful for scientific research.

Wow, that is a pretty amazing-looking cooler. I'm definitely considering this as an option. Is the cooler size ever an issue? I've installed several Zalman CNPS9500 / 9700 coolers over the years, and due to their size I need to install the CPU and cooler when the motherboard is still outside...

I was looking at AnandTech's own benchmark suite. I don't know what the performance would be for my specific simulation software. I see. I'll make sure to get a motherboard that supports PCI-e 3.0. Can you clarify why USB3.0 support can come from either the motherboard or the CPU? I'm a...

That sounds great. What fan / heatsink are you using? I've never used liquid cooling but I heard it could be helpful for these things.

This is for my research in molecular dynamics simulation. I wrote a software for force field optimization that interfaces with several GPU and CPU codes. What is a "DC machine"?

Agreed. I know $200 is not much of a price increase for a workstation, but for this particular one I am on a budget. Thanks. :)

I should add that I can run highly parallel tasks on a cluster (a good cluster would have 40 dual Xeon X5650 boxes shared between 10 users). That decreases the incentive of getting a 6-core CPU for this workstation.

I'm concerned that the lower clock speed on the 3930K CPU would result in lower single thread performance (although i would benefit when running parallel tasks). If the single thread performance is comparable then I could justify spending the extra money.

Thank you for the reply. I need to order online through my work. The LGA 2011 socket motherboard for the i7-3820 tends to be more expensive, so I find that the prices are comparable. :)

Hi there, I'm trying to decide between two workstation builds: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5381783/build.pdf https://dl.dropbox.com/u/5381783/build2.pdf The components are all the same, except for the motherboard and CPU. One is the i7-3770K, an Ivy Bridge processor; the other is the...