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Dual Xeons for new gaming/video editing rig?
- Thread starter skatr0830
- Start date
Either a C2D or, if you must, a C2Q will suffice for gaming. For video editing, I suggest you do some thorough research re: multi-core support for the applications you intend to run and the type of video work you intend on doing. There's no point dumping $$$ into hardware if your particular application won't take advantage of it or doesn't support it.
sgrinavi
Diamond Member
The boards that support dual processors will not have the enthusiest features that will allow you a great O/C on your single quad or single dual core rig. The money you save on your second processor and overpriced dual CPU board will be better spent on RAM, disks and GPU....
Also, the consumer level motherboards support much faster memory than your server motherboards required for dual Xeons. Rendering and gaming in a single machine is a hard task to do because you have to balance them--a good rendering video card sucks at gaming, etc. One option would be to build the gaming machine, and then do a cluster for rendering.
If you are not in a rush I would wait for Nehalem (it will reintroduce hyperthreading so the quad core will be able to handle 8 threads and it should be out sometime in the 3rd-4th quarter o the year). Considering how big an architecture change it shoudl be it doenst make sense to buy a core 2 close to its release (especialy if you are considering budgeting for a dual quad core).
MichaelD
Lifer
This thread caught my eye b/c I've been asking the same question for a couple of years now. 🙂
Bottom line is this: A rig to do both gaming and video editing well isn't cheap. Each high-end part needs another high-end part in order to function at max capacity and of course it will all need a high-end powersupply...which puts a high-freaking-end dent in your wallet. :Q Going high-end requires a total commitment...from your wallet.
I currently edit HD video on a Q6600 (at stock 2.4GHz) quad core with 2GB of memory and a big SATA hardware raid setup (3Ware 9650SE-8, 6 discs total). I don't need the disc speed so much as the space and the redundancy. But a hardware RAID card beats the snot out of any onboard raid, any day.
I also game a lot. Newer games like Crysis and Hellgate: London to name a couple, ARE multi-threaded and will take advantage of multiple CPU cores. So will Sony Vegas Pro and Adobe After Effects. Will games use 8 cores? Today, I'm not sure...tomorrow, most probably! I know for sure the two games I mentioned use 4 cores.
I'm currently spec'ing out a dual Xeon rig using a Tyan S5396A dual Xeon board. and two, 2.33GHz quad core Xeons. It would cut my rendering time in Vegas 8 Pro by more than half. That's a lot of time gained when comparing a 60-minute render to a less than 30-minute render.
Most dual Xeon (and AMD dual socket) boards have onboard SATA raid that would do a decent job. CPUs are so fast these days that CPU overhead for raid calculations isn't too bad under normal usage. If we're talking a big database server, then sure, you need a hardware raid card. But you could get away with just the board, CPUs and memory, then add the raid card later, budget permitting. 🙂
I admit it is debatable whether to spend all that money to save 30 minutes or so...but "worth it" is always relative and most of us surfing these forums are not typical brain-dead computer users but enthusiasts that always want BiggerBetterFasterMore. That's me, anyway. 😀
Hope this helps somehow.
Bottom line is this: A rig to do both gaming and video editing well isn't cheap. Each high-end part needs another high-end part in order to function at max capacity and of course it will all need a high-end powersupply...which puts a high-freaking-end dent in your wallet. :Q Going high-end requires a total commitment...from your wallet.
I currently edit HD video on a Q6600 (at stock 2.4GHz) quad core with 2GB of memory and a big SATA hardware raid setup (3Ware 9650SE-8, 6 discs total). I don't need the disc speed so much as the space and the redundancy. But a hardware RAID card beats the snot out of any onboard raid, any day.
I also game a lot. Newer games like Crysis and Hellgate: London to name a couple, ARE multi-threaded and will take advantage of multiple CPU cores. So will Sony Vegas Pro and Adobe After Effects. Will games use 8 cores? Today, I'm not sure...tomorrow, most probably! I know for sure the two games I mentioned use 4 cores.
I'm currently spec'ing out a dual Xeon rig using a Tyan S5396A dual Xeon board. and two, 2.33GHz quad core Xeons. It would cut my rendering time in Vegas 8 Pro by more than half. That's a lot of time gained when comparing a 60-minute render to a less than 30-minute render.
Most dual Xeon (and AMD dual socket) boards have onboard SATA raid that would do a decent job. CPUs are so fast these days that CPU overhead for raid calculations isn't too bad under normal usage. If we're talking a big database server, then sure, you need a hardware raid card. But you could get away with just the board, CPUs and memory, then add the raid card later, budget permitting. 🙂
I admit it is debatable whether to spend all that money to save 30 minutes or so...but "worth it" is always relative and most of us surfing these forums are not typical brain-dead computer users but enthusiasts that always want BiggerBetterFasterMore. That's me, anyway. 😀
Hope this helps somehow.
Modelworks
Lifer
What I found out from rendering 3d for the past 10+ years is its best to have two separate installs.
One for the workstation, which a dual core is more than enough .
The second for a dedicated render box or 2,3,4 whatever you can afford.
The reason is that the workstation needs good update in the viewports, needs to support a good video card, and a reasonable amount of memory.
You could put a quad core in the workstation, but something I have found out is that even the latest software versions, Max2009, Maya 2009, do not use more than two cores working with viewports. That may change, but right now , that is just the way it is.
So you use the workstation to lay out the work, then hand off the number crunching to the render box(es)
The render box only needs fast cpu(s) and lots of memory.
It doesn't need to have great video card support, sound, or even be compatible with the latest os, like vista.
Its just easier to build and lay out this way.
Also you can set aside a large render job and still work away on your workstation.
Boards I really like for render boxes are Tyans S5376, Dual xeon, so its 8 cores and in my case 16GB per box x2.
So I can render with 16 cores @ 2.5ghz, with 16GB per 8 cores and it doesn't take up much space at all.
I have both boxes running redhat fedora 8
I really can't recommend using a server board for gaming.
They are not really tested with gaming cards and if you approach Tyan or SuperMicro with issues you are having expect them to go unanswered.
Layout of the boards is not great for things like large video cards.
OS support in things like vista is often poor.
The gain you would see in gaming would not , to me, be worth the extra trouble.
One for the workstation, which a dual core is more than enough .
The second for a dedicated render box or 2,3,4 whatever you can afford.
The reason is that the workstation needs good update in the viewports, needs to support a good video card, and a reasonable amount of memory.
You could put a quad core in the workstation, but something I have found out is that even the latest software versions, Max2009, Maya 2009, do not use more than two cores working with viewports. That may change, but right now , that is just the way it is.
So you use the workstation to lay out the work, then hand off the number crunching to the render box(es)
The render box only needs fast cpu(s) and lots of memory.
It doesn't need to have great video card support, sound, or even be compatible with the latest os, like vista.
Its just easier to build and lay out this way.
Also you can set aside a large render job and still work away on your workstation.
Boards I really like for render boxes are Tyans S5376, Dual xeon, so its 8 cores and in my case 16GB per box x2.
So I can render with 16 cores @ 2.5ghz, with 16GB per 8 cores and it doesn't take up much space at all.
I have both boxes running redhat fedora 8
I really can't recommend using a server board for gaming.
They are not really tested with gaming cards and if you approach Tyan or SuperMicro with issues you are having expect them to go unanswered.
Layout of the boards is not great for things like large video cards.
OS support in things like vista is often poor.
The gain you would see in gaming would not , to me, be worth the extra trouble.
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