Haswell Xeon vs Ivy Bridge-E for new photo editing box?

[andrewa83]

Hello!

I'm considering configuration options for a new workstation. I work primarily in Lightroom 5 and Photoshop CC, editing pretty heavy images (20-50 megapixels, at 16-bit ProPhoto RGB, often with dozens of layers). My workstation also typically doubles as a fileserver/media player for the other streaming media boxes in my home.

The question is: do I go with a Xeon Haswell processor (E3-1275 v3, basically a Xeon-ized 4770K) or a consumer Ivy Bridge-E (i7-4930K)? The specific configurations I'm considering for both are:

Xeon E3-1275 v3 on an ASUS P9D WS (C226 chipset) with 32 GB of DDR3-1600 ECC RAM (4x8GB, at stock timings/voltages)
OR
Core i7-4930K on an ASUS P9X79 LE (X79 chipset) with 32 GB of DDR3-1866 non-ECC RAM (4x8GB, at stock timings/voltages)

As of now, the following additional internal components are set, regardless of the platform I choose:
Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB (System Disk) on the host controller
Samsung 840 EVO 500 GB (Scratch Disk and Catalogs) on the host controller
4x2TB WD RE in RAID5 via an LSI 9271-4i with the CacheVault Module
Gigabyte GTX660 w/2GB RAM
2x2TB WD Green Series in JBOD via host controller
Asus XONAR STX Sound card

I'm finding this to be a difficult decision. The cost difference is small (like $100) and I don't care much about the power consumption differences. While some sites report solid performance gains in Photoshop (around 15%) for Ivy Bridge-E over Haswell, no sites that I know of test with Lightroom, which is generally more lightly threaded than Photoshop. Additionally, I'd much prefer the more modern Haswell platform and ECC, although X79 provides everything I need plus more PCIe bandwidth (so I wouldn't have to run the video card in x8 mode).

Thoughts from the fine minds here? I've heard reports that Ivy Bridge-E misbehaves with large amounts of RAM (from anandtech and elsewhere), anyone else heard the same? Any assistance will be appreciated, and I'll be sure to report on my results to help future buyers with similar decisions.

 

[tynopik]

Xeon E5 series for > 4 cores and ECC and no concerns about large amounts (256GB) of memory

 

[andrewa83]

@typnopik - Unfortunately, Xeon E5 is out for cost reasons. Can't afford the $1.5K+ it would take to match a $550 desktop Ivy Bridge-E.

@Deleted member 4644 - You're not crazy, as it's a tough question. Much of what I do in Photoshop will benefit from the two additional cores, but it's not clear that Lightroom will. Additionally, applying file compression during saving in Photoshop is actually one of the more time consuming things I do (and pretty much required with multi-gigabyte TIFFs) and I don't know how many cores that particular operation can effectively use.

 

[tynopik]

$586 E5-1650

 

[andrewa83]

@tynopik - totally forgot about the 1600 series, and was looking at the 2600 series. Thanks!

 

[mfenn]

$586 E5-1650

That's a Sandy Bridge, not an Ivy Bridge.

 

[mfenn]

OP, the reason that your pricing is coming out so similarly is that you're comparing a single-socket workstation platform (E3-12xx V3 + C226) to an enthusiast consumer platform (i7 4xxx + X79). If you were to either knock the Haswell down to consumer or bring the IB-E up to workstation, then you'd see a big price difference.

Anyway, the real question is, can you benefit from the features of the workstation platform? If so, how much are you willing to pay for it? In this context, the main benefit I see is ECC.

In that case, you can save a good amount by going with something like:

Xeon E3-1240 V3 $276 - no need for the IGP since you have a GPU
ASRock H87 Fatality $100 - the Fatality branding is dumb, but it has an extra PCIe x4 slot while being less expensive than Z87
Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 8GB x4 $264
Total: $640

Note that 4 lanes of PCIe Gen2 is 2 GB/s, which is far in excess of what your RAID array can deliver. So there's no concerns about bottlenecking there. This config will have the same performance as the ECC option, but costs about $200 less.

 

[tynopik]

That's a Sandy Bridge, not an Ivy Bridge.

yes, but similar ivys should be out soon

and even if not, nothing of value was lost