Is LGA 2011 worth it for scientific workstation?

[MikeDacre]

Hi,

I have a budget of $1k for a personal workstation to use in my lab. We have a server cluster with 160 cores and 625G of RAM for really intense stuff, but I want to be able to do as much as I can on my personal workstation, so I don't have to fight over resources. Most of my work is very parallel with a huge memory requirement, and ideally I would have two monitors (not included in the budget, I have those already). The budget has to include: CPU, Memory, Mainboard, SSD for OS (storage drives already taken care of), and graphics card.

So my question: is LGA 2011 + ASRock X79 Extreme 6 worth it?

The only reason I am looking at it at all is the quad-channel memory that should make memory access faster. I can get 32GB in 4x8GB DIMMs now and upgrade later if I want.

What do you guys think?

If I get this setup, I have very little money left over for graphics, the case, fans, etc.

Thanks!

 

[crazymonkeyzero]

Hi Mike and welcome to the forums,

Firstly, if your budget is 1K, I would avoid lga 2011 alltogether and look only at the 1155 platform~ I can assure you, it is a very capable platform and not just for "gamers". The 3930k is $500-600 dollars alone and is the only SB-E cpu worth buying on lga 2011 (i7 3820 is crap), thus limiting the rest of your budget. So going with an ivy bridge xeon or i7 is a better choice for you.

I made a very similar setup above with Asrock X79 Exreme6 and a 3930k for my workstation which I also use it for scientific computing, running molecular structure software. I can say that lga 2011 is good, but it really depends of the software you use. If you need tons of memory and bandwith to run highly parallel/ multithreaded tasks, only then will investing in lga 2011 will pay dividends in performance. However I also have an ivy bridge 1155 setup with the Xeon E3 1275 V2 and it is performing very well too, (sometimes neck and neck), on the same tasks at a fraction of the cost.

For your budget I recommend looking into the Xeon E3 V2 series and a 1155 workstation motherboard such as the Asus P8C WS. ECC memory may also be of importance for data integrity. You can run up to 32gb ram in dual channel on most 1155 mobos which is more than enough for most single cpu workstations. If you are buying lga 2011 just for quad channel memory, then it's definitely not worth it.

 

[John Connor]

There really isn't going to be a difference in quad channel vs dual channel.

 

[kleinkinstein]

^ Very true! Is theory yes, but in practice emphatically no.

 

[ShintaiDK]

3-4 channel on LGA1366/LGA2011 is mainly for the other CPUs to access without performance penalty in NUMA.

 

[jacktesterson]

Go 1155. Lot more value for your money.

 

[IntelEnthusiast]

Socket 2011 and the Intel® Core™ i7 processors that use this socket are really about the 6 cores and quad channel memory support (of which there are very few things that take advantage of). With a $1000 I would be focusing on something in the socket 1155 maybe an Intel Core i7-3770 and a solid board like the Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H or ASrock Z77 Extreme4 should work better overall for you.

 

[tweakboy]

Hi Mike and welcome to the forums,

Firstly, if your budget is 1K, I would avoid lga 2011 alltogether and look only at the 1155 platform~ I can assure you, it is a very capable platform and not just for "gamers". The 3930k is $500-600 dollars alone and is the only SB-E cpu worth buying on lga 2011 (i7 3820 is crap), thus limiting the rest of your budget. So going with an ivy bridge xeon or i7 is a better choice for you.

I made a very similar setup above with Asrock X79 Exreme6 and a 3930k for my workstation which I also use it for scientific computing, running molecular structure software. I can say that lga 2011 is good, but it really depends of the software you use. If you need tons of memory and bandwith to run highly parallel/ multithreaded tasks, only then will investing in lga 2011 will pay dividends in performance. However I also have an ivy bridge 1155 setup with the Xeon E3 1275 V2 and it is performing very well too, (sometimes neck and neck), on the same tasks at a fraction of the cost.

For your budget I recommend looking into the Xeon E3 V2 series and a 1155 workstation motherboard such as the Asus P8C WS. ECC memory may also be of importance for data integrity. You can run up to 32gb ram in dual channel on most 1155 mobos which is more than enough for most single cpu workstations. If you are buying lga 2011 just for quad channel memory, then it's definitely not worth it.

I have 3820 and I have it overclocked to 4.8Ghz stable ....... my Q6600 took about 80 percent when I play the piano,,,, steinway grand Now with my new CPU , it takes 2 percent,,,,,,, WOW thats 40x faster........ and 3820 chip is a faster chip then Sandy clock for clock.

I will give it 1 or 2 years, and buy a Ivy Bridge E .......... plus 2011 is quad channel memory 8 dimms slot pci 3.0 usb 3.0 2 estata , plenty of sata 3 and 2 ,,,,,,,, This chip is for people like me running a DAW. The n3930k is nice too but a overkill right now, I will wait until ivy 22nm and pay 300 bucks and get a Ivy E cpu which will fit my mobo, thx gl

 

[tynopik]

there's only 2 reasons to go 2011:
1. more than 4 cores
2. more than 32gb ram

do you need need/want either of those?

you also said your software runs on a cluster, so maybe many cheaper machines on a network would work better?

 

[A5]

If you only have $1K, LGA2011 isn't a good use of the budget. CM0 has the best suggestion so far - if your work is really important, you need to get a Xeon with ECC capability.

 

[tynopik]

The 3930k is $500-600 dollars alone and is the only SB-E cpu worth buying on lga 2011 (i7 3820 is crap), thus limiting the rest of your budget.

It depends on what you need, if you just want more than 32gb ram, the 3820 is perfectly fine

(or if you want (more than 64gb) or (more than 32gb and ecc), its xeon brother the e5-1620)

 

[NTMBK]

The one other big reason for going 2011? Lots of PCIe lanes. Useful if you'll want to do lots of computing on accelerators (CUDA, OpenCL, using a Xeon Phi, whatever) and want a box full of them.

 

[snoylekim]

if you go 1155, consider the Asus P8Z77-WS board ..a little more $$ , but provides dual server grade NICs ( could be useful in a Lab/Heavy NAS environment) ..handles E3 and IB processors ( not sure about ECC memory compatibility w/ the Xeons ..I think so..) Nice PCI-e capacity for graphics and add on cards .. I run one on my rendering/photo rig..very stable ( I don't OC, but the reviews give it good marks here) .. good bios, and has never complained after long (24-36 hour) batch rendering sessions ..

 

[BrightCandle]

You don't really have enough budget for 2011. You have the application it was designed for, you could see up to 50% faster performance on 2011 compared to 1155. But I doubt currently you able to afford it.

So if you do go 1155 make sure to get a processor with hyper threading, you will benefit from that as well.

 

[cantholdanymore]

It looks like you can barely have CPU, MB and memory with that money. Need to talk to your boss to approve some extra money for SSD and graphic card.

 

[tynopik]

You don't really have enough budget for 2011.

He does if he can stick with the 3820 or e5-1620, but again that's only useful if ram is the limiting factor