Please comment on my build

johnwayes

Junior Member
Jan 21, 2006
7
0
0
Hello,
This computer will be used for some 3d modeling (zbrush, maya), some 3d game playing (jedi academy, FEAR, Rome: Total War), a lot of game programming, and some computationally intensive tasks (training neural networks and evolutionary algorithm iteration).

Please tell me if you think I should trade out any of these components or if you think anything's wrongheaded.

case: antec p180 -- like how it looks and it seems that it gets good temperatures, would prefer lian li because it's all aluminum, but didn't want to spend the money
CPU: Opteron 165 -- intend to overclock as much as possible with stock, hoping for around 2.5
PSU: Silverstone Zeus 650w -- needed something with a lot of wattage, and a lot of the 600w's had too many DOA and PSU exploding stories for me not to hesistate
MB: Asus A8N32Sli -- was trying to decide between this and the expert, decided on this because of the Asus name
Graphics: 2 xfx 7800 gts -- perform better than GTX 512 mb
ram: Crucial Ballistix Tracer 2GB (PC 4000) -- getting it for the tight timings at higher speeds
hd: WD 1500 150gb 10k rpm sata150 -- plan on getting another and using raid 0 (was between this and getting another later or getting 2 74gb raptors in raid 0)
cd burner: nec nd-3550a
 

Ricemarine

Lifer
Sep 10, 2004
10,507
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hmm, only recommendation I have would be getting a DFI SLI-DR. or expert... Tweaking that ram is your friend.

That is a very good rig setup.
 

Bobthelost

Diamond Member
Dec 1, 2005
4,360
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It's good. I don't know about the PSU, but it's not a bad brand so you should be ok with it.

Think about eVGA cards, although thier main strength is the waranty, and with the A8N32 SLI you don't really have room to swap out the HSF for NV silencers (i've got one on a G card and in the p180 it's nearly up against the interior divider if i use the lower slot. Not sure about the layout of the DFI, but i'd recomend looking more closely at it.
 

potato28

Diamond Member
Jun 27, 2005
8,964
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All is good except for the Raptors. You could get better performence and storage from a Seagate or another Western Digital. I personally like the Seagates better, with the 5 year warenty, and their pretty cheap.
 

HamidFULL

Member
Sep 5, 2005
177
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Do one 7800GTX 512 it have better Performance from 7800GT SLI and future u can do 7800GTX 512 SLI and get huge Performancr
 

cakes

Junior Member
Jan 21, 2006
12
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I think the 512MB 7800GTX will outperform 2 7800GTS, unless we are talking about 3DMARK.

In the benchmarks they were about even, only 1 FPS ahead or behind, do you plan overclocking your videocard?
 

Bobthelost

Diamond Member
Dec 1, 2005
4,360
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Originally posted by: potato28
All is good except for the Raptors. You could get better performence and storage from a Seagate or another Western Digital. I personally like the Seagates better, with the 5 year warenty, and their pretty cheap.


Back that up with evidence or back down.

Speed wise there isn't a SATA that can touch a Raptor 150. The seagates are much, much slower. You also missed the point where the Raptor 150 came with a 5 year warranty.

Cakes: You could just look at a benchmark using a game to compare them then:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2607&p=7

Edit: I'd go single card if i were you, SLI is more headache than it's worth for all but the ultra high end.
 

theMan

Diamond Member
Mar 17, 2005
4,386
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dont go sli, just get a single card, then when the next gen cards come out, you can sell it and pop a new one in there. its way better. get a 7800gtx, and wait for the x19xx or 7900 cards.
 

johnwayes

Junior Member
Jan 21, 2006
7
0
0
Anyone have comments on the burner or PSU? Like I said, only reason I picked that particular PSU was because most of the 600w's I saw on NewEgg scared me away with reviews saying they exploded or were DOA. Just picked a cheap burner, not too sure about that either. In honesty I'd prefer an optical drive that read really fast, was cheap, and maybe didn't write that quickly at all, but at least produced quality burns--but most of the drives I see in the 30-50$ range have the same read times.
 

johnwayes

Junior Member
Jan 21, 2006
7
0
0
My reasoning behind the double 7800 gt's is that I can get one for 260 and another for 300, a total of 560, and together they outperform a 7800 gtx 512, which costs ~700. I could get a 7800 gtx 256 and buy another later, but the cost/benefit isn't good enough. I'd rather just get two gt's now, perform better than a gtx 512, and get a better card later. It seems like sli gt 7800's hits the sweet spot for cost/performance. A poster above said they only outperform the 512mb gtx on 3dmark, but they actually out perform across the charts, in games, at any resolution.
 

johnwayes

Junior Member
Jan 21, 2006
7
0
0
Bobthelost: What do you mean by headaches with sli? What kinds of problems can I expect with sli? Issues configuring them? Too much heat generated? What?
 

Bobthelost

Diamond Member
Dec 1, 2005
4,360
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Burner = BenQ 1655 or NEC (any) Both are great brands, although i think the BenQ is slightly better, especailly if you're not going to flash the Firmware to an unoffical one.

Why would you get one for 260 and then pay 40 more for the second? Is this part of some "bundle" offer?
 

johnwayes

Junior Member
Jan 21, 2006
7
0
0
Bobthelost: Yes, a bundle offer: Select an opteron 165 and newegg gives you a list of graphics cards to discount.
 

bob4432

Lifer
Sep 6, 2003
11,719
44
91
Originally posted by: Bobthelost
Originally posted by: potato28
All is good except for the Raptors. You could get better performence and storage from a Seagate or another Western Digital. I personally like the Seagates better, with the 5 year warenty, and their pretty cheap.


Back that up with evidence or back down.

Speed wise there isn't a SATA that can touch a Raptor 150. The seagates are much, much slower. You also missed the point where the Raptor 150 came with a 5 year warranty.

Cakes: You could just look at a benchmark using a game to compare them then:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2607&p=7

Edit: I'd go single card if i were you, SLI is more headache than it's worth for all but the ultra high end.

although i wouldn't do sli, they are not a headache, all you do is connect the bridge and power connectors....

also, wouldn't do raid 0 unless some of your apps actually need it. most of the time they dont, but yours seems to be specialized so i would verify that they would benefit from striping raid.

also the ram timings aren't that critical even on the dcs...
 

johnwayes

Junior Member
Jan 21, 2006
7
0
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Lots of times doing soft computation like neural networks or kohonen maps I have to read/write files with sizes in excess of 10 gigs, so the almost double read/write speads gained from raid0 would be very helpful. I want the CAS latency to be as low as possible for the same reason. I need sequential reads to go very quickly.