• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Seeking Workstation Build Help!

Z

zlov

Junior Member
H'okay. I don't know hardware so very much, but I'm looking to build a new machine; I got somebody at work to choose my components, and I'm posting them here for your collective help if possible.

This is the build my coworker gave. If you could give any feedback, alterations, suggestions -- anything at all (both as far as item or a better product for value), I would be much obliged.

Prices here are $CAD, by the by.

Budget: No more than $2500 CAD, but as cheap as possible of course.
Purpose: I work doing 3d/motion design/commercial/television/film work, and freelance for the same. As such, sheer processing power is something I am looking for (for rendering). RAM and GPU are helpful for real-time previews as well as operation speed while using the software. Gaming not so much.
Monitor: 24" 1920x1200
When: ASAP.
Overclock: No. Not comfortable / strong enough hardware-wise to do so.
Where: Either NCIX or Canada Computers. NCIX means I need to pay for shipping, but they pricematch; CC I can go and do a pickup myself.
Other notes:

  • OS will be Win 7.
  • Assembly by a friend.
  • Onboard sound/ethernet.
  • I plan on partitioning the HD into OS/Software || Data, then waiting until a reasonable-sized SSD comes on sale; when I get one, I'll move the software partition over.
  • 6 gigs of ram (triple channel) for now, may upgrade later on. Somebody advised me against triple channel, though from what I understand it increases the bandwidth between the cpu and the memory, which is beneficial for what I do (though gaming not so much -- good thing I'm no gamer.)
  • I know a workstation vidcard (Quadro etc) may be better, but they're crazy-expensive. Is it really worth the price boost?


CPU



Mobo



RAM



Vid Card



HDD



DVD Drive



Case



PSU



Total: $1857.03


Thoughts? And, thanks in advance!
 
Don't bother with anything other than the cheapest GPU unless you know for a fact that your software is CUDA accelerated.
 
mfenn said:
Don't bother with anything other than the cheapest GPU unless you know for a fact that your software is CUDA accelerated.
Click to expand...

+1

Any previous generation video card should work nicely (and save you some money) if your rendering software does not support CUDA acceleration.

On another note, if you plan on doing multiple rendering at once, more RAM would be good. 6GB sounds about right, but I would shoot for 12GB if you could afford it. That'll help when you get into some hardcore 3D rendering.
 
Didn't see a monitor listed in the breakdown but did see you wanted a 24". I'd say ditch the high end vid card and get something cheaper with dual DVI. Then put that $$ into two 20" s.
 
Which software are you using ? That factors big into the video card decision. Autodesk has the new quicksilver renderer and Vray has vray RT both use the gpu to render scenes as well as octane renderer. Some of them only work with nvidia cards, some work with ATI too. Depending on what you need for final output quicksilver can do a pretty good job, although it does have some issues with ambient occlusion sometimes.

Basically get as much ram and processing power as you can afford up to a point. You can put all your money into one box to do your work and rendering or a better option is to build two boxes.

I do a ton of 3d work and my workstation is a Q6600 with 8GB ram, ATI 5770 card, and a few hard drives. The second pc is a 16 core AMD, 32GB ram, 2x1TB hard drives.
. The reason for doing it this way is pretty simple. If you only have the one pc and you have to render a complex scene that can take one hour per frame you cannot use that pc for anything else. So for all the time you need to render content that pc is tied up. Splitting into two boxes allows you to send the content to the pc with all the cpu power and ram and have it sit in a render queue while your other pc is free to start a new scene or do more work.
 
I'd start by asking the software vendors what kind of system you need, my understanding and experience with 3d is that hardware can be the difference between the software working or not. Without knowing what programs you're going to run it's hard to say what system specs you should use, I know a lot of CAD software isn't guaranteed to work on anything less than a workstation graphics card (quadro.)
 
kornphlake said:
I'd start by asking the software vendors what kind of system you need, my understanding and experience with 3d is that hardware can be the difference between the software working or not. Without knowing what programs you're going to run it's hard to say what system specs you should use, I know a lot of CAD software isn't guaranteed to work on anything less than a workstation graphics card (quadro.)
Click to expand...

Earlier this year I got a Quadro FX1800 for a CAD workstation at work, to run Solidworks. This card is almost identical to a 9600GT with 768MB of ram, but it costs $550 instead of $100. I'd bet money that a GTX480 would blow the FX1800 out the water in *any* application.

The only reason to buy the Quadro is to get software support. If you are paying for a supported solidworks license like my workplace, and you find a bug or your software crashes, you need the Quadro / FireGL / FirePro card to get support.
 
Blain said:
Please define what you mean by "blow out the water", since workstation cards aren't designed for gaming.
Click to expand...

Perhaps my initial wording was a bit too strong. To start from the beginning:

1. It's pretty well accepted that all professional cards use identical GPU's to gaming cards. There may be a slight firmware tweak, but the major differences are usually added memory & support for active 3d (shutter glasses).

2. The added performance (sometimes substantial, depending on the benchmark) is based on driver optimizations. It has been pretty common in the past to softmod gaming cards to appear as pro cards to the OS, allowing the use of the pro drivers, and yielding higher pro performance. I'm not sure if softmodding is still possible, but I'd seriously recommend against it in a real work environment 🙂

3. Pro-level benchmarking is pretty weak. Everyone seems to run SPECviewperf and not much else. In the past we've seen video card companies in the past create specific driver optimizations for gaming benchmarks. Do you think they can resist the temptation to do the same thing in the pro market, especially when the main benchmark gets updated at a glacial pace? I've seen some unofficial testing which shows amazing gains (5x+) for pro vs. gaming cards in SPECviewperf, but then show much smaller gains in "real world" usage.

My earlier comment ("blow out the water") was in reference to comparing the $400 Quadro FX1800 (based on the G94 core) to a several generation newer GTX400 or ATI 5800 gaming card.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top