Workstation as a Personal Computer

[jackson1]

I am interested in making a workstation computer into a high-end gaming machine. Is this possible? I figure if there's 4 processors and 8 gigs of memory that it'd be better than my 3.4 GHz HP computer.

Why don't I hear more about people making their own ultrapowered workstation? Is this a faux pas in the computing world to try to create a gaming station with server/workstation hardware? I'm wondering why I hear so much about Alienware and so little about people making workstations themselves for the same price.

I have a budget of about $5000, and experience building PCs. However I don't know much about servers and workstations. In short, I'm looking to build a ridiculously overpowered computer that most people could never experience (and not letting Alienware build it for me).

My current setup (PC):
3.4 Ghz Intel Pentium 4
2.0 GB PC2-3200
2x 250 GB Western Digital HD
256 MB Geforce 6800GT
Some 500 watt speakers and a 32" plasma tv I use as a monitor.

My highest priority would be extremely fast gaming, then multitasking, then storage space. I know you guys know what you're talking about, so can I have some help on what to build?

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I really hope you aren't trolling with this post...

Because it's pretty much a waste. My wife's machine (Opty 148 @ 2.6, 2GB RAM, 74gb Raptor, & 7800GT) does games tons better than my system (dual Xeon 2.66, 2GB RAM, 1.75TB hd space, dual PSUs, & 6800GT). It's because my system was designed for rendering, and hers was designed for gaming. Right now, granted, I have a 6800GT in there, but when I get my Quadro FX 3000 in here, it will be even moreso worse. When you get into the high end, things tend to drift towards specific applications. The higher end you get into rendering, the worse at gaming it is. All the processors and RAM really doesn't matter at that point.

Save your money, and build a good gaming machine.

 

[jackson1]

aww, that's sad. I was hoping that more processors equalled more performance, but I suppose that isn't always the case. My HP computer is okay, it's fairly high-end but not the greatest. I was looking for something to take its place and was wondering if a workstation would be the way to upgrade something that's already really good to begin with.

I'm not familiar with the differences between "rendering" and "gaming" though...i thought they were the same thing...perhaps that's where I'm getting confused on this issue. What if I put 2 7800GTs on the workstation board (assuming there's a mB that can allow that)? Is there any way a workstation could contend with a single processor PC?

 

[Ionizer86]

The system you have will get outperformed on games will get outperformed by any modern system with an ok processor (A64 3200+ etc) with a better graphics card, say a 7800GT/X, X1800 variant, or X1900 variant. It's that come a certain point, the graphics card is the bottleneck. It doesn't matter if you have two Opteron 280's for a total of 4 cores. It'll be barely faster than a fine overclocked X2 while it would cost tons more.

If you want hardcore, I guess you could go for two dual core 7800GTX / 512's for a total of 2GB video memory and 4 video chips, but you'd be spending much more for diminishing returns.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Rendering = Toy Story, stuff like that. Where you are actually rendering each scene, frame by frame. Each frame may take anywhere from 6 seconds to 1 minute. And when you are doing a 5 minutes movie, that's 9,000 frames (5 minutes * 60 seconds * 30 frames per second). That is why the 4 - 8 processors and RAM comes into play.

Once again, you'd be better off getting a high-end consumer level board with dual SLI (Asus A8N-SLI for example) than getting a server mobo. They aren't made for speed so much as thye are for stability. If you get a server and a gaming machine, equip them with (roughly) the same processor, the same RAM (once again, roughly), and put a gaming card in them, yes, their performance would be close. But you'd be spending a hell of a lot more to do so on the workstation. And the advantage of being able to add more processors and RAM on the server mobo won't do you any good for gaming.

 

[mwmorph]

actually it probabyl could. 2 quadros and gaming performance would suffer but 2 7800gts and gaming perforemance wouldnt be bad at all. What are the specs for the processors? With 8, the most a game uses is 2 so the toher 6 can say paly mp3s, show a movie on another screen and do some encoding. asl does ti have a sli motherboard? It wouldnt be as good as say a opty 170 and 2 gig ram and 2 7800gt purely for gaming, but you can run a lot more in the background.

 

[jackson1]

hmm. I guess I should look into a single CPU gaming PC, probably with dual 7800's or whatever is available when I buy it. From what I gather from your posts, more than a single processor in a single machine will create a bottleneck in the graphics card which isn't easily avoided.

On the plus side, I'm sure a gaming machine with 2 GPUs would be alot less expensive than a full-blown server with 2 or more CPUs. Sadly that means I wont get a fantastic performance gain by upgrading soon--I will probably wait a few months for the next geforce to come out to make it worth the aggravation of a new PC.

Thanks for your input though...I'm glad I learned something today

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: jackson1
hmm. I guess I should look into a single CPU gaming PC, probably with dual 7800's or whatever is available when I buy it. From what I gather from your posts, more than a single processor in a single machine will create a bottleneck in the graphics card which isn't easily avoided.

On the plus side, I'm sure a gaming machine with 2 GPUs would be alot less expensive than a full-blown server with 2 or more CPUs. Sadly that means I wont get a fantastic performance gain by upgrading soon--I will probably wait a few months for the next geforce to come out to make it worth the aggravation of a new PC.

Thanks for your input though...I'm glad I learned something today

No, that isn't what I mean. Didn't mean to sound that way anyway... You can get a dual core processor, and be just fine for gaming. It's just that the server hardware is excessive for no reason. A good gaming machine will game just as well, if not better, than a server. The extra hardware capabilities in a server do little for gaming.

 

[xtknight]

 

[jackson1]

oh, mwmorph, I wasn't assuming anything about the workstation at all. Built completely from scratch or whatever, my question was what would give me the best (relative term) performance over a gaming machine of the same price. I think my question was answered, that for the same price, the workstation is going to be worse than a gaming machine built specifically for what I am doing.

It's starting to make sense why nobody talks about doing this. Blowing money is cool up to a point, but excessive wasting of money just makes you stupid.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: jackson1
oh, mwmorph, I wasn't assuming anything about the workstation at all. Built completely from scratch or whatever, my question was what would give me the best (relative term) performance over a gaming machine of the same price. I think my question was answered, that for the same price, the workstation is going to be worse than a gaming machine built specifically for what I am doing.

Gaming machines are the best when it comes to gaming. Workstation machines are the best when it comes to rendering models.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: jackson1
hmm. I guess I should look into a single CPU gaming PC, probably with dual 7800's or whatever is available when I buy it. From what I gather from your posts, more than a single processor in a single machine will create a bottleneck in the graphics card which isn't easily avoided.

Not necessarily. But most games are singlethreaded, and there are limits to how much you can multithread some of the sorts of tasks a game engine has to do. However, future games are more likely to be able to use at least two CPU cores, and NVIDIA has video drivers that can make some use of a second CPU (not sure if they run more than two threads right now; ATI also showed some beta drivers with multithreading). But for the immediate future, a single CPU (whether single or dual-core) should be just fine.

But yes, even if you had a game engine that could really make full use of, say, 8 CPU cores, you would probably be bottlenecked by the graphics card right now. Depending on the video settings you want to run, you could easily be bottlenecked by the GPU even on a relatively 'slow' single CPU.

The best gaming machine right now is going to be one with a very fast CPU (either single or dual-core), lots of RAM, and two very fast video cards configured for SLI/Crossfire operation. Depending on what happens with game and GPU design, that could change later.

 

[jackson1]

how close is multitasking to gaming? I get annoyed when I can't run 3 or 4 things at once and my dad asks why I need to run that much at once :/ I try to explain the concept of a power-user but he doesn't get it

I doubt putting in another video card would help multitasking at all but putting in multiple cpus just so i dont have to wait a few seconds may be foolish.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: jackson1
how close is multitasking to gaming? I get annoyed when I can't run 3 or 4 things at once and my dad asks why I need to run that much at once :/ I try to explain the concept of a power-user but he doesn't get it

I doubt putting in another video card would help multitasking at all but putting in multiple cpus just so i dont have to wait a few seconds may be foolish.

Unless you are 'multitasking' multiple games (or doing something like running 3DSMAX and Maya at once), your video card doesn't have much to do with it.

Running multiple apps without slowdown requires a lot of RAM (enough for each program individually plus some extra overhead), and having multiple CPU cores available helps.

 

[jackson1]

ok i think I'm coming to the conclusion that a happy medium would be a single CPU gaming machine, lots of ram, 2 video cards, and a couple of huge hard drives. Maybe it would be nice to have more than 1 cpu, but from what i'm gathering the payoff is not really worth it. I'm not trying to build an ultra-stable computer anyway, I can restart occasionally

My P4 cpu performs adequately, and it's hyperthreaded, so at least a dual-core cpu would be a nice upgrade. And there's always room for more ram!

 

[fire400]

That system will play games rather well. But workstation computers depending on your modifications can be quite fast. If you're not doing any workstation work, then it would be pointless to pay for a workstation computer when you could pay the same price for better framerates on a gaming rig.

 

[BOLt]

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
I really hope you aren't trolling with this post...

Because it's pretty much a waste. My wife's machine (Opty 148 @ 2.6, 2GB RAM, 74gb Raptor, & 7800GT) does games tons better than my system (dual Xeon 2.66, 2GB RAM, 1.75TB hd space, dual PSUs, & 6800GT). It's because my system was designed for rendering, and hers was designed for gaming. Right now, granted, I have a 6800GT in there, but when I get my Quadro FX 3000 in here, it will be even moreso worse. When you get into the high end, things tend to drift towards specific applications. The higher end you get into rendering, the worse at gaming it is. All the processors and RAM really doesn't matter at that point.

Save your money, and build a good gaming machine.

I really hope you aren't trolling with this post...

What is wrong with your current system? I'm just curious, but why do you feel compelled to build another system when the one that you have is pretty damn good as it is (albeit P4).

 

[jackson1]

Originally posted by: jackson1
Blowing money is cool up to a point, but excessive wasting of money just makes you stupid.

That's pretty much why. Building a fast computer is one of the few things I'm willing to spend money on. I don't pimp out my car, I don't go to clubs, I don't take vacations, I upgrade my computer.

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: jackson1
ok i think I'm coming to the conclusion that a happy medium would be a single CPU gaming machine, lots of ram, 2 video cards, and a couple of huge hard drives. Maybe it would be nice to have more than 1 cpu, but from what i'm gathering the payoff is not really worth it. I'm not trying to build an ultra-stable computer anyway, I can restart occasionally

My P4 cpu performs adequately, and it's hyperthreaded, so at least a dual-core cpu would be a nice upgrade. And there's always room for more ram!

multitask is still more than just ram, having a dualcore would help immensely when multitasking