Advice on upgrading workstation computer

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Cycloner

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Oct 16, 2009
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I want to upgrade my video card but they don't make agp cards anymore so it looks like I need to buy a new computer. It only seemed like 3-4 years ago that I bought my current setup...

So what I'm looking for is advice on a new dual cpu setup that has the same performance or better to what I'm using right now. I will be using this as a workstation to do 3d modeling, rendering, photography and occasional gamming.

Technology seems like it has changed a lot so I have no idea how the performance of my current computer compares to what's available today.

My current setup
CPU: Dual 3.06GHz oc to 3.411
Mobo: Asus PC-DL Deluxe
Ram: 2GB of Kingston PC3200 DDR, Dual Channel
GFX: Nvidia GeForce 6800 Ultra

CPU Specs:
specsa.jpg


1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
3d modeling, rendering, photography, photoshop and gamming.
2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
0-5k? Taxes etc incuded.
3) Where do you live?
Canada.
4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. Please be very specific.
Everything except for speakers, keyboard and mouse.
5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
None.
6) Will you be overclocking?
Yes if possible.
7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
Still researching monitors but I might get 1x 30" and 1x 24".
8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
In the next 6 months.
9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
Not sure, what should I need? Would be nice if I could overclock it and it had sli support, built in soud and ethernet.
10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license?
Yes but I'm concidering XP64bit or Windows 7.


Thanks.
 
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Hi, sorry I missed the asking for build help sticky. I updated my previous post. Thanks again.
 
Six months? Far too early to start planning a build. At most two months but that's a bit of stretch even then.

I recommend asking for build help when you're very close to the purchase date, like one to two weeks.
 
Well I was being conservative. I was thinking before christmas or in january. I just don't know where to start.

Also I'm looking for a dual socket xeon motherboard that supports overclocking.
 
With just some general looking around you could have a hard time finding a dual socket mobo that overclocks very well. Maybe you can find something you like, but the terms overclock and server are generally mutually exclusive. I am sure someone will be along with some suggestions, but I personally have not seen a decent SMP board with anything resembling OC features at this point. That said I would be shocked if a stock 55XX xeon didn't give a substantial upgrade over your current rig. I also would not buy anything below the 5520 Xeon, as you'll be losing out on cache and other features. Good luck on your build, and there is always pre-built if you can't find what you want.
 
Thanks Ghettobox.

My current server motherboard supports overclocking. I can change the multiplyer etc. I would like a motherboard that at least has some way of increasing the cpu clock rate. The current cpus that are even close to 3.4ghz are very expensive so I was thinking I could get a cheaper one and try to overclock it.

Ghettobox said:
That said I would be shocked if a stock 55XX xeon didn't give a substantial upgrade over your current rig.
Click to expand...

Well for example the Intel Xeon E5540 Nehalem 2.53GHz may be able to render scenes faster but its almost 1ghz slower then my current setup. Won't that make everything else in my computer slower? Especially single threaded applications. That has me a little worried. Or maybe I'm missing something?
 
The Ghz alone doesn't mean much. Clock for clock performance would need to be taken into account more than any clock speed advantage your current CPU's would have. FSB speed, memory bandwidth, and general I/O throughput will have a much larger impact on your performance than clock speed. Add in turbo boost, which will automatically ramp up your clock when single threaded apps are used I think you'll be all set. You will lose some clock speed, but I think you'll find a rather large performance gain.

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=40200
 
Prestonia?!?!? :eek: wow... times have changed. You missed the entire Athlon64 era, hehe. Lets do a crash course on revolutionary architecture called Conroe: To sum it up, a 1.8Ghz Conroe can perform on par with a 3.7Ghz Presler (the last of the netburst). Intel switched to a tick/tock product cycle, starting with new arch, then die shrink, rinse and repeat. Conroe/Kentsfield/Merom was the new arch released in Q3'06, and Wolfdale/Yorkfield/Penryn was the die shrink from 65nm to 45nm the next year. In Q4'08, Nehalem was launched (new arch), but its mainstream models were delayed until Q3'09... which brings us to today: these chips OC on their own with Turbo mode. :p

Begin with some reading material:

Intel's Core 2 Extreme & Core 2 Duo: The Empire Strikes Back
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 & E6400: Tremendous Value Through Overclocking
AMD Phenom II X4 940 & 920: A True Return to Competition
Nehalem - Everything You Need to Know about Intel's New Architecture
Intel's Core i7 870 & i5 750, Lynnfield: Harder, Better, Faster Stronger
The Real Conroe Successor: Clarkdale & All You Need to Know about Westmere

Sorry, was too lazy to grab articles from other sites aside from AT, lol. Check the FAQ for more sites to read more reviews.

Basically, you'll probably best suited by an i7 920, almost any X58 board, 12GB of RAM, a couple Intel X25-M SSD's in RAID0, a couple 1TB Samsung F3 or Seagate 'cuda.12's, a FireGL or Quadro card (or a softmodded GeForce if you want to save a few hundred; unless you're running Maya, lol), some $30 or less DVDRW SATA and/or Blu-Ray drive, a nice Lian-Li, and a TP New 750 or whatever good quality PSU is on sale for $100 -- oh, and can't forget about RAMDisk. ;) .... OR, if you can wait even longer, go for a Gulftown, lol.

Did you decide on a monitor yet?
 
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Thanks for the links. Took me awhile to read all of it. The Nehalem article was really interesting.

I'm getting closer to posting a build but I'm having trouble finding 4GB 1066 ram moduals. I wanted to max out the motherboard at 24GB. CAS latency also seems high for what I could find. Any suggestions?

If my budget was 6k what should I get for the best rendering performance. The higher end xeons are very expensive to get the 3.33ghz clock rate. The i7 has a higher clock and is cheaper. If I went with the dual cpu setup I would probably end up getting the X5550 Nehalem 2.66GHz ($1k) or one model higher. Will the lower Ghz hinder rendering performance compared to overclocking the i7-975 to 4+ghz?

As for the monitor I'm leaning towards the HP DreamColor LP2480zx/MultiSync LCD3090W-BK-SV

Thanks
 
The CAS latency doesn't really matter in real world performance. 4GB DDR3 RAM is pretty expensive right now. The cheapest I know of costs $200 USD. A 12GB set of 3x4GB set costs about $1200 USD. If you really want 24GB of RAM, then go ahead and pay for it.

The X5550 isn't really worth it. Nor is the i7 975. The performance difference between a OC'd i7 920 and a i7 975 is pretty much nill.

EDIT: Also, if you do go with a multi-CPU setup, the Core i7 cannot be used in a multi-CPU setup. So you'll need to use a Xeon. The Xeon W3520 and the E5520 are a good choice for the money.
 
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Cycloner said:
What does a "Tripple Channel Kit" really mean? Is this...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820104127

The same as getting 3 of these?
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231307

I'm a little confused what the difference is. The G.Skill does not say how many channels it is. If I got 3 of those G.Skill modules would that be a tripple channel setup like the Kinston's in the first link?
Click to expand...

One is 1066 and the other is 1600. You would want the 1600 for sure.
 
Yea after reading the kingston specs you can underclock it to 1066 to get cas of 7 like the G.Skill.

But I still don't know about the tripple channel thing. When they are sold as a kit of 3 modules labled as 'tripple channel' is that the exact same thing as buying 3 individual modules. Will buying 3 seperate modules still be a tripple channel setup. And what does that mean exactly. Sorry i'm new. :rolleyes:
 
Cycloner said:
Yea after reading the kingston specs you can underclock it to 1066 to get cas of 7 like the G.Skill.

But I still don't know about the tripple channel thing. When they are sold as a kit of 3 modules labled as 'tripple channel' is that the exact same thing as buying 3 individual modules. Will buying 3 seperate modules still be a tripple channel setup. And what does that mean exactly. Sorry i'm new. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

It's the same thing as buying 3 individual modules. Triple channel refers to memory bandwidth and performance. Simply put, they're only meant for mobos based on the LGA 1366 socket
 
In the past, "matching pairs" were a big deal with dual channel kits and compatiblity, but not so much these days. Triple channel kits just mean matching pairs for all 3 sticks -- which isn't as important these days (mobos and modules are more robust now). Though, its still best to use matching specs, at the very least.
 
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Cycloner said:
Cool. Thanks for the clarifications.

I'm looking at the power supplies right now. What wattage would I need for a dual cpu and sli setup? I might not go with SLI but I want a powersupply capable if I decide to in the future.

750W
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371022

-Edit-

I found this Power Supply Calulator. Very helpfull.

I'm leaning towards the Antec Signature SG-850 850W but i'm not sure if it will be enough wattage.
Click to expand...

We'd need to know what card's you'd be using in SLI. Obviously the PSU requirements would vary from a pair of 9400GT's to a pair of GTX285's. :cool:
 
Well I'm for sure going with the Quadros but I have no idea which one yet. Likely the Quadro FX 3800 (108watt) x2. The top of the line Quadro FX 5800 is 189 watts but If I were going to spend 3k per GPU I would rather spend that on a better CPU for rendering performance. However I would like to future proof my power supply a little but not too much.
 
What programs will you be using for all your 3D work?

And what games do you plan on playing?
 
3ds Max and Photoshop will be the main software. As for games, I have no clue. This is mainly a workstation rig but I would like to play the latest games without any problems.
 
Unfortunately, I haven't found a softmod for Quadro/FireGL cards yet, lol. ...or, maybe the GeForce/Radeon drivers will work fine on them? Not sure. If not, your pro card most likely won't play games very well, unfortunately. :(
 
The reason for going with the quadros is to get 30bit color support for the monitor I am planning on getting. Then there's the added benifit of performance in 3ds max but that's not the main reason.

What I don't understand is how the Quadros are for games. Why would they be bad and how much do they suck? I mean I want to at least play the new games smoothly. Is there a comparison somewhere?
 
They're not optimized for fill rates. They're optimized for precision and data crunching. I don't have any links right now, but if nobody posts any soon, I'll look tomorrow.
 
WS gfx cards suck in games, big time. royally bad.

also, CPU is certainly huge for rendering, but more and more apps are utilizing CUDA which means GPGPU, ie gfx card rendering ie WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY faster than the best CPU.

an example of the benefits of CUDA would be a 2 year old nvidia gaming card, the 8800GT which retailed $200 at launch i believe, is probably 5x faster at encoding a video even with an i7 975 OCed to 5ghz.

CS4 added CUDA support to some apps. there's a plugin for photoshop that uses a CUDA-enabled GPU to do some post-processing effects. when used, the effects get rendered like 10x faster than a Intel Core 2 Quad.

visit adobe.com for CS4's CUDA support, it may not even apply to you. i dont know much about 3ds max and cannot comment on CUDA support.


basically, the future of rendering and encoding is GPGPU, meaning their will be muuuuch better performance from the gfx cards than the CPU for specialized tasks.
 
No renderer on the open market currently uses GPGPU. There is one (check on the nVidia CUDA site) that is comming soon. (furry something).
 
hmm that really sucks that games would take a big hit with the Quadro....

Since I'm going to run a two monitor setup what if I ditch the SLI Quadro idea and get one Gaming card and one Workstation Card. The gamming card I would use on one of the monitors and the workstation card I would use for 3ds max/30bit color photo editing on the other.

Unless theres a 30bit color gamming card then that would be the perfect solution.
 
Ok. Here is what I have so far:

Total = *3351 CDN*

Case --> Lian Li PC-A70F Black Aluminum E-ATX Full Tower Case = (223.78 ) (ncix.com)
CPU --> Intel Core i7-960 Bloomfield 3.2GHz = (629.99) (Newegg.ca)
Motherboard --> ASUS Rampage II Extreme LGA 1366 = (419.99) (Newegg.ca)
Power Supply --> Antec Signature SG-850 850W = (255.91) (ncix.com)
Ram --> Kingston 6GB DDR3 1066(PC3 8500) KVR1066D3N7K3/6G = (162.99x2=326) (newegg.ca) or Kingston HyperX 6GB DDR3 1333 KHX1333C7D3K3/6GX = (180.99x2=361.98 )
Video Card --> PNY VCQFX3800-PCIE-PB Quadro FX3800 1GB = (868.49) (Newegg.ca)
Hard Drive --> Kingston SSDNow E Series SNE125-S2/32GB = (399.00) (Newegg.ca)
Blu Ray Burner --> LG WH08LS20K OEM = 189.99 CDN (Newegg.ca)
Other --> Scythe Mugen 2(heatsink) = (36.88 ) (ncix.com)

Well I decided to ditch the xeons and save money for other things. As long as I can render the scenes I need then I don't mind waiting for the render times.

I would like to get the cost of this setup down if I could without sacrificing reliability and still have an upgrade path in the future.
 
Ditch the i7 960. It's not worth the money, even for the kind of work you're doing. Just go with the i7 920 instead.

PSU wise, you can get the cheaper Corsair 650HX, 750HX, and 850HX or the Antec Truepower New 650 and 750 and still get the same reliability as the Signature line. Yes a qulaity 650W PSU will be enough for that planned setup.

Mobo wise, the Asus Rampage II Extreme is not any more reliable than the Asus P6T motherboard. Or, at the very least, not that much more reliable enough to justify the extra costs. So I'd go with the Asus P6T instead.
 
Many thanks for your suggestions. I have considered the i7 920 but only if I can overclock it to around 3.4ghz on air. If the Asus P6T can overclock well then I may go with that. I'm just a bit iffy about it. After looking at the first few pages of reviews on newegg I see problems. The Rampage II Extreme not as much.

That True Power 750Watt PSU was on the top of my list before I picked the Antec Signature 850W. The only thing is I'm uncertain 650-750Watts will be enough for dual video cards. I'm trying to give my setup a little room for upgrading if I decide to.
 
Cycloner said:
hmm that really sucks that games would take a big hit with the Quadro....

Since I'm going to run a two monitor setup what if I ditch the SLI Quadro idea and get one Gaming card and one Workstation Card. The gamming card I would use on one of the monitors and the workstation card I would use for 3ds max/30bit color photo editing on the other.

Unless theres a 30bit color gamming card then that would be the perfect solution.
Click to expand...

Workstation cards don't suck for gaming, you're going to see a 5 to 10% drop in framerate compared to their gaming counterpart. Their drivers just aren't optimized for gaming, that's all.

Don't buy a core i7 960, it's a waste of money, get the 920 if you're going to go with a single cpu setup. However, if you're using programs that take advantage of multiple cores when compiling (4+), I'd go for two Xeon E5520s. Hyperthreading does make a pretty big difference, but 8 true cores and 16 logical are always better then 4 cores, 8 logical if you can use them all. You'll have a lot more options when it comes to support for memory as well.

MB: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182176
CPUs: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117185

If you use ECC memory, you're good to 144 gigs (you'd need 8 gig sticks for that though). If you use non-ECC memory, you're going to be limited to 24 gigs.
 
I agree with Danny's suggestions.

Ditch the SLC, not worth the extra money. Get the MLC version instead, or an indilinx based solution.

If TRIM is not important to you, grab one of these:
$250 - Intel X18-M 80GB w/ DANE-ELEC DA-SDM25-80G-N-T-MK 1.8" - 2.5" adapter + USB2.0 2.5" External Enclosure

It has good garbage collection, but every now and then you'll need to run the manual trim tool provided by intel.
 
Total = *2990 CDN*

Case --> Lian Li PC-A70F Black Aluminum E-ATX Full Tower Case = (202 CDN)(performance-pcs.com)
CPU --> Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz = *Combo Deal(675) (Newegg.ca)
Motherboard --> ASUS Rampage II Extreme LGA 1366 = *
Power Supply --> Antec Signature SG-850 850W = (255.91) (ncix.com)
Ram --> Kingston HyperX 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 1333 KHX1333C7D3K3/6GX = (180.99x2=361.98) or Kingston HyperX 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 1600 KHX1600C8D3K3/6GX (184x2=368) (Newegg.ca)
Video Card --> PNY VCQFX3800-PCIE-PB Quadro FX3800 1GB = (868.49) (Newegg.ca)
Hard Drive --> Kingston SSDNow E Series SNE125-S2/32GB = (399.00) (Newegg.ca)
Blu Ray Burner --> LG WH08LS20K OEM = 189.99 CDN (Newegg.ca)
Other --> Scythe Mugen 2(heatsink) = (36.88 ) (ncix.com)

The price is looking a little more reasonable now. I think I'm going to stick with the ASUS Rampage II. It is only $45 more with the combo deal and with the $30 rebate only $15 more. The Antec Signature SG-850 850W I will probably stick with to as many people say it's quiet and it gives me more head room for upgrading to sli etc.

It looks like I will be able to overclock the i7 920 just fine but which to get for it DDR3 1333 or DDR3 1600? The DDR 1600 has slower timmings and a few $ more.

Now the last thing I'm trying to do is consolidate the shipping and avoid duty. According to the list so far I need to order from 3 different places (performance-pcs,ncix,newegg). The loose ends are the case,psu,heatsink. I would like to purchase them from one place. Just can't find many canadian retailers...

How are these retailers?
provantage.com
performance-pcs.com
sundialmicro.com
frozencpu.com

....and the SSD is out of stock and way more expensive on ncix.com grrrr.
 
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The only one I can't recall off the top of my head whether or not it's good is sundialmicro. But the other three are good reatailers to buy from.

Timings wise, don't worry about it. You're not gonna notice a difference at all between CAS 7 and CAS 9 in real world apps and games. So go for DDR3 1600 for that greater potential for an OC.
 
Cycloner said:
...
Hard Drive --> Kingston SSDNow E Series SNE125-S2/32GB = (399.00) (Newegg.ca)...

....and the SSD is out of stock and way more expensive on ncix.com grrrr.
Click to expand...

Definitely not worth the price.
 
Ok this is really frustrating. Practically everything on that list from newegg is out of stock. Motherboard,Ram,Burner,Hard Drive. Newegg doesn't have the psu or case I want either... So either wait and hope they all get in stock at the same time or not buy from newegg at all...
 
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