Building Workstation PC around

[mrgeppetto]

Hey Guys,

So I'm going to be trying to build a Workstation PC around this Firepro v7900. My old roommate decided to rip out his hard drive from his old gaming PC and tried to throw the rest of the PC away. Me being the dumpster diver I am, I grabbed it and its sitting on my worktable. So far I haven't had the chance to put in a new hard drive to figure out the parts so I'm not quit sure what kind of CPU it is. But in terms of computer components, what minimum CPU and RAM should it at least be to prevent the v7900 from getting bottlenecked.

 

[thedocta45]

Really dependent on the application, but you probably want a high clocked i7 Sandy Bridge and at least 16GB RAM with an SSD.

 

[defaultluser]

For gaming:

You don't need much. The card is equivalent in performance to an HD 6870:

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/580/firepro-v7900.html

That's barely capable of solid 1080p gaming at this point.

Anything more than an AMD quad core or Core i3 would be overkill, assuming this is a one-off build intended to be used just for this GPU.

For workstation: you're going to have to tell us EXACTLY what you plan to do with it.

 

[mrgeppetto]

Not exactly sure. I'm probably just going to sell it as a workstation PC. I managed to get ahold of the v7900 and haven't been able to sell it, I figured id rather just build a PC around it since I almost have a full one that just needs a hard drive and OS. I know plenty of people that do design and photography along with my dad that does construction so I'm sure I can get rid of it that way.

 

[defaultluser]

I don't think you understand:a professional graphics card has a very limited user base. Let me roll over some of the issues you'll have selling this thing:

1. The amount of benefit designers get will be determined by whether they need Cuda support or not (your card does not have this).

2. You'll get zero benefit out of one in Photography.

3. Someone in construction would only benefit of they were working on 3D models.

The reality is that you're not able to sell that card because it's built for a specific use case, and you're not goign to easily be able to throw together a cheap system and sell it a premium just because it has an old workstation card. You're competing with the high-end OEM workstations here

 

[dscherf]

I saw this earlier but want to echo defaultluser here. It's a four-year-old workstation graphics card and there are newer, more powerful cards, cheaper than when this first came out.

 

[primetime]

What would a high end oem workstation be typically used for? And what hardware would it use for best overall value?

 

[mrgeppetto]

I really don't know. I just didn't want to have these items laying around my workspace collecting dust. I would rather turn it into something that can be useful to someone.

 

[pgaster]

Workstation cards like that really shine for OpenGL CAD software, which would be things like Soildworks, Siemens NX, etc. Autodesk moved to DirectX years and years ago, so that card isn't any real big advantage there. Geforce and Radeon drivers have crippled/incomplete OpenGL drivers. You can't get Realview in Solidworks for example by default with gaming cards.
http://fireuser.com/blog/solidworks...nd_benchmarking_on_firepro_v4900_v5900_v7900/

That card is worth some money. You could sell it on ebay for probably over $100 by itself.
Or if you wanted a separate machine to try out CAD software, then go for it.
An i5, sandy or newer, would be a good match, or of course an i7 even better.