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CPU/Mobo recommendation

J

JiBB

Weaksauce
Joined
Feb 19, 2007
Messages
65
So I'm thinking about doing an upgrade. Not really worried about price to much. I want something inbetween a workstation and a gaming rig.

I was wondering if there is any disadvantage to building something with a server board and wanting to be able to play games on it.

The dual socket would be great from rendering (I work in maya) but I'd like to be able to get something with decent onboard sound like the higher end X58 chipset boards.

I was thinking a 1366 Xeon for CPU but I'm not married to it.

Any help would be great.
 
It would help if you told us exactly what you were planning on using this PC for. Your post is somewhat vague.

Also, what features are you looking for in a motherboard? Firewire? # of SATA ports? RAID? CF/SLI support? etc etc.

Anyway, the main disadvantages of a dual CPU setup is as follows:
- High costs as you now have to get server versions of the CPUs as well as ECC DDR3 RAM
- Any home version of Windows cannot be used as none of those support dual CPU setups.
- You have to use a case that allows for e-ATX motherboards.

In addition, since these are server mobos, audio quality is usually pretty low on the list of importance.
 
This is probably your only option for a low-cost, gamer-oriented dual-socket motherboard.

http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/01/27/core-i7-can-work-dual-cpu-mode/

You can use normal Core i7 chips to keep the costs down, so it will be attractive to many high-end gamers. The only downside is the hub architecture, which might bog-down the system if your threads do a lot of inter-process communication.

However, I don't know when it will be released.
 
Cool thanks.

Danni: My plans for this PC is Gaming and 3D work in maya (so full production work from concept to rendering) So I'm thinking at least 6 gig's of RAM and as much processor might as I can manage. I'm not to worried about price.

I didn't think about the windows versions though... that might cause some problems seeing as I only have win7 Home Prem right now. Perhaps I need to curb my sights on something with just a quad core.

I'll keep my eye on that EVGA board though...

My main overall concern is being able to have the most versatility (gaming and casual use without having to hunt down server version of programs) but not sacrificing the rendering power I need for work. I know this is really vague still but I'm still not totally sure what I need.

Is it your (meaning anyone who's reading this thread) that a single quad core i7 has enough hourse power to get 3D rendering done?
 
Why not get a LGA1366 Core i7 for now (CPU is your choice) and then drop in a 6-core i7 when they are released? I don't do 3d, but I do encode videos all day, and a i7 920 performs around 20-25% faster than a q9650 according to my encoding times thanks to Hyperthreading.
 
Yeah i had forgotten about the 6 cores. That's probably the best compromise.

So any recommendations on a good LGA1366 board? I want good on-board sound (I'm no audiophile but appreciate good audio) and need port multiplication on the eSATA ports.
 
JiBB said:
Yeah i had forgotten about the 6 cores. That's probably the best compromise.

So any recommendations on a good LGA1366 board? I want good on-board sound (I'm no audiophile but appreciate good audio) and need port multiplication on the eSATA ports.
Click to expand...

There isn't that much of a difference in audio quality between the good X58 motherboards.

mobo recommendation:
$200 - Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R Intel X58 ATX Motherboard
 
Cool. Thanks for all your help.

So now that we're on a roll. Lets say I go with the i7 920 and the EX-58A-UD3R. Any suggestions on the RAM I should get if I'm aiming to OC the 920 to like 3 gigs or so?
 
JiBB said:
Cool. Thanks for all your help.

So now that we're on a roll. Lets say I go with the i7 920 and the EX-58A-UD3R. Any suggestions on the RAM I should get if I'm aiming to OC the 920 to like 3 gigs or so?
Click to expand...

$160 - Corsair CMX6GX3M3A1600C9 3 x 2GB DDR3 1600 RAM
 
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