New system, no budget...

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NExUS1g

Gawd
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I am looking to build a computer system without regards to money. I would like a multiprocessor, something near a terahertz total (6-8 GHz seems feasilble), but the higher the better. Fiber optic HDD. I'm thinking of 2 gig ram sticks for about 8 gig of RAM Corsair or Kingston. Dual SLI GeForce 6800s. Planning on a projector or plasma for display. Most likely plasma. I would like to get this all at one place if it's possible, but I'm not able to find any one place that meets all these needs. Also, if there's anything out there that I missed or that is better quality, let me know.

Thanks in advance for the help.
 
What are you planning on using this for?

There's no way you'll get anywhere near a terahert though...

Also, not to mention there aren't any boards yet that can truly support a full 32 lanes of pci-e for sli geforce.
 
defakto said:
What are you planning on using this for?

There's no way you'll get anywhere near a terahert though...

Also, not to mention there aren't any boards yet that can truly support a full 32 lanes of pci-e for sli geforce.
Click to expand...

There arnt any boards out period that support SLI.
 
Fiber optic Hard drives? Fiber channel maybe? Good for servers, but U320 scsi in raid 10, or 5 with a good controller and lots of cache will be faster. As far as processors, get a dual xeon system, those are up to what, 3.6 Ghz now? Or wait and find a nacona (64 bit). SLI isn't out yet as said above, and I don't know if there will be dual xeon boards with PCI-e, since PCI-X still gives more bandwidth I believe.

But seriously, what is this for? For that much money you could still have a really fast system, and upgrade yearly.
 
No budget with those specs? I wish I had your lack of budget.

Since I am waiting for rar to archive me some files, let's see what I can come up with. I figure by the "near a terahertz" you mean combined from all of the processors. The 6800 is out though, since I don't know any mobo that can handle these processors with an agp slot.

Let's see, I am not promising anything, just mainly pulling specs from memory and pricewatching price.

Tyan Thunder K8QS Pro - $1,700
Opteron 850 (4) - $6,200
Corsair PC3200 ECC/Registered 2GB sticks (4) - $2,400
Samsung 63 HDTV Plasma Display - $11,000

Without drives or anything like that I get around $21,300. Add a kick ass raid setup, since with this system raid would be nothing.

I am not even worth that much. Good luck to you though, if you end up getting something like this, it will reinvent awesome. Be sure to post pics and benchies.
 
Don't get a plasma, they are a real pain to look at up close. What you want is a large screen tft display. Both Sharp and Toshiba have some big screen high resolution TFT displays coming out (40 inch display with 1920x1080 resolution). Expensive as hell though!
 
2gb sticks aren't all that great price/performance. there are mobos that support 8 sticks, just get 8 1g sticks.

i think only dual xeon boards have the 2 16x pciE's though, and their memory bandwidth is shared. that's just yucky. look at dual opterons.
 
A lot of good feed back here. Thank you all.

First of all, let me answer some questions for you all that cropped up. I'll try to get them in the order they were asked..

"What are you planning on using this for?" -Defakto
Primarily Gaming and 3D design as far as the intensive stuff. Other than that, it will pretty much be my entertainment centerpiece as much as possible. Movies, music, entertainment, etc. Since many console games are coming out on PC, and quite frankly I think perform better on PC, I'm not going to bother with consoles.

"Fiber optic Hard drives? Fiber channel maybe?" -Zyzzyva100
I had read about these a few years ago actually, so I wouldn't doubt that my terminology is off. Now, the drives I had read about had a very fast transfer in the GBPS range. I will do some research on that.

"I figure by the "near a terahertz" you mean combined from all of the processors." -Brad4321
Yes, that's what I meant by "near a terahertz total."

Now, onto the comments that people have made, I have a few questions in return...

"For that much money you could still have a really fast system, and upgrade yearly." -Zyzzyva100
I intend to upgrade. Most likely more often than once a year. Just whenever something comes out.

"Also, not to mention there aren't any boards yet that can truly support a full 32 lanes of pci-e for sli geforce." -Defakto
PCI-e may not fully support nvidia's SLI. However, PCI-e is still faster than AGP, and I will still see a significant performance increase with an extra GPU, correct?

"I don't know if there will be dual xeon boards with PCI-e, since PCI-X still gives more bandwidth I believe." -Zyzzyva100
I wasn't aware of PCI-X. Intel's site is a bit cryptic to me. Can anyone verify if PCI-X is faster than PCI-e? If so, will I be able to use a PCI-e video card on a PCI-x board? I would imagine so since they're both "PCI."

"Don't get a plasma, they are a real pain to look at up close. What you want is a large screen tft display. Both Sharp and Toshiba have some big screen high resolution TFT displays coming out (40 inch display with 1920x1080 resolution)." -snatch
Don't TFT displays have poor pixel response when compared to plasma? This will not be feet from my face either, I would say with the current room, it will be about 15 feet away. Would a computer system be able to utilize the HD standard?

"look at dual opterons." -unhappy_mage
Opterons. Those are basically the same as the "64" branded processors, right? Xeons share memory bandwidth from what you say, but Opterons don't? Also, AMD boasts over a GHz FSB, don't they? I had read in another thread that this extra speed is basically trickery.

"2gb sticks aren't all that great price/performance. there are mobos that support 8 sticks, just get 8 1g sticks." -unhappy_mage
Well, since they support 8 sticks, then I could do 16 gig. To me, price versus performance is a joke. If I want top-of-the-line, I kind of have to throw that mentality out the window.

"hm, thought there was one, ok, well, makes his machine even harder at that point." -Defakto
I was also under the impression from Nvidia's site that there was one board currently out that will support SLI. Of course, I can't find it now, but I think it was either an Asus or MSI baord.
 
1.) pci-x and pci-e are totally different things and as far as i know not compatible
2.) U320 scsi is roughly 2.56 gigabit transfer rates, or 320MB/s
3.) fiber channel drives do exsist but you'd be just as good with standard scsi u320 if that's what you wanted
4.) it would take you 333 processors at 3.06GHZ processors to reach a terahert
5.) current video cards do not stress agp8x yet so the performance jump between pci-e and agp is within 5 percent, at least on most the benches of seen compareing an agp card with teh same card on pci-e
6.) If you want a gaming machine, the most you will probably be able to go is a dual board as most quad systems and above have integrated video that sucks.
7) Opterons have on on die memory controller. So there is no north bridge latency so you will get better memory transfers. They use hypertransport to connect between components on the board, it's a serial point to point basically on the motherboard. I believe current gen opterons have an 800mghz link. I know my board has one from processors -processor, processors to each seperate ram slots (8 total, 4 dedicated to each processor), processor 0 to pci-x controller, and one to the agp bus from the processor0. There is no trickery on teh opteron for speed, my 2 gig opteron performans the same as a 3.06 gig p4 without breaking a sweat. The Opterons have a more efficient pipline that can handle more instructions at onces than the p4's. Also, the opterons are just amd64 brand, opterons are different from teh first amd64's that came out, The opteron was designed with dual core operations in mind, so if you got a dual opteron board, sometime in 2005 dual core processors are hitting hte market and your dual board becomes a quad board with,most likely just a bios upgrade as, according to amd's ceo, the dual core are supposedly pin compatible with current boards.
 
PCI-X and E are completely different. I think that they aren't compatible, but I am not sure on that. PCI-E is suppose to be faster than PCI-X in the next speed increase, so I have heard.
 
Brad4321 said:
PCI-X and E are completely different. I think that they aren't compatible, but I am not sure on that. PCI-E is suppose to be faster than PCI-X in the next speed increase, so I have heard.
Click to expand...

Yea, I have heard that too. I didn't mean for my original comment to be miscontrued either. I never meant PCI-e and PCI-X were the same. I was just saying that since at the moment a PCI-X 133 mhz slot is faster than any other standard bus, and so it is what high end board will continue to use (especially since graphics aren't important on those boards). I was mistaken though in saying that no xeon board would have dual pci-e, but the only one I have heard of yet has 1 regular one, and one half crippled one (runs at half the speed), so that would be useless to use with SLI.

And as far as the original poster "looking into" fiber optic storage. Nothing exists beyond fiber channel, and based on your posts, I don't even know if you would be able to handle setting it up, as it can be a pain. Its certainly not plug and play, or just set a few jumpers like scsi.

And finally, Im surprised that it took as long as it did for someone to catch the fact that 10 GHz does not equal a THz. OOps, I feel stupid thinking about that now.
 
PCI-X is great right now if you want a high end disk controller. PCI-e will be the next step but it may be a wihle before boards have enough pci-e channels to make it worth it
 
defakto said:
PCI-X is great right now if you want a high end disk controller. PCI-e will be the next step but it may be a wihle before boards have enough pci-e channels to make it worth it
Click to expand...

the only add on cards for PCI-X I can find are NIC's and drive controllers. Most good mobo's have NICs built in anyways....PCI-X seems to be kinda of a flop. They are good if you want to add a high end SCSI controller...but thats about it.
 
Steel Chicken said:
the only add on cards for PCI-X I can find are NIC's and drive controllers. Most good mobo's have NICs built in anyways....PCI-X seems to be kinda of a flop. They are good if you want to add a high end SCSI controller...but thats about it.
Click to expand...

It was never meant for normal users. It is meant for webservers running huge scsi raid arrays that will still saturate a 64 bit/133/100/66 mhz bus. The only reason I meantioned it was because he wanted a high end mp board, and I just pointed out that pci-e will be slow to migrate to there since they already have a high bandwidth options. Graphics cards on the other hand are different, and someworkstation board will get pci-e slots, but a lot won't (at least initally), and server boards probably never will until the high end storage solutions go pci-e too.
 
Steel Chicken said:
the only add on cards for PCI-X I can find are NIC's and drive controllers. Most good mobo's have NICs built in anyways....PCI-X seems to be kinda of a flop. They are good if you want to add a high end SCSI controller...but thats about it.
Click to expand...


I never said anything beyond disk controllers...
 
easy cowboys. many people here on the [H] are not normal. I had a PCI-X equiped board once, and while it is supposed to be backwards compatible with older PCI cards, thats often not true, And mine wasn't. How many people have 0 PCI cards in their puters? I still use PCI capture cards, and I would use my old creative audigy if it wasnot such a POS.

to me the ultimate would be a quad opteron with AGP (or fully functional PCI-E) when its ready; built in SATA, Giga Ethernet, a couple of PCI-X slots for SCSI arrays and a few PCI for old school cards. Unfortunately, no one makes one as far as I know. Some dual opterons that do though.

I agree, servers and power-work stations are different, I was simply saying a full on server mobo with PCI-X is pretty much useless for your average workstation.
 
Hello again, everyone.

First of all let me say that the THz thing was funny. I don't know where my mind was going when I was thinking of those things, but aparently my mind kidnapped all of yours as well. I'll rescind and rephrase, "I would like to get as close as possible to 10 GHz."

"If you want a gaming machine, the most you will probably be able to go is a dual board as most quad systems and above have integrated video that sucks." -Defakto
If a board does come with the on-board video, it's been my experience that BIOS usually has the ability to disable it. Is this changing?

So basically what it seems to be boiling down to is Dual Opterons with AGP8x and a SCSI U320 raid setup, SLI is out for now as it was born premature.

Is anyone able to comment further on the pixel response for Plasma in comparison to TFT? Which will give me better color and sharpness?

Also, which raid would be best to use (5, 0, 1, etc.)? What are my options and what's the bottom line on each option?
 
NExUS1g said:
Is anyone able to comment further on the pixel response for Plasma in comparison to TFT? Which will give me better color and sharpness?
Click to expand...


That depends entirely on the model and sizes you're talking about. Currently there aren't many direct view LCD TVs that will allow you to play games without some sort of ghosting or smearing. The new Sharp Auqos are definitely getting better, though. Plasma doesn't have response times, so that's not an issue. The issue with plasma and HTPC is lower resolutions and the remote possibility of burn-in. LCDs can burn in, but it's almost unheard of - and they have uniformly have higher resolutions.

As for colors and sharpness, again it depends on the size and model. Generally the colors on plasmas are more vivid and the contrast ratio and black levels are better, however LCDs tend to be brighter overall. The sharpness thing is as arguable as you're going to get, either one can be made to look extremely sharp and well defined, especially more expensive models. I guess the last concern is cost (which you said really isn't an issue), but the fact remains that new (currently unavailable) 42 inch LCDs are well over $10,000, whereas for the same cost you can get 60 inch+ plasmas.

If you're trying to decide between the two go to a high end shop and look at them in a (preferably) dark room with access to the remote for tweaking. Do not base any conclusions on viewing at stores like Best Buy or Circuit City.
 
NExUS1g said:
"If you want a gaming machine, the most you will probably be able to go is a dual board as most quad systems and above have integrated video that sucks." -Defakto
If a board does come with the on-board video, it's been my experience that BIOS usually has the ability to disable it. Is this changing?
Click to expand...

Its not so much that you cannot disable the on-vidio.
Its more the fact that there is no AGP slot for a vidio card in the first place.

With a high end SCSI raid card and multiple drives then the best level of raid is probably 5.

Luck........ :D
u=Tigerbiten.gif
 
So basically what it seems to be boiling down to is Dual Opterons with AGP8x and a SCSI U320 raid setup
Click to expand...

That is what is currently in the mail for me, thunder k8w. The SCSI comes later, as that costs as much as both of my opterons, and that is just for the controller.

I only use 1 pci card, and that is my audigy. Everything else I use integrated. Now, if the integrated fries, I am screwed unless I RMA the motherboard.
 
Your best bet is probably going to be a system similar to mine (see sig). As far as Mobo, I would recommend going with a Tyan Thunder K8W or possibly an Iwill DK8X. For Graphics, I would say either a PNY Quadro FX (for DCC) or a BFG 6800 Ultra OC (for gaming). You will also need a high-speed PCI-X RAID Controller; Broadcom RAIDCore (BC4452 or BC4852) and Highpoint RocketRAID (1820A) are both good. Even though "money is no issue", be prepared to spend upwards of $10K for the hardware alone. ;)
 
If you use a 32-bit OS (read: Win 2k/XP) you won't be able to utilize more than 4GB.
 
Moog said:
If you use a 32-bit OS (read: Win 2k/XP) you won't be able to utilize more than 4GB.
Click to expand...

And the only 64-bit OSes are a buggy Windows beta and Linux, therefore limiting your software choices.
 
Moog said:
If you use a 32-bit OS (read: Win 2k/XP) you won't be able to utilize more than 4GB.
Click to expand...

With 2k or 2k3 server you can enable PAE and use more than 4GB. Applications are limited to less than this, but on a whole it works quite well.
 
-First PCI-E 16x is the fastest bus avaliable. Here is a handy dandy chart to illustrate this: http://www.acme.com/build_a_pc/bandwidth.html.
-The best graphics card I have seen is a GeForce 6800 GT. But a Radeon X800xt PE is in the works: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=18412.
-Most quad boards will not have AGP or PCI-E and will not run XP on them.

-Some upcomin tech to look forward to:
Dual P4 Tumwater with SLI PCIE: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=43

-As far as storage goes you do not need to drown in fiber channel garbage. Stick with a U320 setup in RAID 10.
 
JackieO said:
That depends entirely on the model and sizes you're talking about. Currently there aren't many direct view LCD TVs that will allow you to play games without some sort of ghosting or smearing. The new Sharp Auqos are definitely getting better, though. Plasma doesn't have response times, so that's not an issue. The issue with plasma and HTPC is lower resolutions and the remote possibility of burn-in. LCDs can burn in, but it's almost unheard of - and they have uniformly have higher resolutions.

As for colors and sharpness, again it depends on the size and model. Generally the colors on plasmas are more vivid and the contrast ratio and black levels are better, however LCDs tend to be brighter overall. The sharpness thing is as arguable as you're going to get, either one can be made to look extremely sharp and well defined, especially more expensive models. I guess the last concern is cost (which you said really isn't an issue), but the fact remains that new (currently unavailable) 42 inch LCDs are well over $10,000, whereas for the same cost you can get 60 inch+ plasmas.

If you're trying to decide between the two go to a high end shop and look at them in a (preferably) dark room with access to the remote for tweaking. Do not base any conclusions on viewing at stores like Best Buy or Circuit City.
Click to expand...

yes BUT you need take into account the longevity of the screens. there is a reason that 42" LCD's and 60" plasmas are the same price, and its that the LCD will last longer. it has been shown that over time, a plasma based screen will degrade, the colors will fade ect. with LCD screens that doesnt happen, and tat is why they are so much more expensive, as well as the fact taht all those pixels are hard as hell to fit into a screen that size. if price is no factor, go for the LCD man!
 
As far as the FC-AL stuff goes, it does have one advantage vs. SCSI for home use: Cable length. Really f'n massively long cable length. That means the HDs can be in another room. So you can pop in an FC-AL board, and put the array in the basement, spare room, etc. and not have to listen to it. Plus the cables are pretty thin so it's not too hard to get them through a hole in a wall or floor. Add some water cooling and have one truely silent system.
One catch with FC-AL is that it's damned hard to find internal FC-AL gear. If you want your drives in the case, just use SCSI. I'd use SCSI if they're going to be right next to the case as well. FC-AL is meant for SANs and external drive arrays, and that's pretty much all it's used for. Sun briefly flirted with internal FC-AL, but they've since gone back to SCSI for internal and FC-AL for external for the most part. Of course, you can still get external SCSI arrays, but all the really big stuff is FC-AL.
 
terahertz as in a trillion? there are no two processors that will give you a terahertz, a teraflop would be a feat in a small machine, but you'd need about 1000 processors to get a TFLOP today.

as for the screen, bigger isn't better. if you do end up getting something that can do serious visualization to drive ultra high resolutions, you won't be getting the ability to play any games on it. you'd have to settle for something like dual opterons or dual xeons to get an AGP slot and have it able to run Windows and that would give you about 7 aggregate GHz, which is nowhere near 1000GHz. you could run windows server on a machine with about 1000 Itaniums in it, but I don't know if you could run any games.

you might want to consider an IBM eServer visualization system (~$250,000-several tens of millions) with an IBM T221 monitor($7000) or a custom visualization system from SGI to get a few TFLOP's of number crunching power. Plasma would look OK as a computer monitor but it would be relatively low resolution and even a 21" CRT could do better.

Don't solid state hard drives come in 90GB ranges now for about $5,000? you could get a terabyte of those for some fast storage and run it on a diskless cluster node or two.
 
Wow, doesn't look like the thread starter did too much research..

I predict somebody wasting a lot of money in the near future.
 
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