overclockable dual socket (2cpu) systems... what is out there?

T

tecton3d

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Hey all,

I do a lot of heavy 3d modeling and rendering and am looking for an "enthusiast" and overclockable dual cpu platform. I'm having trouble finding anything other than the EVGA SR-2 system which, when spec'd with other components, comes to around $2300, which is more than I'd ideally like to spend.

Does anyone know of other dual cpu systems similar to the SR-2? I'm interested in both AMD and Intel options.

Thanks!
 
SR-2 is currently the only overclocking game in town unless you have engineering chips for AMD G34 platform. In that case any of the G34 boards will work but the special chips are rare as hell and won't end up any cheaper than an SR-2.

My advice would be to keep an eye out for used SR-2's in FS/FT and check Ebay for hex core xeons. Then once you get it running make sure you hit up the distributed computing section to give that rig something to crunch on when you're not using it. ;)
 
[ame="http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-Intel-Xeon-Six-Core-X5650-5650-2-66GHz-12MB-6-4-CPU-/200608027227?pt=CPUs&hash=item2eb52b925b#ht_796wt_1139"]http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-Intel-Xeon-Six-Core-X5650-5650-2-66GHz-12MB-6-4-CPU-/200608027227?pt=CPUs&hash=item2eb52b925b#ht_796wt_1139[/ame]
2.66 ghz hex core two available
650x2 = 1300

Pick up a sr-2 for 600

You're done for 1900.

You should be able to overclock to 4.0 ghz or more with these chips. You also may want to look on the forums for better chips, I've seen x5675 go for 700, 1200 if you bought both.

If you intend to overclock, you're going to need some aftermarket cooling... a reasonable solution would be a pair of corsair h50/60.
 
SR-2 really is all that is out there. On a cost/performance for heavily multithreaded apps, the best I could do was the SR-2 with 2 x5650s. I overclocked them to 3.6-4.0 and it is awesome. When I built the machines a year ago, they cost about $4k each (I built 3 of them).
 
Maybe not as sexy as a SR-2, but a Tyan S4985 with quad Istanbuls can accept a software overclock using ntune so long as you're using Server 2003. Although, it is a 4P board - not 2P like you asked about.

I bought a S4985 for about $350 a year ago. And now with Magny Cours being the talk of the town and with Bulldozer just around the bend, Istanbul processors have been plummeting in price. I just paid $800 for four Opteron 8439SE's. I already had 16GB of DDR2 ECC RAM. So that's a pretty decent 24 core machine for the price. Now, I'm using Linux on that machine and have not tried running ntune in Wine - I doubt it would work. But with Server 2003, overclocking definitely works. Does not work on Server 2008, though.
 
Dead Things said:
Maybe not as sexy as a SR-2, but a Tyan S4985 with quad Istanbuls can accept a software overclock using ntune so long as you're using Server 2003. Although, it is a 4P board - not 2P like you asked about.

I bought a S4985 for about $350 a year ago. And now with Magny Cours being the talk of the town and with Bulldozer just around the bend, Istanbul processors have been plummeting in price. I just paid $800 for four Opteron 8439SE's. I already had 16GB of DDR2 ECC RAM. So that's a pretty decent 24 core machine for the price. Now, I'm using Linux on that machine and have not tried running ntune in Wine - I doubt it would work. But with Server 2003, overclocking definitely works. Does not work on Server 2008, though.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a sweet setup. I built 3 SR-2 machines with x5650s and 2 machines each with a 980x. I need the hyperthreading, since it does make a noticeable impact to my application. However, the prices you quoted sounded pretty awesome. I looked into doing a setup like that when I built the system I am using, but I couldnt find that board anywhere.
 
txaggies07 said:
I looked into doing a setup like that when I built the system I am using, but I couldnt find that board anywhere.
Click to expand...
The board used to be a Newegg special. Pretty hard to find now that it's EOL, though. With 24 cores at 2.8GHz, it absolutely kills my SR-2 with dual E5649's at 3.6GHz in both multithreaded performance and stability. So there is some proof to the notion of physical cores trumping logical threads.

I actually have two of those boxes - the other's running a set of Shanghai Opteron 8393's. But, admittedly, the platform is simply no match for G34 machines in raw performance. But then, it's tough to outfit a G34 box for less than $2300.
 
Kind of wish I had looked into it a bit more. It cost me about 4k per box for my SR-2 builds.
This was at a time when RAM was $150 per 6GB (last year sometime).
 
There is a Skulltrail setup on the FST forums, might want to check that out
 
txaggies07 said:
Kind of wish I had looked into it a bit more. It cost me about 4k per box for my SR-2 builds.
This was at a time when RAM was $150 per 6GB (last year sometime).
Click to expand...
I wouldn't sweat it. You'll make your money back on the back end, since the resale value on SR-2's will remain high for a while yet. Socket F systems are basically worth nothing since there's hardly any market for them. Kinda like...

Mr34727 said:
Skulltrail
Click to expand...
:eek: That's an awesome price he's asking - but at this point, Skulltrail is really just a collector's item.
 
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