So Im trying to decide between two systems right now and want all of your thoughts on the matter. System 1: 16 cores @ 3.7GHz 64GB of RAM @ 1600MHz 4 SATA3 ports, expanded with controller card to 12 SATA3 ports 2 USB3, 6 USB2 System 2: 6 cores, 12 threads @ 4.6(ish)GHz 64GB of RAM @ 1600MHz 6 SATA3 ports (4 of them on bad JMicron controllers), 4 SATA2 4 USB3, 4 USB2 The difference in price is small. The main differences between the systems is one has a LOT of cores at somewhat fast speed, the other has much faster, but less cores. Once I buy this I probably will actually keep it for a couple years. Im just not sure which of the systems would provide the best performance in those couple years. Remember I do things other than playing just games, I run a Minecraft server that benefits from both fast cores and lots of cores too. And my computer is also the file server in my apartment to a few other computers.
I'll bite. I know what you want to do. And I bet I know why you are posting this: you are trying to get someone to convince you to come to your senses, right? First... you sure you crunched ALL the numbers? Same price, really? Ok, lets disregard price then: Here's my experience. For a visual, I looked around and actually found a company that builds a rackmount dual xeon rig that is fairly close to what I made a while back- just with newer parts, of course. Its uncanny how similar these units are spec'd out. Even down to the liquid cooling I recommended and added later... http://www.gamepc.com/shop/systemfamily.asp?family=prowess5&mode=expand As you can see, its a monster. And it costs a fortune. Full disclosure- I built my rig to use as a sweetener to seal the deal for a closing on a ProTools/Cubase-based recording studio I was part owner of before I moved north. The studio sale was the whole nine yards/basically a turnkey operation. But thats another post for another time. I digress. Anyway, fun part of this story is, I got to hammer the living shit out of the beast before I gave it up! Wouldnt you? Here's my experience. For enterprise level applications, the thing was... well lets just say I considered drilling a glory hole into the side. I was in love. It effectively rendered around 12k of external processing card banks (for running high-end effects and rendering plugins for the production software) redundant. I just didnt need them, anymore. The CPU's had it covered internally. The system didnt even blink. I'd never seen anything like it. Still haven't since. I was real time rendering entire orchestral expansions using gigabytes worth of sound samples with no problem... that's a big deal, by the way. The sheer volume of RAM I was working with (32GB- big for the time) was more than enough to handle anything I threw at it. I just wish SSD tech was more established at the time... maybe next time... fap fest over. Here's the reality. For everything else, most of the cores and almost all of the memory sat and did nothing. nothing. Just a big ass paging file that kept the system bogged down. (thanks, Vista) I dont care what load sharing software/firmware is supposed to exist on paper. They did nothing. total waste. Games. Meh. Couldve fooled me there were 8 cores 32gb Ram Maybe that's improved recently. You'd probably know better than me, but my experience is you have to be using an application programmed to take advantage of all the extra available prowess. If you dont, they just kinda sit there burning up electricity. That being said, I've never run a public game server or an internet file server, so maybe that would be put to use there... that is what xeons are designed for, after all. If you have no idea what to do with all your cash, then go for it. Better choice, I say go for the more traditional route that gives you a larger market for upgrade parts in the future. Its faster in the real world, has a better upgrade path, and is more flexible in any way you look at. Just some thoughts from a guy who burned SERIOUS CASH doing this before.
No Im actually serious about getting them and dont know which to go with. The future can be so hard to predict in a time like this. Also, system 1 costs around $1800, $1350 if I didnt bother with the controller card. System 2 costs around $1700. So you think its better to go with system 2 that has much higher core speeds?
... really? Oh! wait! We arent talking about Xeons! We are talking about Opterons!! Hahaha I cant multiply at midnight apparently. I missed that. What I was talking about would be 8 or 12 cores provided by dual processors. I was gonna say you're nuts Enigma! You were gonna neeed to add another zero to your system one price tag! Yeah i dont have any valid input on the latest and greatest from AMD. So, I really cant comment on that. My assumption would be the same as using a six vs four core processor. If you are using software that takes advantage of multiprocessing- then its a no brainner. The bragging rights are second to none, also. Honestly, it all comes down to what you are using it for. You mentioned running a server. Its my understanding they benefit from lots of cores. For the sheer experimentation/ shits and giggles side of the equation- I say go for the bulldozer. and one other thing... you going to overclocking that thing? I havent seen these for sale with anything more than 2.2ghz.
Well the first system uses Opteron's and has a stock turbo core of 3.7GHz. That's without any overclocking but what AMD already does by default, I cant OC a dual processor server system. The second system uses a single Intel i7 socket 2011 processor and is overclock-able. Which is how it will be running somewhere around 4.6GHz. I was leaning towards the first once since it ha so many cores and is still fast, but I dont really know since I have used a dual quad-core system about 5 years ago which went with the more cores thing. Those ran at 2.6GHz which was decently fast for its time as well. For gaming it seemed rather slow since most games still didnt use more than 1-2 cores at the time. Also it just seemed slow when doing calculations between both CPU's. That is what gives me pause with the first system. I suppose it really comes down to the question of will 3.7GHz be fast enough or should I go with a smaller system at 4.5+?
Obvious choice is choice 1, but that's because of Choice 2's junk SATA slots and median-high speed RAM. The Opteron server CPU is more than likely going to underperform against a overclocked 6-core processor, Windows 7 task protocol or no. The real question is where you will take your rig once it's made. Are you willing to continually make use of a 12core system by hosting probably more than one server? You could host Minecraft, a max player limit FPS server and another game all at the same time with that rig without bogging it down, and still have resources on the side for personal gaming usage. Even more than that. The server-side mathematical computations are just negligible in fenced-in sets of interactions in a lot of cases. If you overclocked the 6core CPU, got 2133 speed RAM and a motherboard that wasn't inherently flawed to start with, you'd certainly have a server for at least Minecraft and be able to play games at max settings at the highest potential FPS. Servers or FPS?
I dont want to spend more than the cost of 1600MHz RAM though. That already costs $600 on the Intel system Only costs $300~ for AMD because that one has twice as many RAM slots so I can use 4GB sticks. The Intel one needs to use 8GB sticks. I think I will be "ok" with the SATA ports sucking, there are two good ones I can use for my two best SSDs. My other two SSDs can go on the SATA2 Intel ports, which will slightly limit their speed but not by much as they are older gen SSDs anyway. I think I will only have 3 or 4 big drives in this computer and the rest will probably stay in my old computer to be hosted there
I gotta ask why?? You can rent a Minecraft and web server for less then the cost of the monthly electricity cost to run this beast. Certainly all this isnt needed just for storage because a drobo or some variation would be much more cost effective. Are you rendering gobs of video, audio, 3D work? Running a stack of VM's? Im curious as to the usage, running a work horse server in your apartment just doesn't make a lot of sense to me these days with the cost of cloud computing unless you need massive rendering power. This sounds like the kind of box id buy for work and stick half a dozen test VM's on *looks at Xeon box uner desk lol* in which case Ram and Cpu threads is king.
It really has no purpose except one Minecraft server, a file(mostly HD video) server, playing games, and web browsing. Sure its cool bragging right too. I just like building new computers, I do it with almost every new release of a CPU to play around with them. But that is expensive too and so this time I plan to build a big bad ass one and just keep it for a couple years. My last computer was here for like 6 months or so before I sold it, and this one has been here for just a few months and was really only to tide me over to the next big one. Its just what I enjoy doing.
Hobbiest, fair enough. Id go option 1. More real cores, More solid sata ports through the use of expansion card. You give up some usb 3 ports but how many do you really need. You dont get as much raw horse power but if your running something that can use 16 cores it will benefit more. Ps: host my mc server plz
So two of you think I should go with system 1, and one of you thinks system 2. Alright, I was kinda leaning more towards system 1 already... But now lets fine tune this a bit and think of some other things. With what I am using it for, do you all think it would be better to go with only 32GB of RAM at 2133 speed, or 64GB at 1600 speed? Latency wise the 1600 isnt much worse since it has faster timings to offset the MHz difference. It is more a bandwidth issue, which 1600 should still be fine on anyway. I can get 32GB @ 2133 for $330 or 64GB @ 1600 for $340 (or 64GB @ 2133 for $3000 lol) Or if I was using system 2 then I could OC the RAM to 2400MHz and it would be quad channel RAM Or I could spend the same amount as system 1 and get a slightly slower speed CPU but gain quad channel RAM there too... Also one thing to note that might make a difference in a couple years, system 2 has PCI-E 3.0, system 1 uses PCI-E 2.0. We still dont max out 2.0 bandwidth yet and probably wont till the Nov 2012 GPU releases or even later so it might not really be necessary.
Its estimated pci-e 2.0 will still have band width into the next gen cards (beyond hd700 and keppler) Id go with ram quantity, i doubt the speed differences will make any noticible improvements, quantity can always be utilized. I really feel like this is being planneed backwards / with out objective. You want to throw heaps of power and ram at a minecraft file server. I usually design with requirements in mind and purchase appropriate hardware. Are you gaming on this rig? Why does pcie matter if you arent, an if you are, pcie 3 will be best for triple and quad gpu setups with the mutiple x16 planes.
I will be gaming, but never will do multi-GPU. The problems it has dont appeal to me. Objective is: What is the best I can get for under $2000 (after tax) and There is no primary purpose. The MC server, file server, and gaming are all of equal importance. I already have the audio taken care of and wont be upgrading that unless some new super amazing DAC somehow comes onto the market. Video is taken care of too as I have a very nice gaming monitor and a huge projector setup for movies on the other screen.
What chips are you looking at? Interlagos and?? Id be very reserved specing something for gaming with an AMD cpu. I hear you on multi gpu. Id kill to run cfx and sli as single cards just dont cut it at 2560x1600 but i love my full screen window mode too much lol
Interlagos on socket G34, has quad channel memory. They have a 2.8GHz CPU I think it is, that has a turbo speed of 3.2GHz that is used most of the time. Valancia on socket C32, dual channel memory. CPU speed is 3GHz, turbo with all cores active (so always) of 3.3GHz, and turbo with 4 cores or less active @ 3.7GHz (so 90% of usage in your home probably) No point in getting Valencia in a single socket config for gaming, it would be the same as an FX-8150. Only with the FX you can OC it higher which would be very useful. Only look at Valencia if you are looking at dual socket. Interlagos is pretty much the same unless you need either very high RAM bandwidth or higher than 8 cores (as Interlagos has 12 and 16 core CPUs too) The Intel CPU i am looking at is an i7-3930K.
Well, i'd probably rank gaming as most finicky requirement to deal with. File server is all about just stuffing capacity, either using on board or expansion card ports, but you only want to go with 3 hdd. Running a Minecraft server, I would think the CPU of either would rock it pretty good, and 64GB of memory would allow for a server with 150 people according to the MC Server calculator. So it goes back to gaming... I am assuming you are looking at SUPERMICRO MBD-H8SGL-F-O ?? for your mobo in option 1 with the Interlagos 16 core. There just isn't a lot of data in the game bench mark realm for this setup. I'd be pushing for a Sandy-E chip on a X79 board, much more development around gaming and should rock everything else just fine if you stuff it full of ram. If the disk controller is inadequate you have the ability to upgrade. Then you have an upgrade to a Ivy-E chip later this year as well Is there a GPU in this equation? Intel 3930k - $600 Asus P9x79 - $379 G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 64GB (8 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 $699 Thats $1700 right there. I'm not overly familiar with what to throw in for a SATA3 raid controller, or if you need to buy disks as well, going to get costly. Going to run a raid to boost performance? You seem to have better pricing, im just browsing NewEgg. I don't buy from the US so I am not up to speed where else to look down there.
Being a nerd has lead me to a very successful and lucrative career in IT. Nerds are the new jocks anyways, we rule the world.
Actually system 1 is using dual Valencia as those go up to 3.7GHz (so dual 8-core processors). I picked some ASUS board, which arent known in the server area but I have great luck with them and I know some people at ASUS. System 2 uses an ASRock EXTREME-9 board. GPU is what I have currently, and will *probably* be upgraded to a Kepler when it comes out. I already have 5 SSDs (just bought another today lol) and 14.5TB of HDD space. Not running RAID as I hate those. Each big HDD is just labeled for what it contains to make searching for files easier. One is TV shows A-M, TV shows N-Z, and the last is HD movies 2006 - now. I will use another port for a backup drive for anything I care about saving. The other drives can go in another computer as they are rarely accessed in comparison to these drives. And my current PSU is compatible and beefy enough for this already, but I have a spare 750w laying around if I need it. QFT
Intel x79 from a gaming performance standpoint especially if Kepler is in the future. HDD is just storage, throw a sata controller in there if you need more ports. RAID is only important if you want to crank up disk I/O or fault tolerence, for download storage your right its meh. RAID stripe those SSD's for super speed!! My votes for system 2 knowing its Intel and gaming is on your agenda.