Building a monster - 2x E5-2690's, SR-X [advice required]

[Mark_Skeldon]

Hi guys,

I'm after a little bit of advice.

I work in IT and a rare request has popped up from one of my clients who design and render high-end holograms.

Their last rig I built about 4 years ago (quad extreme etc etc) is showing its age now and taking over 24 hours to render their latest designs.

They've asked me to build them a ninja workstation. Money not really a concern (within reason). It needs to have at least 18 cores ( specs from the new software vendor [cant release any names]) and a min of 8gb RAM.

It can however exceed these specs if I deem it necessary.

I was thinking about twin E5 2690's in an SR-X, RAM I'm on the fence about, but as there is no real OC'ing to be had from Xeons I'm not after high freq kits. GPU(s) are unknown at this point as I'm still waiting to hear from the vendor whether or not their software can make use of Quadro cards.

I would just like to hear your thoughts on any alternatives to this set up? I'm open to the idea of AMD but as all of my kit (data centre/rack mount) is Intel based I'm on the back foot regarding the best tech at the moment.

My client has agreed to let me fold on this rig 24/7 under my own name, so I'd like it to be as quick as possible

[Mark_Skeldon]

Wow! Volume of replies is hard to keep up with :/

I have decided to go for the following:

EVGA SR-X
2x E5-2687W's (with two Corsair H80's)
32GB Corsair Vengeance
EVGA GTX 670
2x 512GB Crucial M4's
Corsair AX1200
Coolermaster Cosmos II

Thoughts? Can anyone see any improvements here?

[DocJonz]

Mark, I guess we're not familiar with the hardware requirements for hologram rendering!
The alternative for the AMD route would be Opteron 6100's with a quad socket G34 motherboard (it also depends on whether rendering benefits from Xeon or Opteron architecture) - no hyperthreading with these, just pure CPU power, and more cores than dual Xeon's (if that is the desire).

[Mark_Skeldon]

Originally Posted by DocJonz

Mark, I guess we're not familiar with the hardware requirements for hologram rendering!
The alternative for the AMD route would be Opteron 6100's with a quad socket G34 motherboard (it also depends on whether rendering benefits from Xeon or Opteron architecture) - no hyperthreading with these, just pure CPU power, and more cores than dual Xeon's (if that is the desire).

Hi Doc,

Yeah sorry was a bit snarky there. Just given up smoking in the last couple of days!

It's just basically number crunching. I don't think the software has any customisation regarding optimised instruction sets. The number of cores is important though. I guess what I'm getting at is I'm a little unsure the performance difference I'd see between more physical cores (quad opti's) or the equivalent in virtual cores from hyper-threading.

I moved away from the 2690's due to speed and cost. The 2687W's just seem a far better option, alas nowhere in the UK has them in stock

Quite looking forward to the build, just not looking forward to having to part with it and hand it over!

At least I get to fold on it without bumping up my electricity bill by SR-X proportions!

[kirk46]

wow a free folding rig!! lol

when is then client letting folding on it? over night etc?

[BeauchN]

Mark, I don't have any experience with dual processor set ups (apart from drooling over the idea of having one for folding) but do recall BT did a review of a dual E5 Xeon set up a little while ago - Link. Only thing I can see from that is it got by with a 865W power supply, and only drew 395W at load, so don't know if 1200w is a bit overkill!

Neil

[TaRkA DaHl]

You could save cash and go down the AMD route, you would get a lot more physical cores for your cash which can prove a lot better in certain applications (FAH being one).

Get 1x:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus-...d-16-dimm-slot

And 2x:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-o...-cache-80w-oem

That's 24 real cores for £1700, and you could get a lot cheaper if you shopped around. Another £150 for 8x4Gb of DDR3 nonECC and you're pretty much there.

If you wanted there are certain boards (Supermicro/Tyan) that support 4 processors, but will happily run with just two installed meaning you could upgrade later depending on cash. 48 real cores, even ones just doing 2Ghz or so would be blisteringly fast at heavily threaded apps.

It really just depends on the software using it. I would have a word with the manufacturers quickly to see what their opinions are, as I am guessing this isn't common software which will have tons of information available via google from people whom use it already.

[Mark_Skeldon]

Those are some interesting options. I'm still in talks with the software vendor to try and find out what their software prefers with regards to core count vs clock speed.

48 real cores at under £3k is amazing! It would make a ninja-ESX host! (next upgrade being planned heh).

If it does look like it's leaning towards raw cores then the opti's seem like the logical choice.

Thanks for the info guys

[Tattysnuc]

Originally Posted by Mark_Skeldon

Those are some interesting options. I'm still in talks with the software vendor to try and find out what their software prefers with regards to core count vs clock speed.

48 real cores at under £3k is amazing! It would make a ninja-ESX host! (next upgrade being planned heh).

If it does look like it's leaning towards raw cores then the opti's seem like the logical choice.

Thanks for the info guys

Don;t forget that the number of sockets that can be used in an OS are tied to that OS.... You'll need linux or a server version of Windows to use 4 Sockets....