some advice on my new machine..

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cosmico
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Location: Rome, Italy

some advice on my new machine..

Post by cosmico » Thu Jan 31, 2008 9:18 am

it's time for a new pc so I looked around for the components and I would like to know what you people think about this:

XEON UP 3075 @ 2.66 with Scythe Ninja cooler
Asus P5BV-C
RAM 2x2Gb OCZ 800Mhz
main HDD 74Gb Wester Digital Raptor 10000RPM SATA
secondary HDD 750Gb Samsung HD753LJ
Nvidia Quadro FX570 256Mb

all inside a nice Antec Sonata Designer case :)

ciao!

shathal
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Post by shathal » Thu Jan 31, 2008 10:22 am

... why a Xeon, out of curiousity?

jhhoffma
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Post by jhhoffma » Thu Jan 31, 2008 11:04 am

The Raptor and Quadro will most likely not be quiet either. Some say their Raptors are quiet, others hate them. If the Quadro is stock, I doubt it will be very quiet from the fans I've seen on them.

cosmico
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Post by cosmico » Thu Jan 31, 2008 12:26 pm

jhhoffma wrote:The Raptor and Quadro will most likely not be quiet either. Some say their Raptors are quiet, others hate them. If the Quadro is stock, I doubt it will be very quiet from the fans I've seen on them.
I think I will prefer speed to silence for those two: the Raptor is the only 10000 rpm SATA I could find and the Quadro is the best for CAD and rendering, wich is what I need. Do you know about any quieter 10000 RPM SATA HDD?

cosmico
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Post by cosmico » Thu Jan 31, 2008 12:27 pm

shathal wrote:... why a Xeon, out of curiousity?
because I have been told it's best for CAD and rendering, why? You think Centrino is better?

Blue_Sky
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Post by Blue_Sky » Thu Jan 31, 2008 5:24 pm

Well, I don't think the Xeon is going to have any effect on CAD performance specifically, the graphics card will. I have a Nvidia Quatro NVS 110M in my laptop and it takes 50 part assemblies no problem where my 8600GT struggles with a couple of parts. I think it is more of a function of that the 8600GT, like most graphics cards today, is really games oriented (ie. no openGL power whatsoever).

Noise is proportional to spindle speed and, less directly, number of platters. You aren't going to find anything that the average SPCRer would call "quiet" spinning at 10 000 RPM. It is your choice though - if the noise doesn't bother you, go for it.

The Xeon you are looking at is basically an E6700 that met a higher standard. An E6700 is far from current right now. If you are looking to do heavy rendering work, think about a quad core. For the money you were going to spend on a 3070, you could get 3085 which has a faster FSB (1333 vs 1066 MHz), and clock speed (3 GHz vs 2.66 GHz).

If you are looking for a dual core, you can't beat an E8400 (They are $230 here in Canada), for a quad core a Q6600 is cheap. If you don't mind spending a bit of money, look at Intel's Xeon 53xx series (though there are a whole series of other requirements for those).

Edit: My first sentence is unclear. I mean the difference between a Xeon and a Core 2 will make no difference to you.

cosmico
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Post by cosmico » Sat Feb 02, 2008 5:26 am

Blue_Sky you have been VERY helpful!! If you confirm that the 10000 RPM should make the system faster as I have been told. For what CPU concerns I think I will get the E8400 if the XEON is not worth it. Just out of curiosity: for what is the XEON better than the CORE 2? Thank you again.. :D

Blue_Sky
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Post by Blue_Sky » Sat Feb 02, 2008 8:57 am

If my understanding is correct, they are basically the same processors as the Core 2 line (the 3xxx series anyway) that met higher quality standards. There many be be some low level differences, but unless you plan to use it to crunch numbers 24/7, it just doesn't make much sense to buy one.

With a raptor you'll get average read/write speeds that are 50% higher than todays 1 TB drives and seek times that are roughly 2/3. Those values are very approximate. If you have applications that need HDD speed, then they are worth your money. Either way, most of the people I know that have raptors just use them so that they can shave a couple seconds off boot up time and game loading times.
Personally, HDD bandwidth/speed has never the constraining factor. I would think that CAD is constrained by the video card and ram and rendering programs are constrained by the CPU. As always, I could be wrong about that. This is just what I have seen from my own CAD usage and reviews that value rendering times.

If I were you, I would wait a bit and get a Q9450 when they come out (supposed to be Feb/March). Four cores at 2.66 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB and 12 MB of L2 Cache for $316/1000 (retail of ~$350?) is unbeatable. That processor should be the non-overclocked sweet spot the Core 2 quads when it is released.

sjoukew
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Post by sjoukew » Sat Feb 02, 2008 10:32 am

Xeon's have a larger l2 cache, are bloody expensive, and meant for servers. They aren't really faster that much faster (couple of %).
If you want to do a lot of render work, get a quad core (Core2Quad)
NVidia Quadro's are the same chips as the Geforce series, only sold as professional cards, to they can be more expensive for the same product.
As far as I know a geforce ???? can do the same as a Quadro ????, therefore I quess a geforce is a better option. (But I am not certain)
The FX series of cards was the biggest mistake nVidia has made in the last 10 years, I would strongly recommend you buy anything else than a nVidia ??? FX.
They are SLOW, OLD, Bad Design, Troubled and everybody tries to forget it.

Blue_Sky
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Post by Blue_Sky » Sat Feb 02, 2008 11:35 am

Well, I had a look into the hardware involved in the graphics cards, and I found out a couple of interesting things. None of the Quadro cards support OpenGL 2.1 - only the 8xxx series does.
Of all of the Quadro cards, only six are based on recent GPUs - the FX 370, FX 570 and FX 1700 on the G84GL, the FX 4600 and FX 5600 on the G80GL and the FX 3700 on the G92.
This means that the FX 570 is equal to an 8600GT and the FX 370 is a toned version of one (between an 8400GS and 8500 GT specwise), the FX 5600 is close to an 8800GTX and an FX 4600 is, again, a toned down version.
The FX 1700 is effectively an 8600GTS, and The FX 3700 is about an 8800GT, but has less power draw.

I'm sure there is something that I am missing here (driver support, better software openGL support ...), because no one in their right mind would pay twice as much for a card with a different name.
Here is something that you may want to read.

Edited: typos.

sjoukew
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Post by sjoukew » Mon Feb 04, 2008 1:12 pm

Blue_Sky, Very interesting article :) nice read.
It looks like nVidia has some extra's for their quadro series which aren't present in the geforce series.
I am sure it is pure driver based and they only enable certain options for the quadro series, but the effect is the same, quadro's can do some things geforces can't.
On nVidia's website there is a nice comparison of all current quadro's. Comparison chart
Unfortunately it isn't visible on which geforce series they are based.
I found a review of the Quadro FX 5600 and Nvidia Quadro FX 4600: on xbit labs, but those cards are extremely expensive.

It looks like nVidia is keeping the FX in the quadro line, FX sounds sooo bad in my ears that I immediately saw all kinds of horrible chips in front of my eyes, but it appears that I was wrong. I should have looked better....

The Quadro FX 570 looks whole lot better in my eyes now. But I would really see a review / comparison between a Quadro FX 570 and a Geforce 8600GT or similar. Just to see what the real differences are. The article linked by Blue_Sky is nice, but some more material would be even nicer, so to say.

cosmico
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Post by cosmico » Tue Feb 19, 2008 5:01 am

thank you everyone.. I am getting the Q6600 processor for sure and stay with the Quadro FX570 because it's the best for my budget.

My only doubt now is the motherboard.. Will the P5B-Deluxe work with the quad core or should I get the P5E?? Any other advice??

Blue_Sky
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Post by Blue_Sky » Tue Mar 18, 2008 8:09 am

The P5B-Deluxe supports 45 nm quad cores (right under the title on the spec page). Why get an old motherboard though? P35 is currently the low cost, DDR2 route.

cosmico
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Location: Rome, Italy

Post by cosmico » Tue Mar 18, 2008 2:00 pm

..and what about something a bit higher level? Pardon my ignorance but what is the gain in getting a better motherboard??

Blue_Sky
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Post by Blue_Sky » Wed Mar 19, 2008 9:44 am

If you can't see a reason why, then don't. The P5B-Deluxe is a $300 motherboard where I am, and I could get a motherboard with more useful features for a third of that.
If it works for you, it works for you.

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