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Thanks Alanbard for your posts as I feel your question is also relevant where alternative options are concerned. I know absolutely nothing about dual chip motherboards which seem to be mainly used in servers.
During my searches I did see some videos on YouTube where people had commented on using these for fast gaming machines. Others had commented that the high cost of the CPU's and GPU's made this an unlikely proposition. There is of course the question you mentioned regarding if the operating systems would allow our software to run. I believe this was also a point raised by gamers who were looking for faster machines. Many concluded that games only ran as fast as their game engines allowed, and they were not designed for Server orientated systems. Maybe that answer also applies to us in the 3D world too. Who knows ? but gaming requirements is not what my thread is about, so I will leave that senario alone. ;-)
Ultimately, it all boils down again to hearing from people who are actually running such dual CPU motherboards for the purposes you mention, and can therefore advise from experience. Hope you get some feed-back.
Cheers. :-)
...something goofy happened. Anyone else seeing the text spilling over into the right margin?
I see it too. It may have to do with the original quoted text.
On the subject of dual-cpu motherboards, Linux has no problem with that. ;-) For Windows 8.1, you will need the Pro edition.
Another thing to watch out for with server-grade motherboards is that they tend to require server grade memory (Buffered ECC), which is more expensive than consumer grade. Some MBs will take either.
If you're serious about server class hardware, then look at the tower workstations offered by HP and Dell. An HP Z840 puts most consumer grade hardware to shame. Expect to pay around $4K - $10K, though. You can also have them "downgraded" to Win 7 Pro 64. I have an older Z800 dual 4-core Nehalem with 96GB of ECC memory at work running Linux.
...if you are running dual CPU's, don't you need Windows Server 2012 - 2 CPU?
should be fixed now
...just noticed. Thank you.
Thanks, Cho.
According to MSFT, you can go up to 2 sockets before a server edition is needed. Go here and click on System:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/enterprise/products-and-technologies/windows-8-1/compare/default.aspx
...but will Windows 7Pro x64 see 2 CPUs?
Yes. Win 7 Pro, Enterprise and Ultimate support 2 sockets.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/system-requirements
This company looks good for dual core work stations for graphics work.
http://www.xicomputer.com/index.asp
I am strongly thinking about getting my next computer here.
Hope this helps.
You mean Dual-socket? Yes, that site looks good. Configured the way I'd like it, one came in at $3500. Oof!
For non-server based towers, I like ibuypower.com. They always have specials going on.
the biggest step up with the x99 boards is the ability to use 16 gig memory ...
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my old i7 920 even if I were to upgrade it to a i7 990 extreme would still only set 24 gigs of ram in a six slot board.
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the next generation of boards/processors in the i7 series can apparently see 8g per slot in an 8 slot board for 64g
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I'm not certain whether you need the newest processors with the x99 series to see 16g but that leaves you room to hit 128g in an eight slot board.
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I have 24 gigs now ... system takes a couple and a lot of my scenes put daz at 20 gigs... so I occasionally hit the top and stop when rendering.
You mean Dual-socket? Yes, that site looks good. Configured the way I'd like it, one came in at $3500. Oof!
For non-server based towers, I like ibuypower.com. They always have specials going on.
Ouch ! $3500
I have just priced up an x99 chipset computer based on some answers in this thread :
CPU i7 5820K £294.39
Asus -S x99 Mobo £199.99
Asus GTX 780 6Gb GPU £459.50
Corsair 2666 DDR4 16Gb memory £238.94
Corsair H100i cooler £84.99
Samsung 840 EVO SSD 500Gb £166.99
Corsair Air 540 case £98.95
Asus DVD-RW drive £16.95
Total £1560.70
or
Total $2451.61
Added to this cost would be the operating system, and 'a further shop around' for "best price" which may not always be reliable depending on the supplier. Therefore....Always read the small print. %-P
Also, these prices include my countries 20% purchase tax which equates to £312.14 or $198.71 of the Total. :ohh:
People living elsewhere may therefore find them much cheaper.
Cheers. :-)
Yes. Win 7 Pro, Enterprise and Ultimate support 2 sockets.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/system-requirements
...excellent.
Annoying that when I go to MS's site using "Windows 7" as the keyword I get sent to a support page that says XP is no longer supported and has a link to upgrade to Win8.1 (not 7) from XP. Poked around the main site, tried a link that mentioned Win7, and even did a chat with one of their support people yet it seems nobody there knows that Win7 still exists anymore as both the site and person I chatted with kept tying to railroad me to 8.1.
Seems that at least some level of support for 7 has been terminated. Shoot I can go to Intel's site and still pull up the specs and update timeline on the 945gm Expess chipset in my 8 year old notebook.
It's things like this that almost make one think about Linux....than again, don't care to play IT tech on a daily basis.
I didn't say I would BUY one at $3500, just that configured the way I'd like it, it would cost $3500. ;-) That's with 2 cpus, and 64GB of Ram. Memory prices can be exponential with the density of the memory sticks. Depending on how many slots there are, you might have to jump up to the next size stick to get above a certain threshold.
At work, I've been evaluating a rack mount server with 4x E7-4830v2 cpus, and 1.5TB of RAM. Only $38K. :bug: It smokes anything else I have access to. Edit: That's four 10-core cpus == 40 cores, 80 threads. They have 15-core server cpus with hyperthreading. That would yield 120 threads!
...excellent.
Annoying that when I go to MS's site using "Windows 7" as the keyword I get sent to a support page that says XP is no longer supported and has a link to upgrade to Win8.1 (not 7) from XP.
If you search from Google, you get direct links to MSFT pages that their dumb menus won't let you get to. Most of the system builders will offer you the "downgrade" to the equivalent W7 version for maybe $10-20 more.
I too initially went and configured my ideal machine, it was similar to your price only it was in £'s not $'s. :-/
So I cut out dreaming, woke up and therefore listed something more reasonable that I may now go with.
Your works machine sounds awesome. Bet that would cut LuxRender times by days !
In response to a previous question, yes, 3D software renders faster and faster the more cores and higher speeds you throw at it. That's the cool thing about the version of 3Delight in DAZ Studio... unlimited cores on a single computer motherboard.
If you're doing animation, you can use tricks like pre-rendered backgrounds and save oodles of time which would be similar to building a high end workstation without the cost.
Keep in mind, you don't have to use LuxRender to get really nice looking images. It can be done in 3Delight with a little work and maybe save your electric bill. Biased render engines can output nice looking images, even with cheats. Here's a link to some new Stonemason renders... he has some in Octane and some in DAZ Studio for a new set coming soon... they compare very well between unbiased and biased!
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/48820/
..agh, scared me, thought maybe it was Urban Sprawl 3 for a moment. Too broke after the PC Sale.
WOW, thanks Kevin....nice link too.
In my search I have been looking at other Daz threads and noticed some nice 3Delight renders, but did not see this thread.
There are some great 3Delight renders when the lighting and shaders all "come together". I certainly need more practice.
Cheers. :-)
...excellent.
Annoying that when I go to MS's site using "Windows 7" as the keyword I get sent to a support page that says XP is no longer supported and has a link to upgrade to Win8.1 (not 7) from XP.
If you search from Google, you get direct links to MSFT pages that their dumb menus won't let you get to. Most of the system builders will offer you the "downgrade" to the equivalent W7 version for maybe $10-20 more.
...not looking for someone else to do a custom build, will be doing it myself, currently in the "research and design phase".
It is mildly frustrating for system planning that the hardware freaks don't use our preferred software, and only a small section of our peers are particularly bothered about discussing the hardware they're using (they're too busy having fun making pictures).
There is nothing extra special about the X99 platform technology when it comes to 3D graphics. X99 offers the opportunity of 8 physical (Intel) cores in one desktop machine for the first time. It supports DDR4 memory which may become significantly faster as it develops (not so much at the moment). The chipset / motherboard technology is bang up to date to work with the latest ancillaries. The platform will still be current in two years time(ish).
DAZ Studio, Poser Pro and Carrara Pro are all multi-threaded and 64bit. All will benefit from as many quality cores and as much RAM as you can realistically apply. Intel X99 is your fastest, broadest option for a domestically discrete workstation. AMD tech will be considerably cheaper, somewhat slower and behind the cutting edge.
Just for your info, I’m a Bryce user currently (re)building a system around an X79 3930K cpu.
Thanks Peter,
I totally agree. I have found it very frustrating to search out relevant information related to my 3D needs. As you correctly pointed out, this new x99 chip-set has been ceased upon by 'hardware freaks' (and I use that term with affection) and they have posted loads of reviews and YouTube videos BUT all related to Video editing ! Screams :ohh:
I have got to the point where, in a previous post, I have listed what I think will be a good build for the price, and I will go for that.
There has not been much of a response from others saying what system they are using at the moment, but in all fairness, I would have liked to see results from anyone who was using the new x99 chipset. Maybe nobody is ! Will I be the first ? ;-P
I really take your point, that this new chipset will set a standard for the next couple of years, and if I go with this I will have an up-to-date upgradeable machine for the foreseeable future.
Much appreciated. :-)
You can lop £350 off that (or transfer it to RAM). Due to late night editing I accidentally left the 6Gb GTX 780 in the blurb. That was there for GPU based rendering such as Octane, but I dropped that subject as you weren't focussing on it.
For OpenGL acceleration of the work windows I don't think you need much more than a basic (and silent) £50 discrete card to thrash the inbuilt graphics chip on your old 4770K.
...for the fun of it, worked up a workstation for about 28K:
--CPU: Dual Intel Xeon E5 2699 v3 CPU 18 cores/36 threads ea.
--Memory: 512 GB DDR4 2133 memory Quad Channel (16 x 32GB)
--GPU: ATI FirePro W9100 100-505725 16GB GDDR5, 5.24 TFLOPS single precision floating point performance.
--MB: Extended ATX Xeon Server Motherboard Dual LGA 2011 and x16 288piin DDR4 slots
--Main Drives: x2 1TB SSDs
--Storage HDDs X2 4TB 7200 RPM
--Liquid CPU Cooling:
--Dual 25" IPS Displays
--PSU: 1500W
--Windows Server 2008 64 (up to 2 TB Memory support)
.
With case and accessories, roughly around 28,000USD (indeed, the 512 GB of memory was the largest expenditure about 42% of the total cost).
Of course, this is complete overkill for software like Daz, Carrara, Poser, and even Vue Complete. Basically, if one can afford this monster, one can afford the likes of 3DS Max, Lightwave or any other pro grade applications.
In a year or two though, it will probably cost half as much.
You can lop £350 off that (or transfer it to RAM). Due to late night editing I accidentally left the 6Gb GTX 780 in the blurb. That was there for GPU based rendering such as Octane, but I dropped that subject as you weren't focussing on it.
For OpenGL acceleration of the work windows I don't think you need much more than a basic (and silent) £50 discrete card to thrash the inbuilt graphics chip on your old 4770K.
Well, to be honest, when I had my old, now departed, 4770K computer it had a 2Gb graphics card. I found large scenes in Carrara lumbered and were very hard to visually move around on the screen. I therefore thought that my new build should include a better GPU at possibly 4Gb and this would solve the problem. When I read your post mentioning a 6Gb card I must have misunderstood the reasoning.
What do you suggest ? I am only going to use 3Delight, firefly, Luxrender, and Vue's render engine.
Thanks. :-)
Definitely a "Lottery Win" build. but we can dream %-P
As with all technology I guarantee it will be half that price next year !
Those are the render engines (and all use the CPUs, I think), for rendering the final image.
The work window is where you create the 3D scene for later rendering. You'll need to check with the user base of your programs to see if they take advantage of any GPU technology beyond what they did five years ago. I'm very out of date with those, I'm afraid. Maybe a pro OpenGL / OpenCL card would bring something? Can be very expensive.
Sorry I can't be much help with your particular programs.
Those are the render engines (and all use the CPUs, I think), for rendering the final image.
The work window is where you create the 3D scene for later rendering. You'll need to check with the user base of your programs to see if they take advantage of any GPU technology beyond what they did five years ago. I'm very out of date with those, I'm afraid. Maybe a pro OpenGL / OpenCL card would bring something? Can be very expensive.
Sorry I can't be much help with your particular programs.
Thank you once again Peter. I am grateful for your contribution and help. I have now placed the question regarding GPU VRAM in the Carrara forum because this was the program that struggled with moving large scenes around the work window.
Hopefully some Carrara users will enlighten me to what graphic cards and VRAM they use, and I can then come to some conclusion.
Kind regards, as always. :-)
...the 16GB Firepro GPU in the "monster" build above is only 3,100$ (compared to 5,000$ to the Nvidia Quadro K6000 that only has 12GB).
That should keep the viewport from bogging down.