Workstation on a Budget?

[lots]

If you shoot for a 6800GS, you could save some cash. The performance difference will be fairly non existant as well.

[daft-crut]

yup, I thought about that too, but we want to softmod the 6800 gt into Quadro 4400, and I was informed that 6800 gs cannot be softmodded..

[MattClary]

What's the advantage of choosing an Opteron if you are running a single chip? I think an X2 would be preferable.

edit:
Actually, looking at your choice of an Opteron and the DFI board, I'm guessing that you are looking to overclock. In a production environment, that's a really bad idea.



Check this out. Less than $1300 US. Could be brought lower.

http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=47511

.

[alejandro_m1]

Single Dual Core Opterons (socket 939) are made of higher grade silicon and better memory controllers which make them OC pretty well. I don´t agree about not ocing in a production enviroment, you can make a pretty stable overclock if you respect the boundaries of your own system and have a good cooling solution, and gain a few mhz that will help in your production enviroment. I think that the X2 equivalent of the 175 would be a 4400+, they cost almost the same ($496 vs $458 in newegg just for reference), so I think you are on the right track, go for the 175s and overclock it with ntune, i personally prefer MSI than DFI but heard that this is a nice OC mobo.

What Case and PSU are you planning to use? For Psu go for something above the 560w and very important of a respected brand, check Silverstone or PC Power and Cooling.

[daft-crut]

Yes, we are going to overclock the processor a bit and in my experience, if it's not too much overclocked, it can run pretty stable, coz I'm using opteron 165 in my home running at 2.4 ghz.

As for the PSU, we are aiming something like Antec or Enermax and also server casing but nothing too fancy..

The problem is, right now we have two x2 system in our office with 6600. Sometimes it lags too much when we started to animate using volume effect and lots of particle. What we want to know, would softmodding the 6800 GT into Quadro helps in viewport performance? cause in my experience, 3dsmax run fastest with directX and I know there are many limitations with directX when it comes to wireframe display, particle, and many other CAD things. Thanks a lot guys for the input!

PS: Just red the link Matt gaves to me, have a question though. The VGA card and mainboard is insanely cheap, here in my country the same board cost for about $182 and the VGA card is about $300.

[lots]

Just as a warning, not all 6800GTs are softmoddable either. If the 6800GT was built recently enough, it will be using the newer stepping of the GPU, which has the security features that also appear in the 7 series and newer 6 series cards.

[daft-crut]

yup, I'm aware of that, what I need to look for is 6800 GT nv42 based, thanks a lot Lots!

[tecton3d]

What we want to know, would softmodding the 6800 GT into Quadro helps in viewport performance?

I don't know first hand because I run a Quadro (unmodded) but everything I've read here backs up the fact that turning anything into a quadro does indeed help your viewport speed . . . i'm sure you know well enough that people wouldn't be doing it if they didn't get something out of it!

[daft-crut]

I'm actually pretty sure it would speed up the performance in viewport, but my question is regarding when it comes to modifier based animation (like volume select, particle, and other intense viewport stuff). Because at my office x2 4200+ with 6600 lags so much just like the other pc with P4 3.0Ghz HT with geforce 4 ti..and I'm not sure if the VGA causing it or x2 wasn't that powerful compared with p4. If it thats the case then perhaps we shouldn't buy opteron as well.

[tecton3d]

I'm actually pretty sure it would speed up the performance in viewport, but my question is regarding when it comes to modifier based animation (like volume select, particle, and other intense viewport stuff). Because at my office x2 4200+ with 6600 lags so much just like the other pc with P4 3.0Ghz HT with geforce 4 ti..and I'm not sure if the VGA causing it or x2 wasn't that powerful compared with p4. If it thats the case then perhaps we shouldn't buy opteron as well.

Had to be the graphics card...I have a laptop with a 3.2ghz p4 HT northwood and it is always slower doing anything (...anything) than my Opteron 248's (2.2ghz). This just came up the other day...geometry - modifier based animation occurs in the system memory (not graphics) and therefore is more relavent to overall system performance rather than the video card by itself:

from this thread about video memory and viewport performance:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=325288

The memory will mostly make no difference to speed. Only once you load more textures and geometry than will fit on the card will it make a difference. Most 3d apps will only store the textures on the cards memory, doing most geometry transformations in main memory.

. . . a faster video card will only display the modifications that the system has already calculated in less time than a slow card . . . resulting in a snappier viewport (as expected) but not faster modifier calculation : (

[rajbir]

nvidia help

GUYS can Nvidia Ge-Force MX 4000 128 mb 8x agp graphic card SOFTMOODED
i mean can we change the settings, how to do that there are certain featurs in the need for speed underground that my card doesnot support like motion blur can i turn that on with some variations in my card

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