thoughts

[Cronholio]

I think it's a machine for someone who has more money than common sense.

[SalaTar]

why you say that?

here (http://www.salatar.com/AppleStore.pdf) (<link)

[SalaTar]

in fact Im going add a cineform prospect to it (oem xena )

Cronholio, guess im stupid for doing it...in your oppinion, could you explain why I dont need the support and warrenty?

you didnt even ask what its for or needs behind it, I could boxx it but ...good answer from you was not forthcoming

[Cronholio]

I don't care who makes the machine, or what the warranty is. I think it's ridiculous to spend that much money on a workstation that has 8 cores in it and a 3 drive raid. You get diminishing returns the more processors you put in a single machine, and being that this is a workstation, your returns are going to diminish even further because you can't possibly keep the machine running at capacity full time because it is serving you as a workstation. You can run Cineform Prospect very well on a much more modestly equipped machine than that.

The other thing is it's like putting all your eggs in one basket. If this machine goes down for some reason that's a significant ammount of CPU power you don't have access to. You could probably get 4 well equipped rack mounts and a decent workstation for that amount of money. You'd have more collective power at your disposal, and if one of the machines goes down, you lose only a fraction of your total computing power.

If you are doing oil or gas exploration, real time medical imaging, some sort of scientific research... maybe it's a good machine, I don't know. If you are making cartoons or editing video, even HD video, your money would be better spent on a more modest workstation and a couple of decently equipped rack mounts.

[newman]

I agree with Cronholio. Don't get me wrong - the configuration is impressive, to say the least - but I don't see how you'll be able to cost-effectively utilize all that power. If you want to go on a spending spree, get a high-end dual core system with a quadro and lots of RAM, and a render farm. That way you can have a decent workstation and a separate rendering system, which makes a lot more sense.

[mattmos]

Does seem like a heck of a lot of money... and those xeons are a little underpowered compared to the faster dual xeons - if you work out 4 x 3 ghz and 8 x 1.86 ghz it doesn't give you that much more of an advantage and any single-threaded apps are going to be slower.

Personally I'd wait til january when a much wider range of xeons is supposed to be available, including quads at higher speeds, or go with a dual woodcrest and upgrade when you feel you need to.

[Ed Caracappa]

Forgetting the cost and just thinking about the configuration, my first question would be about how you plan on using the machine. What type of projects do you do? What software do you run? Do you model, animate, render, composite, video edit, etc?

We sell these same Intel machines. We also build and sell 4 processor and 8 processor AMD dual core (will be quad core next year) workstations. The market for these is smaller and very targeted but, there are people who can use this type of deskside performance.

If you want to have a conversation about this, please feel free to give me a call. I'm always happy to advise whether you're going to build your own or even buy from someone other than me.

Ed

[lots]

I agree with Ed. A machine like this is very dependant on your work load. Its impressive on paper, but if you dont really do anything that mandates it, its a waste.

What software do you use? If this is mostly for rendering purposes, a render farm is better suited, and can be fairly nice with your budget...

[SalaTar]

The market for these is smaller and very targeted but, there are people who can use this type of deskside performance.
Ed
Ed agreed with my specs for my needs, in fact he speced faster quad cores :D

BTW thanks ED

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