Price vs Power

[olson]

It really comes down to the budget. For a 3D workstation a dual socket system with 8-16GB of memory is the sweet spot right now. Maybe we can help if you have a price range. Cheers!

[MichaelR]

I´d say Core I7 is by far cheaper than a dual socket work station and as fast as one.

[imashination]

For a sensible machine, If pitch for a 2.6GHz i7 system with 12 gigs of ram. You can put together a perfectly good workstation for ~£1500. the biggest potential thing to bite you is the gfx card, depends on the apps you use. Some apps will give you awesome performance with a £200 high end card, others will mean paying much more for the pretty box the workstation cards come in.

[olson]

I´d say Core I7 is by far cheaper than a dual socket work station and as fast as one.

Except for its not as fast as a dual socket workstation (lower end Xeon systems using previous generation technology are the exception). Even it was as fast as a dual socket workstation the processor performance is only one part of the puzzle for a workstation.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/24/lenovo-thinkstation-s20-d20-sport-new-xeon-cpus-tesla-c1060-g/

Xeon 5500 series processors should be generally available this week which translates to roughly double the processing performance of a Core i7 system at the same clock speed. Don't forget about Opteron systems either. Cheers!

[imashination]

Yes, but to put it mildly, theyre fecking expensive. Roll back 6 months before i7 and id agree, a dual cpu workstation could be a great bargain, an 8 core 3ghz machine could be had for £2k loaded with ram and drives, and would be twice as fast as a single chip machine.

But now, you cant get a dual nehalem machine for £2k which works out twice as fast as a single core machine, the machines are so fresh off the production line that theyre still in the early adopter price gouging stage

[hemlok]

Olson , whats really interesting to me about your post there is the Telsa card in that computer http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=4259469&sku=P56-1060&srkey=tesla

i wonder how that would enhance 3d rendering.

as far as price vs power i would say that if you are going to buy a more expensive workstation make sure you can make reasonable upgrades in the future instead of buying a new rig.
I have a dual socket opteron 270 workstation that i bought a few years ago that was really expensive.
i cant upgrade the processors anymore and to upgrade this slow memory is just not worth the price. it does work very well if you are using it for anything but rendering. so i just bought an i7 that i know i cant really upgrade anymore either, but it was rather inexpensive in comparison.

[RandyCA]

I was hoping you guys would be telling me that somewhere between $2000 and $3000 would be enough to put together a pretty solid 3D work horse. I recently met a couple of guys who were bragging about their machines. One was telling me he spent $8k on it and uses it for HD video editing. Another guy was telling me how he got an SBA loan to buy a $12k machine as well as ton of neat video camera and studio equiptment. I don't know how well his business is doing with the crises and all of that, but I would really rather not tie up that much capital in a machine at this time.

[Srek]

2K-3K are definitly enough for a workstation that you can use for modelling, rendering and animation on a pretty high level. You won't get the absolute top of the line systems, but then, they aren't usualy realy needed.
A solid Core i7 system will fit the bill nicely, often enough it will even be above what is actualy needed.
You can pay way more, but the tipping point for what makes sense and what not is absolutely individual. I don't think anyone will be able to give you a clear answer on this.
Cheers
Björn

[The4thAggie]

If you build a baseline Core i7 machine then overclock it, it will give you ample performance. The real bottlenecks when building a Core i7 are the hard drives and the video card. You can build a 920-base machine for $1100 (depending on the chassis), throw in a decent watercooling setup ($200-300), 2 x 300GB SAS drives in RAID 0 ($600), and any workstation card that is mid-top range. For about $3k you'll have an awesome machine for 3D.

Where dual Xeon 5500 or greater help out is rendering large amounts of complex frames. My Mac Pro at work with dual 2.8 5400 Xeons score 13689 on Cinebench. My single processor Core i7 920 runs 16035 (stock) and 18635 (overclocked to 3GHZ). Rendering is noticeably faster as well to the point where the Mac is pathetic.

In the end, it is the amount of money you are willing to throw at the thing and your needs. As a hobbyist, a $6k decked out workstation is too much.

[ojido]

what about harddrive speed/size, is raid a good idea or even necessary?

[imashination]

For what? If youre going to ask for advice on hardware, at least tell us what its for. Otherwise yes, you need a 4 disk raid array with 15k raptors for your photoshop web graphic editing.

[Tangster]

For what? If youre going to ask for advice on hardware, at least tell us what its for. Otherwise yes, you need a 4 disk raid array with 15k raptors for your photoshop web graphic editing.
lol, for that kind of price you want one of the new Intel SSDs.
Intel 160GB SSD($759) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167015)
Intel 80GB SSD($363) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167005)

So long as you don't go and buy a high-end quadro or FireGL card, which would really kick you in the pocket then the Core i7 region is the sweet spot, preferably loaded with memory.

[ojido]

For what? If youre going to ask for advice on hardware, at least tell us what its for. Otherwise yes, you need a 4 disk raid array with 15k raptors for your photoshop web graphic editing.

sorry I should have clarified, I meant for exactly the same purposes the OP is seeking advice for, that's why I posted in his thread.. everyone seems to be helpfull advising on processors, graphic cards and ram in general which I've decided on for my build by reading the numerous threads here and elsewhere but I've found little info about storage solutions of any kind while researching and no mention in this thread so far.

Recently I've come across some posts with general advice about the HDD being a possible bottleneck and ones about other people's builds, many of which were/are being built around similar components to mine but many included raid setups for storage, it's something I wasn't even considering before since I figured it was just a gamer/HTPC enthusiast thing and am now wondering if I should. I don't have a lot of experience with hardware so I was hoping someone would share some general info on the subject in relation to 3d apps the way they've been sharing about processors and GPU's.

[imashination]

For 3d work, harddrives dont mean much, just get the biggest one you can get for the money.

Personally, if i was buying a machine now, id get 4x 1.5tb drives, and whack them in a raid10 using the onboard controller. It'll be faster if you do any video editing, and if a drive dies you wont lose anything.

But, if its just 3d then speed doesnt mean much and you should be backing up anyway.

[tfortier]

(read the first post only)

For me there is the low budget sweet spot: a 2.66ghz i7 and a vulgar 8600gt will do the job perfectly for under 900$. And for the ultra ultra low budget, I think a q6600 is still a very good option for under 500$!!

[ojido]

For 3d work, harddrives dont mean much, just get the biggest one you can get for the money.

Personally, if i was buying a machine now, id get 4x 1.5tb drives, and whack them in a raid10 using the onboard controller. It'll be faster if you do any video editing, and if a drive dies you wont lose anything.

But, if its just 3d then speed doesnt mean much and you should be backing up anyway.

Oh ok, thanks a lot. I guess I'm going to skip the raid then and just back up to externals for now and see how things work out.

Cheers