olson
04-04-2010, 07:45 AM
In the next few months I'll be upgrading my current workstation for some freelance work (RealFlow simulation and rendering). Currently I'm using a dual socket F system with 16GB of memory and Opteron 2352 processors (8 core total at 2.1GHz). Its served me well for the last few years (upgraded from dual core processors along the way) though its at the end of its rope in terms of processing power and upgrading to the six core Opteron 2400 series doesn't seem worth it at this point. The case (Lian Li PC-201), power supply (SilverStone ZU1200M (http://www.silverstonetek.com/products/p_contents.php?pno=ZU1200M&area=)), disk drives, and all other general components will be used again.
I'm considering a quad socket G34 motherboard (Tyan S8812 (http://www.tyan.com/product_SKU_spec.aspx?ProductType=MB&pid=670&SKU=600000180)) and using Opteron 6128 processors. Between the board and processors it would be about $2,200 ($1,000 for board, $300 for each processor). Seems like the biggest bang for the buck giving 32 cores at 2.0 GHz. Memory on top of that would be about $1,100 for 32GB. After 18-24 months down the line I'd look at upgrading it to the future 16 core Opteron processors using the same socket (like I upgraded to quad cores on my current setup) which would be 64 cores at whatever clock speed (like 1.8-2.0GHz).
Licenses for multiple processors and cores is a non-issue. By the time I build the system RealFlow 5 will likely be available (licensed per machine instead of per core), I use Linux so Window Server is unnecessary for the quad sockets, and Mantra has no limit on the processor or core count for rendering.
Long story short, I'm looking for suggestions if there's a bigger bang for the buck in the $3,500 range for multithreaded tasks. Anyone have experience with the new Xeon 5600 series? A dual Xeon 5650 upgrade would come out to about the same price with 12 cores at 2.66GHz. Which would you go for? Cheers!
I'm considering a quad socket G34 motherboard (Tyan S8812 (http://www.tyan.com/product_SKU_spec.aspx?ProductType=MB&pid=670&SKU=600000180)) and using Opteron 6128 processors. Between the board and processors it would be about $2,200 ($1,000 for board, $300 for each processor). Seems like the biggest bang for the buck giving 32 cores at 2.0 GHz. Memory on top of that would be about $1,100 for 32GB. After 18-24 months down the line I'd look at upgrading it to the future 16 core Opteron processors using the same socket (like I upgraded to quad cores on my current setup) which would be 64 cores at whatever clock speed (like 1.8-2.0GHz).
Licenses for multiple processors and cores is a non-issue. By the time I build the system RealFlow 5 will likely be available (licensed per machine instead of per core), I use Linux so Window Server is unnecessary for the quad sockets, and Mantra has no limit on the processor or core count for rendering.
Long story short, I'm looking for suggestions if there's a bigger bang for the buck in the $3,500 range for multithreaded tasks. Anyone have experience with the new Xeon 5600 series? A dual Xeon 5650 upgrade would come out to about the same price with 12 cores at 2.66GHz. Which would you go for? Cheers!