Help build up an 8 Core?

About to bite the bullet again and this is what I've come up with

over the last couple months for an 8 Core Windows 64-bit box. I'm still undecided if to go Vista64 or XP64? I've

been using XP64 since it came out and have no issues with it or driver problems with printers and scanners. If

anyone has experienced both Vista64 and XP64, I'd apprecaite their thoughts on which way to go and why they like

one over the other?

 

This is a little less than a high end Mac Pro. I wish for two 10,000 rpm Velociraptor drives in Raid O and a third

Velociraptor for scratch drive. This should be one very fast box and last me five years with the possibility to

upgrade and add more ram. I like this motherboard

because it can take 32 gig of Ram and is 771 socket. I'm hoping I'll be able to upgrade CPU's easily in the

future with a 771 socket motherboard.

 

I'd love some insight or if I've made some big boo-boo's with my below parts list.

 

*Case; Antec P190 + 1200. $350

 

http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=81900

 

 

*Motherboard; Tyan Tempest I5400XL. $420

 

http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=564

 

 

*CPU; 2 X Intel Xeon E5420 Quad Core 2.50GHZ 771 Socket (8-core). $650

 

 

*Ram; 4 X Kingston DDR2 SDRAM - 8 GB - FB-DIMM - 800 MHz. $600

 

 

*Hard Drive for OS; 2 X Western Digital Velociraptor, Raid 0. $600

 

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=459

 

 

*Hard Drive for Scratch Disk; Western Digital Velociraptor. $300

 

 

*Hard Drives for Storage; Already own

 

 

*GPU: $100

 

 

*DVDRW; Pioneer DVR-115DBK; $35

 

 

*CPU Cooler; 2x Thermalright HR-01-X $100

 

http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/thhrforinxe5.html

 

 

 

*Fans; Add two 120mm Scythe Fluid Ball Bearing Fans to the Antec case fans. $30

 

 

Grand total; $3200.00 'ish.

 

 

Am I on the right track? Missing anything major? In terms of performance, what do you feel is the bottleneck with

this system and consequently upgrade or improve on? It's been a couple years now since I've had to build a new

box. Opinions welcomed!

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Gary

You won't see a significant improvement with PS with the Raptors in Raid 0, so I'd consider just using two total (1 for scratch and the other for OS). If you plan on upgrading to CS4 when it comes out, definitely consider getting more than a bottom end GPU, as CS4 will be able to utilize the GPU for extra power. Other than those two minor things, it looks great! I'm jealous!

Garrison, you are trying to tweak at very high end.

 

I am a novice computerist, since I am a 3D graphics artist, so I always needed high end graphics platforms.

 

I would love to share some of my experience with you.

 

You are thinking write in case of hard disk, ram and a higher speed cpu, but I would not agree with you to choose a intel cpu, whether the AMDs are far better in the multimedia usage. I would suggest you to use AMDs, quad cores.

 

Motherboard wil also be a critical part of this kind of system, so go for best suitable with your cpu, not for a highly featured on papers.

 

And offcourse a major part of this sytem will be a 3D graphics card, I would love the Nvidia.

 

If I would have been at place of you, I wouldn't have made a 8core pc today, because after some months this would also be a common and costing will be to low. Acer recently invented a pc, go on their website and explore that. It is also the great graphics tweaker. I found that a very interesting unfortunatly I don't remember the name right now. And offcourse, it will be benifitial to get service and support of one company in case of any problem.

 

I would simplify this :>>

 

AMD multicore CPUs (Best for graphics platform)

 

Asus motherboards with nvidia chipsets and SLI or any extended SLI technology(Not a onboard graphics) The crosshair is very old but very successfull and a milestone motherboard, I am not sure whether asus have developed any extension of it yet.

 

Nvidia multicore graphics cards (Two or more in case of SLI tweakings)

 

Ram as yu need, 4 GB will be sufficient for todays workflow requirement and will not benifiial to have more if the more than half of the rest is free when we are utilizing our pc fully.

 

I am not sure about the costing, but sure that, it will be much lower use your total.

 

WD Harddisks are doing well nowadays. I would suggest to use raid benifits.

 

If you want true clors dont go for LCDs, CRTs are far better in true color reproction but LCD will be better in terms of resolution.

 

Ok, I thing I don;t need to clarify here that I experiment a lot with computer hardwares to get perfect match for my havey 3D studio MAX Animations and modeling. I have all my computers based on Asus, Nvidia and AMDs, even my laptop too. My next upgrades will also be the AMD/Nvidia based.

 

Best regards.

PP

I forgot to mention anything about Photoshop, so here we go>

 

Photoshop mostly runs like Notepad on these systems, and if working with bigger files, than also not stuks on anyway.

 

Franklin, GPUs provide workflow speed in graphics applications, and a computer with hi-end GPU performs greatly in graphics work.RAID would be benifitial in backups.

I will respectfully disagree with Pankaj. AMD used to be great, but since the introduction of the Core 2 microarchitecture (what modern Xeons are based on), AMD can't compete. They offer a better price/performance ratio for lower end systems, but for high end systems, Intel simply is that much faster. This itereration of PS doesn't use the graphics card at all, for all intensive purposes. There are no animations to render, unlike movie editing. I have personally compared an 8600 GT with an 8800 GTX and found no difference in the operation of PSCS2. CS3 will run essentially the same with a low end $50 card as a top end $600. In addition, SLI/crossfire offer nothing for still image editing. Multiple video cards (not in SLI) can be useful if you want to run more than 2 monitors, however. As for brands, ATI and Nvidia have pretty much been trading blows between generations, by the time CS4 is released, it would simply be best to look at reviews to see which is the most powerful.

 

I wanted to make sure i put this separately: RAID IS NOT A BACK UP METHOD! Raid is soley designed for uptime or speed, as in when you can't afford to spend time fixing a dead hard drive, or when you need extra speed (as in RAID 0 for games of video editing) . RAID will do nothing if you get a virus, or there is a power failure. Multiple offsite backups are the only way to secure your data.

Not to bang the Mac drum here but…

 

I just got an Apple Refurb Mac Pro 2.8ghz for $2399.99.

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?sf=wHF2F2PHCCCX72KDY&nclm=CertifiedMac

Scroll down the page.

 

Got ram from Newegg For $159. for 4 gigs (2X2 gigs)

 

You can run XP, Vista, Linux or whatever floats your boat.

1 year warranty (buy apple care for 3 years)

 

I know it's not as much fun as building your own and spending the time routing cables, searching the web for new drivers, or older driver

that work because the new ones conflict with the others.

I've done that!

 

As a bonus you get OS10.5 and all of the iLife apps.

 

With the spare cash you can get Aperture and take out your significant other for a nice dinner.

just my 2¢

mdr

Unless you need a new computer right now, I would wait until the end of the year, only 3 or 4 more months, when Intel will release Nehalem.

 

Nehalem will have on die memory management, no more North Bridge/South Bridge, and will support both multi core and multi threading.

OK franklin, I appreciate your R&D based put-up.

 

This is can be more simpelify that Intels are good on data based operations and AMDs are better with graphics acceleration.

 

But I would still vote for the AMDs because my PCs are used mostly for 3D graphics, and my photoshops usage is also countable on those. In future, adobe will also introduce their GPU based softwares so this would be much benifitial to invest today in a graphics based machin as Garrison wants to stay for 4-5 years with his todays investment.

 

When I bought my first PC that was a pentium (I) 166 mhz with 8mb ram and 1gb hdd, which I got upgraded to 32mb ram and 2gb hdd.

 

Technology has changed so fastly in last 8-10 years in computer world, so this is the time to go with todays minimum needs

Sorry, I forgot to mention that building a reasonably suitable system is much more affordable with AMDs as compared to Intels, Intels charge much higher for their so historical great past goodwill when there were no compititors fighting strongly with them.

Garrison,

 

What kind of speed increase can one get from 8 cores over 4 cores?

 

What size files are you typically handling?

<i>Franklin Polk , Jul 23, 2008; 03:23 a.m. You won't see a significant improvement with PS with the Raptors in

Raid 0, so I'd consider just using two total (1 for scratch and the other for OS). If you plan on upgrading to

CS4 when it comes out, definitely consider getting more than a bottom end GPU, as CS4 will be able to utilize the

GPU for extra power. Other than those two minor things, it looks great! I'm jealous!"</i><br><br>

 

Hi Franklin, I'm excited too. I budget $1000/yr for computers and do this every three years. I've always Raided

my drives. It has crossed my mind that this gear might be fast enough to not Raid? But must disagree, Raid O will

always increase read/write times and data transfer over one solo drive. As far as I know, The GPU and CS4

utilizing it's ram is still

a rumour? I will definitely upgrade if it turns out to be so :)<br><br>

 

 

<i>Pankaj Purohit , Jul 23, 2008; 03:38 a.m. Garrison, you are trying to tweak at very high end. I am a novice

computerist, since I am a 3D graphics artist, so I always needed high end graphics platforms. I would love to

share some of my experience with you. You are thinking write in case of hard disk, ram and a higher speed cpu,

but I would not agree with you to choose a intel cpu, whether the AMDs are far better in the multimedia usage. I

would suggest you to use AMDs, quad cores. Motherboard wil also be a critical part of this kind of system, so go

for best suitable with your cpu, not for a highly featured on papers. And offcourse a major part of this sytem

will be a 3D graphics card, I would love the Nvidia. If I would have been at place of you, I wouldn't have made a

8core pc today, because after some months this would also be a common and costing will be to low. Acer recently

invented a pc, go on their website and explore that. It is also the great graphics tweaker. I found that a very

interesting unfortunatly I don't remember the name right now. And offcourse, it will be benifitial to get service

and support of one company in case of any problem.<br><br>

 

I would simplify this :>><br><br>

 

AMD multicore CPUs (Best for graphics platform)<br><br>

 

Asus motherboards with nvidia chipsets and SLI or any extended SLI technology(Not a onboard graphics) The

crosshair is very old but very successfull and a milestone motherboard, I am not sure whether asus have developed

any extension of it yet.<br><br>

 

Nvidia multicore graphics cards (Two or more in case of SLI tweakings)<br><br>

 

Ram as yu need, 4 GB will be sufficient for todays workflow requirement and will not benifiial to have more if

the more than half of the rest is free when we are utilizing our pc fully.<br><br>

 

I am not sure about the costing, but sure that, it will be much lower use your total.<br><br>

 

WD Harddisks are doing well nowadays. I would suggest to use raid benifits.<br><br>

 

If you want true clors dont go for LCDs, CRTs are far better in true color reproction but LCD will be better in

terms of resolution.<br><br>

 

Ok, I thing I don;t need to clarify here that I experiment a lot with computer hardwares to get perfect match for

my havey 3D studio MAX Animations and modeling. I have all my computers based on Asus, Nvidia and AMDs, even my

laptop too. My next upgrades will also be the AMD/Nvidia based.<br><br>

 

Best regards. PP</i><br><br>

 

 

<i>Pankaj Purohit , Jul 23, 2008; 03:43 a.m. I forgot to mention anything about Photoshop, so here we go>

Photoshop mostly runs like Notepad on these systems, and if working with bigger files, than also not stuks on

anyway. Franklin, GPUs provide workflow speed in graphics applications, and a computer with hi-end GPU performs

greatly in graphics work.RAID would be benifitial in backups.</i>

<br><br>

 

Thanks for your articulate post, Pankaj. I wont be "tweaking" or over-clocking. This is all server class and dead

reliable. Just need to keep it cool. I dislike AMD, too many bad experiences in the past. Can you recommend a

mobo that will take 8 core and up to 32gig of ram? I searched and could only find the Tempest. Everything else

seems to max out at 8 gig? I only need one GPU and wont be doing crossfire etc with them. This is for 2D graphics

only and feel the less power, the less heat, and less system resources used, the better. If the rumours turn out

to be true about Adobe using GPU for extra performance, I'll pull out the cheap card and bridge something

then.<br><br>

 

<i>Franklin Polk , Jul 23, 2008; 04:34 a.m. I will respectfully disagree with Pankaj. AMD used to be great, but

since the introduction of the Core 2 microarchitecture (what modern Xeons are based on), AMD can't compete. They

offer a better price/performance ratio for lower end systems, but for high end systems, Intel simply is that much

faster. This itereration of PS doesn't use the graphics card at all, for all intensive purposes. There are no

animations to render, unlike movie editing. I have personally compared an 8600 GT with an 8800 GTX and found no

difference in the operation of PSCS2. CS3 will run essentially the same with a low end $50 card as a top end

$600. In addition, SLI/crossfire offer nothing for still image editing. Multiple video cards (not in SLI) can be

useful if you want to run more than 2 monitors, however. As for brands, ATI and Nvidia have pretty much been

trading blows between generations, by the time CS4 is released, it would simply be best to look at reviews to see

which is the most powerful.<br><br>

 

I wanted to make sure i put this separately: RAID IS NOT A BACK UP METHOD! Raid is soley designed for uptime or

speed, as in when you can't afford to spend time fixing a dead hard drive, or when you need extra speed (as in

RAID 0 for games of video editing) . RAID will do nothing if you get a virus, or there is a power failure.

Multiple offsite backups are the only way to secure your data.</i><br><br>

 

I also feel AMD can't compete with Intel. A year or two down the road, I'm confident that todays $1200 Quad CPU's

will be dirt cheap and in a matter of hours be able to swap them out and do a bios flash. That's what I'm hoping

for! Different Raid configs do different things. I wish for Raid O. It'll be my third box in a row with Raid O

and have had no issues. I safe guard myself by using high quality yet common drives that are easy to replace if

need be. I think the wd raptor series is great. They have the highest MTBF rate. I use Ghost to clone my system

if anything should happen.

<br><br>

 

<i>Michael Del Rossi , Jul 23, 2008; 09:06 a.m. Not to bang the Mac drum here but…I just got an Apple Refurb Mac

Pro 2.8ghz for $2399.99. (link) Scroll down the page. Got ram from Newegg For $159. for 4 gigs (2X2 gigs) You can

run XP, Vista, Linux or whatever floats your boat. 1 year warranty (buy apple care for 3 years) I know it's not

as much fun as building your own and spending the time routing cables, searching the web for new drivers, or

older driver that work because the new ones conflict with the others. I've done that!</i><br><br>

 

Hi Michael, I might return to Mac when they are on a level playing field with Adobe and the 64-bit issue. I left

Mac with a 8500 PPC. For the next little while though, Macs are going to be dead slow compared to Windows. The

$2300 Mac Pro you listed isn't near the spec of the build I'm considering above as it only has a one 7200 rpm

drive and 2 gigs of ram. By the time I yanked that and put in three Velociraptors, 8 gigs of ram, I'd be well

above the $3200 Windows box. I'd really like Adobe to port for Linux so I could run Ubuntu as I really have a

tough time with oligarchies.<br><br>

 

 

<i>Brooks Gelfand [Frequent poster] , Jul 23, 2008; 01:29 p.m. Unless you need a new computer right now, I would

wait until the end of the year, only 3 or 4 more months, when Intel will release Nehalem. Nehalem will have on

die memory management, no more North Bridge/South Bridge, and will support both multi core and multi

threading.</i><br><br>

 

cheers very much, Brooks. I thought about that and felt that being so new, it would be over the top in terms of

$$$'s. I also thought that the new ssd drives will be common soon as well. Is Nehalem really only a few months

away? I heard next year and by the time it was affordable and common like quad cores today, it may be a couple

years. It certainly sounds juicy. The stats are incredible.<br><br>

 

<i>Pankaj Purohit , Jul 23, 2008; 01:38 p.m. In future, adobe will also introduce their GPU based softwares so

this would be much benifitial to invest today in a graphics based machin as Garrison wants to stay for 4-5 years

with his todays investment.</i><br><br>

 

There's no confirmation of this, Pankaj. If Adobe does go with GPU integration, I'll upgrade then. I don't game

and sometimes i need to draw simple things in solidworks. But I think it's not worth the risk of spending $600 on

cards hoping CS4 uses GPU tech.

<br><br>

 

 

<i>Marc Bergman [subscriber] [Frequent poster] , Jul 23, 2008; 05:41 p.m. Garrison, What kind of speed increase

can one get from 8 cores over 4 cores? What size files are you typically handling?</i><br><br>

 

Hi Marc, it's not the speed, it's the multi-tasking. Using more than one app at once. At the moment, my

bottleneck is simultaneously correcting a massive folder of raw, while another folder is batching to jpg or tiff,

while

another is burning to dvd. Using CS3, Lightroom, and Nero. Sometimes I have to open Illustrator or Indesign and

tweak something as well. My file sizes aren't too large, but the amount of files is numerous. Todays camera raw

files are massive. I preferred the 6mp days. Am I on the right track going 8 core attempting to do many things at

once? I feel that with a quad core I sit here with my arms crossed too much and going 8 core would speed things up?

<br><br>

Vists64 or XP64? Will Adobe run on XP64? Beta V2 of Lightroom for Vista64 worked flawlessly on XP64 so I am

hoping so.<br><br>

 

Wow, what a post! Thanks everyone, I sure apprecaite it. Anything else?

<i> </i>

<br><br>

 

 

Hi Garrison,

 

As far as I know, the quad core Nehalem chips and the X58 chip set (well really South Bridge), should be out before the end of the year. Since we are almost at August, that is about four months. Cost of the CPU between $999 (for the 3 GHz) and $1500 (for the 3.2 GHZ). Since each core is capable of dual threading, you have nearly an 8-way chip (note I wrote "nearly"; two threads per core is not the same as two cores). You also have SSE4 and on chip memory access. The boards should use 1333 MHz DDR3 memory. (In your design, I do not think the Northbridge can keep both Xeon processors supplied with data if they run flat out), and DDR2-800 memory is just too slow. Here is a link about the X58

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-x58-nehalem,5829.html

 

And here is a peek at Nehalem (Bloomfield)

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-nehalem-core,5854.html

 

I am not as ambitious as you. I shall wait until about March 2009 and build a dual core Nehalem. Unless Nikon decides to write 64-bit drivers for the Coolscan V, it will be a 32-bit system.

 

As for Solid State Disk, if it is Flash Memory based, no thank you. Flash memory wears out; it is good for a bit more than 100,000 write cycles, then the cells begin to fail. This is not a problem for devices like cameras, but would be a problem for a hard drive replacement, especially one with the Page Data Set or the Photoshop scratch file. I will stay with hard drives until I.B.M. releases Racetrack.

 

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/23859.wss

Hi Gariison,

 

I think if you are going for a server based system than it is ok to go with Intels, but I would totaly refuse your fearness about AMDs that they heat up more than Intels, I have been useing those for mare than last four years and still my first AMD (32bit single core, via based motherboard, nvidia graphics) is in running condition.

 

I think that you can imagine that when we (3D proffessionals) run our 3D applications, those utilize the full CPU performance at 98%-100%. We have to continuesely render our animated scenes for few days even without shutting down the system and keeping those in batteries. I have been doing 3D animation renderings for last 4 years for my various 3D walkthrough projects and never felt any kind of shutdown problem due to any warmness. I live in India where temprature goees over 45 digree in summers and I tested my all AMDs even my laptop in those hotest conditions running full day and night without AC. AMDs cool and quit technology is unbeatable. I love those for that kind of relibility.

 

My brother got an Intel PC by his company and that was too noisy that you can hear its fans noise in drawing room from his bedroom.

 

I also tested pentiums for my graphics needs but those never impressed me.

 

I am writing this for your brain-wash about AMDs bad image made by those warming failures in older versions like Turionsetc. I agree that AMDs were not good before the five-six years but they surprisingly beaten intels everywhere and if anybody gives honestly a fair one chance to AMDs, he/she won;t go for anything else.

 

3D applicaions always utilize all the power and resources of CPUs and GPUs continuousely for long hours. If a computer doesn't fail on these kind of situations, than I think that is most failsafe.

 

I think this is sufficient to clarify any confusions about AMDs in case of warm failures.

Gariison,

 

I usualy do kind of multitaskings, whwn I work with my photographs which I scan from 35mm negatives and I do multitasking when I prepare architectural scene, I simultaniously work on 3D studio max, photoshop, Autocad and many exlporer windows, and sometimes some more related application. I want to sure you that I never felt any kind of switching problem, as I am now using only the 64bit single core 3500+ and dual core 6000+ and a laptop. Only laptop stucks sometimes due to only 1GB ram.

 

I would like to share some of my great experience with single core that single core performs much faster in switching applications and loading windows, than the dual core and i felt this with both,intels and AMDs, offcourse the difference in performance is so little but it is.

 

Multicore have much resources to mange so those take some time, I think so I don;t ehat is technically behind this, may be you think me a fool thinking like this but it is true that I felt single cores better in multitasking.

 

One more thing here I would like to say that there was never any physical presence of multiple CPUs in multicore systems yet, those were onle vertuals so you will only find a increament of speed in only MHZ, not in physical availability of multiple CPUs or any resources.

 

The dual core, Tri Core (AMD has developed tricores) or quad core is only marketing stunts of these companies like camera companies who always try to make us fool by highlighting the megapixel countings. We know that many other things affect the photography like sensor sizee, lens and ISO etc. Same is in the computer field, where the technology has reched on a milestone where that wants to tale a rest, so thats why we are not getting true improovements in technology except increasing the MHZ speeds. That is only happening vertually, not realy.

 

It is not the right time to spent a lot in a computer like you described, you can get at least 85%-90% capabilities of that computer in a perfectly low cost designed dual-core.

 

So I would advice you to go with a perfect dual core and drop the idea to go with a latest 8-core or any similar to that kind of pc for this lot of cost. As you said you do upgradation timely, do that next time, I think after two or three years....!

Garrison,

 

Thanks for your reply. I think that a quad core will do me fine.

oh, Brooks. Now you've got me doubting everything again :) I think you're right, I'll wait. This is my busy

season and i'm almost through it as it is in a couple months. It'd take me a month if I ordered everything,

assembled and tweaked and I'd sit through late fall to early spring not needing a hot rod. Thanks for the wise

words.

 

"As for Solid State Disk, if it is Flash Memory based, no thank you. Flash memory wears out; it is good for a bit

more than 100,000 write cycles, then the cells begin to fail. This is not a problem for devices like cameras, but

would be a problem for a hard drive replacement,"

 

What about the Macbook air owners? Are they going to be upset pretty soon?

 

Thanks again Pankaj. I really apprecaite the time for your posts. But no thanks. I'm running AMD right now in

one box. I really feel Intel is the way to go.

 

no worries Marc. I might just build another too :) A shame it's tough to find more than 4 dimm slots on today's

mobo's though.

Hi Garrison,

 

You may not have long to wait according to this article:

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-nehalem-cpu-bloomfield,5968.html

 

Nehalem out in late September and motherboards in October.

 

BUT... it is according to "sources at motherboard makers". It is not an official Intel release.

 

So you will have close to your 8-way (4 cores each mulit-threading) with one chip. You will not need ECC memory and will be using faster DDR3-1333 memory. You will not need a cooler; the cooling module that comes with the CPU is more than sufficient unless you overclock. You can cut back on your power supply - drastically. Unless you got with a very high end display card, you probably will not need more than 600 watts - less if you have more than three or four disks (disks take about 10 watts) - and may need even less. All in all, you will have a faster machine at lower cost.

 

As for the solid state disk, I know flash memory does "wear out" - cells fail after repeated write cycles. The only question is how fast. I have seen figures between 10,000 and 1,000,000 cycles - a very broad range. However, even a million cycles is attained in short order for disks containing the Page Data Set or the Photoshop scratch file.

 

As for Airbook users, it would not be the first time Apple users were upset. Remember the battery problems with the i-PODS. There is an old saying in the computer business - "Do you know how you tell pioneers? They are the ones with the arrows sticking our of their rear ends!" (An allusion to the old Western movies where the Wagon Train was ambushed by the Indians.) I think I will wait for solid state disks.