Can you better this spec for 3D/Video work?

Hi

I've been trying to get my office to upgrade my windows pc so I can do some better 3ds max rendering and video stuff in the office the IT guy put together this spec but I think going the core i7 route would be better but given the budget (I think under £1k) what can you guys put together that I can go back with a convincing argument to him with?

He said he'll be able to overclock the AMD pretty high but I reckon he'd be able to do the same with the i7 and it'd still beat the AMD... also I'm not too sure on the SLI GTS 450's as I think one GTX460 might be better? We'd be using the fermi cards in 3ds max to render on the GPU's ...

Any help on speccing a decent i7 rig and some Fermi cards (if you can get a 2gb card in there that'd be even better!) I'd appreciate it a lot! Thanks

Code:

---

Motherboard:

Asus M4N98TD EVO AM3 NVIDIA nForce 980a SLI ATX AMD
£93.87 inc. Vat
£79.89 ex. Vat
 
http://www.yoyotech.co.uk/item-detail.php?products_id=4370619
 
CPU:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Socket AM3 Quad-Core CPU
£108.62 inc. Vat
£92.44 ex. Vat
 
http://www.yoyotech.co.uk/item-detail.php?products_id=1932496
 
Water Cooling:

Corsair Hydro H70 High Performance CPU Cooler (CWCH70)
£77.70 inc. Vat
£66.13 ex. Vat
 
http://www.yoyotech.co.uk/item-detail.php?products_id=4369489
 
Harddrive:

Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive (HD103SJ
£39.88 inc. Vat
 
http://www.yoyotech.co.uk/item-detail.php?products_id=2896585
 
Memory:  x2!!

G-Skill Ripjaws 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 PC3 10666 1333MHz
£53.43 inc. Vat
£45.47 ex. Vat
 
http://www.yoyotech.co.uk/item-detail.php?products_id=3184604
 
Graphix:  x2!!

Gainward GeForce GTS 450 GLH Edition 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E 2.0 x 16 Graphics Card
£113.09 inc. Vat
£96.25 ex. Vat
 
http://www.yoyotech.co.uk/item-detail.php?products_id=4370066
 
 Power Supply:

OCZ StealthXStream 2 700W Active PFC Power Supply (OCZ700SXS2)
£69.28 inc. Vat
£58.96 ex. Vat
 
http://www.yoyotech.co.uk/item-detail.php?products_id=4368564
 
Case:

Thermaltake V4 VM30001W2Z Black With Window ATX Mid Tower Case
£31.32 inc. Vat
£26.66 ex. Vat
 
http://www.yoyotech.co.uk/item-detail.php?products_id=4369839
 
 
TOTAL:

£753.71 inc. Vat

---

Surely a Hex-core would be better for those uses than the quad core specified?

Well he said he was going for the price to performance ratio I had a quick look at the X6 and the i7 930 still outperforms it hmm...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dbh

Well he said he was going for the price to performance ratio I had a quick look at the X6 and the i7 930 still outperforms it hmm...

---

In what tasks?

A single hard drive? That'll hold the system back. If you have regular back-ups then I would go for 2 drives in RAID 0

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kalniel

In what tasks?

---

Generally multi threaded tasks according to the reviews I found on google... couldn't find anything related to 3D though.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by blueball

A single hard drive? That'll hold the system back. If you have regular back-ups then I would go for 2 drives in RAID 0

---

We'll have a large network for storage so not worried too much about the hdd mainly the cpu, mobo and graphics card choices I need specced.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dbh

Well he said he was going for the price to performance ratio I had a quick look at the X6 and the i7 930 still outperforms it hmm...

---

Be careful with how you read the reviews. For example many websites use CineBench 10 which lead to lower scores with AMD processors. However in CineBench 11 the AMD scores are much higher.

In 3DS Max the Phenom II X6 processors do quite well:

http://www.extremeoverclocking.com/r...6_1090T_9.html

http://www.behardware.com/articles/7...90t-1055t.html

http://techgage.com/article/phenom_i...x-core_arena/4

I would look at the following parts:

Phenom II 6 1075T ~ £152 to £160

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-p...hz-125w-retail

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/238328

Asus M4A89GTD PRO ~ £95

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/197748

This has a split 8 phase VRM with cooling and SATA 3.0 too.

This motherboard cannot do SLI though.

8GB 1600MHZ DDR3 ~ £96

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/234975

Antec TruePower New 650W ~ £70

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/159920

Asus GTX 470 1280MB ~ £188

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/246706

This uses the GF100 GPU unlike the GF104 found in the GTX460 and has more L2 cache and better FP64 performance. This means that the GF100 probably has better GPGPU performance when compared to the GF104.

Coolermaster Elite 370 Mid Tower Case ~ £34

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/245413

Antec TriCool 120mm ~ £6

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/79896

Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB ~ £41

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173804

The total comes to around £682 to £690. I have not included an aftermarket cooler as for work purposes it would probably be better to keep any CPU at stock speeds IMHO.

I have not added an optical drive too although perhaps a Blu-Ray rewriter would be useful so you could have a read only copy of any important files.

Also,a RAID 0 array would probably help with read/write speeds as 3D work can produce large data files.

Thanks CAT and for also explaining your choices will have a read up on it (as im now on my lunch break!)

If you're going to be offloading the rendering to the GPU then frankly I don't think you need to worry about the CPU too much, as there's a number of GPU accelerated video encoding programs available too. Get a GTX470, which will be much better for GPGPU tasks than either a GTX460 or SLI GTS450s (remember than some GPGPU tasks won't run on SLI setups), get an Athlon II X3 or X4, go for a non-sli motherboard on an AMD 770 or 870 chipset, and invest the savings in a 2x 4GB memory set up (so you've got room to expand later) and a decent GPU-accelerated video encoding program :D

Seriously, if you're buying the graphics card for offloading computation, why spend £200 on a high-compute CPU as well?

If you insist on going for a more powerful CPU, pick of the bunch IMNSHO is the 95W Phenom II X6 1055T. It's OEM, but you're planning on an H70 anyway so that doesn't matter, and the lower TDP gives it more overclocking headroom, lowers temperatures, and, obviously, reduces power draw. Grab it while you can ;)

Cool how would this compare to the black edition? I know you guys are saying if I'm going to be offloading to the GPU for rendering don't bother with the CPU but there are certain functions that iray (we have a 3ds max subscription so we'll get access to this new GPGPU rendering function in mentalray) won't support and will have to use the CPU.

Have also been reading Jeff Patton (mentalray guru) blog and he mentioned when using these Fermi cards for rendering the onboard RAM plays a big part as the whole scene and bitmaps have to fit on the memory uncompressed when rendering a scene so if you see anything Fermi based with 2GB of RAM let me know!

Thanks

Supposedly despite the locked multiplier the 95W version of the Phenom II X6 1055T is meant to be quite decent for overclocking and may need less voltage too. However,the unlocked multiplier of the Phenom II 1075Twill make it easier to overclock. However,the 890GX based motherboard I listed is supposed to be decent for overclocking though.

I do agree with scaryjim aout getting 2X4GB even if it is slightly more expensive as it means you could have up to 16GB of RAM.

If you need more video RAM perhaps you should look at the GTX480:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/202257

This uses the GF100 GPU.

There is also the GTX580:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/246903

This uses the GF110 GPU. It has more shaders and high clockspeeds than a GTX480 and reduced power consumption.

It looks like the GTX580 should be faster than GTX480 in GPGPU tasks:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4008/n...orce-gtx-580/2

However,it seems that there maybe issues with 3DS Max with the GTX400 series GPUs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_400_Series

I would read the links in the article.

TBH,it maybe also worth looking at a Quadro card as these have more video RAM.

The Quadro 4000 has 2GB of video RAM but only 256 stream processors and costs around £700 to £800.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH

Supposedly despite the locked multiplier the 95W version of the Phenom II X6 1055T is meant to be quite decent for overclocking and may need less voltage too. However,the unlocked multiplier of the Phenom II 1075Twill make it easier to overclock. However,the 890GX based motherboard I listed is supposed to be decent for overclocking though.

I do agree with scaryjim aout getting 2X4GB even if it is slightly more expensive as it means you could have up to 16GB of RAM.

If you need more video RAM perhaps you should look at the GTX480:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/202257

This uses the GF100 GPU.

There is also the GTX580:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/246903

This uses the GF110 GPU. It has more shaders and high clockspeeds than a GTX480 and reduced power consumption.

It looks like the GTX580 should be faster than GTX480 in GPGPU tasks:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4008/n...orce-gtx-580/2

However,it seems that there maybe issues with 3DS Max with the GTX400 series GPUs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_400_Series

I would read the links in the article.

TBH,it maybe also worth looking at a Quadro card as these have more video RAM.

The Quadro 4000 has 2GB of video RAM but only 256 stream processors and costs around £700 to £800.

---

Quadro would be nice but that's pretty expensive don't think we'd be able to get away with that! Also seems its OpenGL issues with 3DS MAX .... will be running in DirectX mode so should be fine.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dbh

We'll have a large network for storage so not worried too much about the hdd mainly the cpu, mobo and graphics card choices I need specced.

---

I still recommend fast local hard disk such as RAID 0. As already mentioned by cat-the-fifth, 3D can generate huge files.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by blueball

I still recommend fast local hard disk such as RAID 0. As already mentioned by cat-the-fifth, 3D can generate huge files.

---

Yep yep I've mentioned it to the tech guy now. He said he's happy to order those parts so thanks everyone for the suggestions only thing now is seeing if department heads approve it depending on what budget we got kicking about here's hoping!

Speaking to a friend of mine who is in the industry, he says that viewport speed is what all the fuss is about.

The quadro/firegl viewport speeds are insane compared to the gaming cards.......we are talking 2 generation old WS card gigantically out-performing todays flagship gaming cards.

It all depends on whether thats a dealbreaker. If it is, you have a couple of options.
1. Use 2 cards, an old 8x00GT/GTX/GTS flashed to the relevant FX bios (or even an old WS card you have lying around), plus a newer 4xx card for CUDA and live rendering.
2. There are reports of GTX275 being flashed to FX4800. Might be worth a try and that could potentially cover both aspects in one.