Recently I was thinking about building a dual CPU workstation with Xeon E5-2630s. However the reviews for the motherboards have pointed to a few issues.
Reviews for the Asus Z9PE-D8 WS on newegg:
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131817[/url]
I don't plan on using GTX cards, only a Quadro 2000, it'll also be running Windows 7 Pro or Ultimate.
Review for the EVGA SR-X by TimeToLiveCustoms:
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0qVZz-ot6k[/url]
People have also told me they have had a few problems.
I really want to build a socket 2011 workstation. Is it likely I'll run into issues?
If anyone can tell me about their experiences with 2011 boards (gaming, servers or otherwise) it would be much appreciated.
I haven't heard anything, but I don't generally go looking into that particular area of building, so take that with a grain of salt.
Are you sure you need that kind of power? It's an enormous cost difference and most people benefit far more from rolling with a 3770k and throwing some flavor of an NVIDIA brick in their system to use CUDA cores with. For the price of xeons, you could have some off the charts ridiculous CUDA power if your applications support it.
What are you doing that makes xeons worthwhile?
[QUOTE=Zephyrs;37732307]I haven't heard anything, but I don't generally go looking into that particular area of building, so take that with a grain of salt.
Are you sure you need that kind of power? It's an enormous cost difference and most people benefit far more from rolling with a 3770k and throwing some flavor of an NVIDIA brick in their system to use CUDA cores with. For the price of xeons, you could have some off the charts ridiculous CUDA power if your applications support it.
What are you doing that makes xeons worthwhile?[/QUOTE]
Well he is getting workstation with a quadro so....
[QUOTE=Zephyrs;37732307]I haven't heard anything, but I don't generally go looking into that particular area of building, so take that with a grain of salt.
Are you sure you need that kind of power? It's an enormous cost difference and most people benefit far more from rolling with a 3770k and throwing some flavor of an NVIDIA brick in their system to use CUDA cores with. For the price of xeons, you could have some off the charts ridiculous CUDA power if your applications support it.
What are you doing that makes xeons worthwhile?[/QUOTE]
It's a mostly Maya workstation and I need the power for Mental Ray Render which can sometimes take days.
I know that the EVGA LGA2011 boards are having some problems right now, so it'd probably be best to avoid them until further notice. It's a shame really; EVGA is my favorite computer hardware manufacturer.
[editline]19th September 2012[/editline]
at least for the single socket X79s. I didn't hear much about the SR-Xs so you might be fine with one of those.
[QUOTE=RoboChimp;37732539]It's a mostly Maya workstation and I need the power for Mental Ray Render which can sometimes take days.[/QUOTE]
Right. That's a very legitimate use. I don't know much about Maya, but I do know that Mental Ray apparently produces better results than iray or whatever it is, and it doesn't work with the GPU. Something that sprung to mind last night as I was going to bed is an [url=http://vr-zone.com/articles/idf-sf-2012-haswell-ep-en-grantley-in-2014-now-with-moar-cores/17188.html]article[/url] that I read a few days ago. Relevant information quoted and bolded bellow.
[quote]The more interesting part is, of course, the dual socket one, as it shares lots in common (socket and chipset, among others) with what's usually Intel's top desktop HEDT platform. While there were doubts and otherwise rumours before, [b]it now looks like the current 8 core Sandy Bridge EP Xeon E5 2600 / 4600, to be followed by mid next year with socket compatible 10 core 3.2+ GHz Ivy Bridge EP Xeon E5 2600 / 4600 v2, will have a 2014 replacement - this time again with yet another different pinout within the same physical Socket 2011 dimensions. The Haswell EP Xeon E5 2600 / 4600 v3, which will likely also have a uni-CPU desktop flavour too, is expected to be a 14-core processor[/b] with 4-channel DDR4-2133 replacing the DDR3 from Ivy Bridge EP, and dual QPI links at 9.6 GT/s, a bit faster than now. So OK, a bit extra memory bandwidth but still way below DDR4's real DDR4-3200 scheduled server RAM speeds. But why so many cores, when the EX parts are supposed to handle that kind of count?[/quote]
In other words, 2011 sockets will have an upgrade path for ivy and haswell xeons into 2014, and you may be easily looking at 12-14 core processors at some point in 2014. I don't know what your budget is, but I'm assuming it's relatively large to even look at xeons in the first place. This may be very useful to you in 18-24 months. Unfortunately I cannot really give you any useful information on a mother board, but considering the information above, I'd definitely recommend against cheaping out on a board in any way.
[QUOTE=Zephyrs;37747576]Right. That's a very legitimate use. I don't know much about Maya, but I do know that Mental Ray apparently produces better results than iray or whatever it is, and it doesn't work with the GPU. Something that sprung to mind last night as I was going to bed is an [url=http://vr-zone.com/articles/idf-sf-2012-haswell-ep-en-grantley-in-2014-now-with-moar-cores/17188.html]article[/url] that I read a few days ago. Relevant information quoted and bolded bellow.
In other words, 2011 sockets will have an upgrade path for ivy and haswell xeons into 2014, and you may be easily looking at 12-14 core processors at some point in 2014. I don't know what your budget is, but I'm assuming it's relatively large to even look at xeons in the first place. This may be very useful to you in 18-24 months. Unfortunately I cannot really give you any useful information on a mother board, but considering the information above, I'd definitely recommend against cheaping out on a board in any way.[/QUOTE]
I can't say I have much money at the moment but I could afford a $650 dual socket board plus 2 $700 Xeons over 3 months. The parts will be purchased over around Feb 2013, I just want to make sure I'm not wasting my money something faulty. Thanks for the info.
I'm not sure when the ivy bridge xeons are coming out, and a quick Google search isn't turning up much that is useful beyond 'mid next year'. Don't know if it's worthwhile for you to consider waiting.
Going a bit above your projected price range, [URL="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=Property&N=100008494&IsNodeId=1&PropertyCodeValue=6527%3A281483&bop=And&CompareItemList=727|19-117-273^19-117-273-02%23%2C19-117-267^19-117-267-02%23%2C19-117-268^19-117-268-TS%2C19-117-269^19-117-269-TS"]this[/URL] is what I think you are looking at. The power difference between the top one and the rest is very considerable. In fact you will get more raw power out of that one until you hit 1600 dollar 8 core chips, just that it obviously won't support as many threads as the 8 cores. I'd expect the price to come down marginally, but it's still going cost a pretty penny. Up to you ultimately to decide what you want.
As I said, I'm no expert on Maya, or xeons for that matter, but it would seem to me that if you were to go any lower than the minimal one on that comparison chart, you would get nearly identical, perhaps even superior performance from just investing in a [URL="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116501&Tpk=3770k"]3770k[/URL], or [URL="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116492"]3930k[/URL], a good cooling solution, and cranking it up to 4.0-4.4 GHz range vs buying dual 2 GHz quad core xeons.
While you couldn't just slap a haswell xeon in it and call it a day in 2014 with the 3770k, both of those single processor solutions would cost a small fortune less.
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