First time builder Qs

Ok, my poor comp(See siggy) is really taking some hard hits with my 3D rendering and I think it's time to go all out since my scenes are starting to get more and more complex and I can't really wait 2 days for something to render. My question to you guys is, which brand?! I heard the Xeons are good, but which ones, I need some real power in this puppy and I don't know how the Xeons rack up against the Opterons and other AMDs.

This is gonna be used for folding/Rendering/Gaming also. I know duallies arent the best for gaming, but are they THAT much worse than single CPU rigs when it comes to gaming? Or will it just be a few added seconds on load times?

How much RAM should I use in this puppy? I have about $4000 to spend on it but I would also like to watercool it so I need to set some aside for that as well as everything else considering this is gonna be a full system build. Unless I decide to keep my Antec PlusView1000AMG, but I dunno. I want a beast! So if you guys could give me a rough sketch on the CPU/Mobo/RAM/Size of case I would want to use, that would be great!

Also, which mobos should I stay away from? I plan on overclocking as well as putting some high end parts in it so I want this baby to last me. Thanks in advance!

What programs do you use? some have optimizations specifically for p4/Xeons that let them run faster on a xeon than an opteron. As far as price goes.. With 4000 you can get an amazingly bad-*** xeon or opteron system, with pleanty left over for watercooling. With a quick trip to pricewatch, a basic dual opteron 246 with 4 gigs ram and 2 250 gb SATA drives on a tyan thunder K8W is about $2800. I'm not sure about the OCability of the dual opteron mobos though. You might want to wait for the nforce4 boareds to show up.

XPs are your cheap and cheerful option. Tbreds or Bartons. They also provide the least power but you could cheaply(comparitively) set up a dually box and run it as well as your main rig. Have it encode while you use your rig.

Other options are Xeons and Opterons. Opterons > Xeons > XPs but also costs go the same way.

Zac42 said:

What programs do you use? some have optimizations specifically for p4/Xeons that let them run faster on a xeon than an opteron.

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Programs are 3Ds Max, Maya, Lightwave, Photoshop, ImageReady, Premiere.

And I am putting aside $1000-1300 for a Dual LCD setup, though I am not sure on which LCD I want to get. Also, which CPUs are the best bang for the buck overclocking wise? I was looking at some Tyan mobos a little while ago. Are those good? Thanks again

I don't know about the Effects programs, but the 3D renderers are no longer 'optimised' for intel systems.

Make sure you get a motherboard with separate dedicated memory for each cpu, as this will also drastically reduce your rendering times.

I miss my duallie, completely rocked for rendering in lightwave. Haven't done much since i got a bit skint and couldnt afford a replacement mobo.

As far as motherboards go if you want to overclock, then do not get a Tyan. They have no options for overclocking. MSI makes a dual 940 board, which allows up to 233 FSB. It is a "plain" board though.. no PCI-X or anything like that. Also no independant memory for each proc. However, the only OS that can take advantage of the NUMA features that the opteron offers is XP-64 beta and some flavors of linux. Here is why NUMA is good: http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q2/dually-opterons/index.x?pg=8. Unfortunatly, the OS support is ont there yet.
http://techreport.com/reviews/2004q2/opteron-x50/index.x?pg=7
That page has some dually benchmarks for lightwave, 3ds max, and a whole bunch of other apps.

I took another look at prices; depending on how much of a gamer you are or how much storage you need, you could get a system between 2700 and 3000$
I came up with this with:

2x opteron 248 $1338
MSI MS-9130 mobo $220
2 gigs of OCZ registered ddr400 $500
200 gig SATA HD $135
either R9800Pro @200$ or GF6800GT @400$
good dual layer DVD burner for ~70$
fortron 530 watt PSU $75
lian-li PC71 (pleanty of room for any watercooling you could possibly want) $175
Total: about 2700$ without the 6800GT. pleanty of cash left over for dual LCDs and an awesome water setup.

Ok, I was planning on 2 SATA 200gig Cuda Vs, I already have the 9800Pro but I will probably get a 6800GT or maybe even an X800 pro since the gap from OpenGL apps isnt so great anymore. And with the 2 gigs of RAM, how much would that help out over 1gig of OCZ? I was looking at the Lian Li PC75 a few mins ago and noticed there is a fairly big gap at the top. Do you guys think that could fit a Thermochil 120.3? And I have a Vantec Stealth 520watt PSU that I should re-sleeve but I dunno yet. Anyways, thanks again!

Im not sure about the thermochill in particular, but I know that I have seen pleanty of PC70s with 3x120 rads in the top. I have one, and its enormous. Makes my xp-120 look tiny. I really dont know how much an extra gig of ram helps the 3d apps you use, but when I'm working in premier, it sucks up nearly all of my 1 gig, and thats on a fairly small project. So, it couldn't hurt. As far as the 6800 vs x800, if you are watercooling, I'g go for the GT. It should OC well past ultra speeds on water, which is a great value for $100 less than the ultra. Although, a flashed X800 VIVO is a good deal too. Of course neither of those is a sure bet, but no overclock is. Have fun with this system, It'll be a killer!

Also, should I get the OCZ or Cruzial Balistix? I heard the Crucial was really good in the A64 rigs. Or do they not have ECC Reg versions of that stuff?

I dont know if there is a registered version of the ballistix. I dont think that you can even OC the board far enough to need that kind of stuff. I think the FSB limit on the MSI is 233, and I dont thinkthat any other boards let you OC at all.

David said:

XPs are your cheap and cheerful option. Tbreds or Bartons. They also provide the least power but you could cheaply(comparitively) set up a dually box and run it as well as your main rig. Have it encode while you use your rig.

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Ok, i've been thinking about what you said and after checking out all those damn prices! I think i'm going to build a cheap dually and then upgrade my main rig. Slap the dually in my PlusView1000amg and hook my Vantec Stealth 520watt PSU to it. Then get the Cooler Master case I was looking at and upgrade to a 3.0C Hopefully it will help me out in prices in the long run!

If I were you I would go with a PC-DL(200 new or 150ish used), some 2.4ghz Prestonias (about 200 a pop or cheaper as a used pair), some non ecc non registered ram(DDR400 is fine), and a quality EPS12v power supply(cost is 100-150 for a qaulity model from either antec or OCZ for example. A quality psu is very important in a duallie rig. The EPS12v psu's offer a seperate 12v rail to power the processors to prevent overload and underpowering of the psu's. This is especially important when running a demanding video card plus a couple hard drives. This combination of parts should be a very decent duallie and is probably one of the cheaper ones that you can get away with. The MP's are a little more dated which is why I would stray from those personally. If you did go this route you can easily upgrade the motherboard a few months down the road to an Asus NCCH-DL or Iwill DH800 and slap in the memory and xeons and be good to go. Then if you want to upgrade again a little more down the road you can slap in some Nocona xeons and be ready to go. Overall I think the xeon platform will give you a little more upgradability since you can just change up one part at a time and still use the system. Where as if you go with an AMD XP setup you will have to upgrade the board and chips at the same time to switch to opterons for example.

DanFraser said:

I don't know about the Effects programs, but the 3D renderers are no longer 'optimised' for intel systems.

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Ever seen some recent 3DSMax 6 benchies? It's definitely Intel optimized- Opterons lead in Maya and other benchies I cant remember off the top of my head for rendering. Ive seen an increasing trend of focusing on exactly what apps you use to figure out what system is best for you, unfortunately. Adobe also seems to fall in line with Intel optimisation, or at least Photoshop does. I can't comment on how RAM contributes to rendering performance, but I do know that 2 gigs are only worth it over 1 gig for Photoshop if you do a lot of large image work or batch work.

I would be seriously leery about going with a dual XP rig as a main right now. IMHO a little bit more for upgradeability, either with Opterons or Xeons, would be most definitely worth it.

mateo said:

Ever seen some recent 3DSMax 6 benchies?

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Whoops, missed that!

As for LCDs, those new Apple screens are sweetness! I guess you probably won't be able to get the 30 incher, but the smaller ones ought to work with the appropriate adapter (I think the adapter's like 100 bucks! sheesh)

For the machine, I'd agree that if you're going cheap now, Prestonia 2.4s (M0 533FSB, maybe 1MB L3 cache) are the best price/performance at this point for those applications. Overclock 'em to 3.4 and you're good to go. If you were doing a lot of math programs and such, I'd say that XPs might still be viable, but for rendering and such, XPs probably won't match up well against a well-overclocked Xeon. Might be close at stock speeds, but most likely not when things are overclocked.

Z