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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Sandy Bridge E processors out today...

Sorry, that was a typo. The OS drive is 2 STRIPED (Raid 0) SSDs. I also have two 3tb SATA3 drives in a RAID 0 configuration for media. The speeds I'm getting are unreal. Peaks at over 800MB/s transferring between the OS RAID and the Media RAID.

I'm adding another RAID setup with SATA2 drives too. Not sure if it will be a RAID 5 or 11 setup, but I want some redundancy for these drives. I can install up to 4 drives in this RAID configuration.

I can also setup another 4 SATA3 drives in a third RAID array. Thinking about striping them and using them for media also. Then backup all the media with an LTO setup or external HD array or... Still figuring that out.

I realize the WEI isn't indicative of real world performance, but it is fun :)

I do plan to see how much I can overclock this....
 
From Legit reviews:http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1833/1/



When the Intel X79 platform was first announced it was supposed to include several features that would be new to the Intel desktop line. One of the features was Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) ports. Unfortunately due to compatibility issues, Intel announced that that feature was no longer included and that feature had been completely disabled within the Intel X79 chipset. The reason for 'removing' this feature was because Intel observed the x79 SCU SAS/SATA controller may exhibit one or more random ports with unreliable I/O performance. Now that you have a little bit of background information we proceed to the issue at hand.

While we were getting our first hands on time with the ECS X79R-AX we noticed something that stood out to us. When we looking over the ECS X79R-AX we noticed that four of the SATA ports were labeled as SAS. Initially we figured that ECS already had the board laid out and the silk screening process already in place when Intel dropped the SAS function from the chipset. To be sure though, we contacted ECS and the responded in an unexpected way, ECS left the SAS ports enabled on the X79R-AX and wants to market them as extra SATA ports. ECS also mentioned that they want to keep this low profile.

Below you can find their response.
​
"As to SAS labeled, it’s because originally Intel was going to support SAS connection on X79 chipset, but they hid this function in the end. However, since our MB layout already designed for this support, we decide to keep it. Due to Intel stopped on the project, so it’s hard to guarantee 100% compatibility on every SAS device, we have to keep it low profile as just more SATA ports to promote it (even though in our test, most SAS storage are workable on these ports). It’s indeed supported by Intel X79 chipset,
even though Intel doesn’t announce to support either disable the function, the function are still in the chipset..."

 
Not bad clock for clock. If you've got a decked out SR-2 though I wouldn't sweat the new ones too much unless they come out with unlocked variants.
 
DJ Meyer said:
Not bad clock for clock. If you've got a decked out SR-2 though I wouldn't sweat the new ones too much unless they come out with unlocked variants.
Click to expand...

Clock for clock, the new Xeons are about 20% faster than the previous core with superior memory controller that offers higher throughput and integrated on-CPU PCIe controller -- PCIe v3.0 support. The new chipset supports USB3.0 directly -- no add-on USB chipset for PCs to add it. Doesn't look like Thunderbolt support was rolled in as many hoped, that will probably come with the next iteration. Starting with Ivy Bridge on the desktop and mobile platforms.

I wouldn't throw away a dual Xeon system you have now just to upgrade to the new platform, especially if it's the prior iteration of "Westmere" core Xeons. But you will definitely see real performance gains with the new release.

While I almost always build all my PCs, except for laptops/notebooks, I do occasionally buy a few from the mainstream vendors. I have an HP z620 with dual 8-cores ordered. :) I'm expecting that an announcement from Apple regarding a new Mac Pro is just around the corner. PC motherboard makers with dual Xeon offerings are already shipping product, Dell, Boxx, Origin, etc.. all will have offerings to buy here shortly.
 
Yes, it is very impressive, but exactly what we expected and half a year late. AMD has still got a substantial price/performance lead across many segments though. The big move forward comes in PCIe bandwidth - effectively 4.5x than the last gen. AMD has been shipping PCIe 3.0 GPUs through its HD 7000 range for a while now and NVIDIA's GTX 680 (and derivatives) are PCIe 3.0 too.

On-die Thunderbolt is scheduled for Haswell. Intel will release a new low cost Cactus Ridge Thunderbolt controller next month alongside Ivy Bridge which will make it more appealing to ODMs. Still some 5 times the cost of USB3 though, so entry level notebooks won't see Thunderbolt till 2013. The Ivy Bridge ultrabooks will ship with Thunderbolt - let's hope that helps it gain traction. It's simply not as useful for 2P workstations though, now with massive PCIe bandwidth and expandability. Intel also realized that Thunderbolt offers little benefit over USB 3 for high performance scenarios, while most devices are tackled just as well with USB 3 - 5 Gbps is nothing to scoff at. Where Thunderbolt excels is in low bandwidth PCIe solutions like entry level / mainstream external GPUs - as shown by Sony Vaio Z over 2 generations now - and peripherals like Rocket. However, these are mostly relevant to laptops and certainly not to performance oriented 2P workstations. A high bandwidth interconnect like InfiniBand is much more appealing. Which is Intel acquired QLogic's InfiniBand division. I would expect Intel to push InfiniBand in this market, Thunderbolt for ultrabooks.
 
To keep in a reasonable budget (about 1000$ for mainboard and processor), i'd be interested to see performance comparison between... let's say :

- i7 3930x (3,2Ghz, 6 cores, 12 thread, 600$)
- 2x Xeon E5-2609 (2,4Ghz, 4 cores, 4 threads, 300$ per processor)
- 2x Xeon E5-2620 (2,0Ghz, 6 cores, 12 threads, 400$ per processor)

I'm wondering how the last one (a bit more expensive package) would do against the 3930x, since the raw speed is a a lot less)...
 
2 x INTEL XEON E5-2670


CINEBENCH 11.5 TEST

o9lifs.jpg




TASK MANAGER - Number of Threads

2u88cg5.jpg




REDCINE-X PRO and some other tests will be released this week.

Stay tuned.
 
Can't wait too see the RCX tests.
Multithreading may not kick in as you would expect.
 
OK Philip,
Did you find that RXC is ignoring all those fabulous cores and getting you the same render times as us SB-e guys ? ;) ;)
 
Hehe... I think we get the point, Les.

It's true, RC-X is optimized for the Rocket right now and scales very poorly across multiple processors. Old RedCine, before the Rocket and any of the 'X apps, actually had much better multi-threading. It would scale relatively well to about 4 cores and then the benefits would drop off from there.


I'll be having some of the new Xeon-E5 systems rolling in here within the next couple weeks. I'm heading up some animation projects and we have a few i7 3960X systems that we're building right now and will be assembling two 16-core workstations with the new E5's, plus I have an HP Z820 on pre-order. Building a render farm with all Xeon E5 8-core CPUs (28 total CPUs). The amount of power in one rack is insane and we'll have room to add more if needed.
 
Wondering if anyone tested the E5 2600's with RCX 12 yet. Does it use all the cores/threads?

I'm getting ready to build one with a pair of 2690's.

(sorry if it's been mentioned, but I only skimmed through the 12 pages here).
 
Jeff,

Really interested in what you have cooking for a render farm. Care to share? PM

Thanks,
Jon
 
Still ironing out details on that render farm... Shifting gears, again. I'll share details when they're finalized, no problem there. :)
 
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