Advice for new PC build for Redcine-X, CS5, etc

[LarryMcPhereson]

I built my machine using the same MB. Be aware that it is larger than an E-ATX MB. You will need a case from Supermicro to hold it. It is about 1.5" wider.

I have a pair of 6-core CPUs. (X5680s) I have 24 GB of DDR3 ECC RAM, the NVIDIA FX5800 with SDI, an Intel SSD and an ioXtreme SSD. I have been using the Adaptec 5085 SAS/RAID card but am looking to move to the upcoming ATTO 6 GBps R680 SAS/RAID card. I also have a RR and a 1394b/eSATA PCIe card.

Right now I run SCRATCH on the machine. I will install CS5 as soon as it ships.

Hi Stacy! Yes, I've read extensively up on the EEATX and considered both the Coolermaster cosmos and Corsair options while settling on Supermicro's SC747 as the case which could probably best satisfy any technical route I go without any "drilling" which makes me nervous.

I'm thinking that without the option to go SLI with this mobo, your thinking is to simply go with one seriously high end NVIDIA card like the FX5800 with its added co-processing power combined with dual X5680's which would each be nearly 50% more powerful than most quad cores and let those combined advantages be enough to handle your needs for DPX processing. Do you like it (is it powerful enough?) and do you think you'd see unsatisfactory results with lower quad models like the xeon E5530? Obviously the price difference is considerable but if the X5680 gets you where you need to be maybe SLI isn't as important as NVIDIA x 2 wants everyone to think? They sure charge a lot for their cards as they claim "The CPU is dead."

The question for me is whether the CPU is dead x 2 since it obviously handles rendering as well...

 

[Stacey Spears]

I built the machine last October and used a pair of quad core's at the time. I just recently installed the 6-core CPUs. Last time I had a pair of 2.8 GHz. This time I figured I might as well go all out and get the 3.3 GHz.

This is my second Supermicro MB. I have been happy with them. I had a Tyan before and I had a lot of issues.

I have the 747TG case. http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/747/SC747TG-R1400-SQ.cfm

SCRATCH does not support SLI, so it was not a problem. Unless the software you want to use makes use of SLI, it will not help out. I have not noticed a big difference between the 2.8 and 3.3 GHz. I am currently updating my software to use more cores, which is where I expect the bigger gain.

As soon as the FERMI based Quadro cards ship, I will get one of those. It should actually make a bigger difference with a product like SCRATCH since it uses the GPU for its processing. I also want a 2nd REDRocket so that I can use it on stereo work.

 

[LarryMcPhereson]

I built the machine last October and used a pair of quad core's at the time. I just recently installed the 6-core CPUs. Last time I had a pair of 2.8 GHz. This time I figured I might as well go all out and get the 3.3 GHz.

This is my second Supermicro MB. I have been happy with them. I had a Tyan before and I had a lot of issues.

I have the 747TG case. http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/747/SC747TG-R1400-SQ.cfm

SCRATCH does not support SLI, so it was not a problem. Unless the software you want to use makes use of SLI, it will not help out. I have not noticed a big difference between the 2.8 and 3.3 GHz. I am currently updating my software to use more cores, which is where I expect the bigger gain.

As soon as the FERMI based Quadro cards ship, I will get one of those. It should actually make a bigger difference with a product like SCRATCH since it uses the GPU for its processing. I also want a 2nd REDRocket so that I can use it on stereo work.

Thank you for your considerable insights into both Supermicro and SLI Stacy. It is a very important consideration, best 2 CPUs vs. 2 NVIDIA cards and this really does seem to get to the point of it!

I did not know that Scratch, among others does not support SLI. I'm thinking it is for now at least, wiser to invest in the CPU first and a SINGLE graphics card whether or not you buy a mobo which is SLI compatible...

I'm beginning to think that NVIDIA and Intel had better sort out their ISSUES soon so that we can all easily identify the fastest and best choices of the top GPU(s) combined with the top CPU(s) without the stupid marketing ploys.

 

[Subhadip Sen]

A Core i7 is the way to go. But AMD's upcoming Phenom II X6 might be a killer product. These apps are multi-threaded, right? Six cores at $300 is just too tempting.

As for GPUs, its a real shame buying an obsolete GTX 285 just for CUDA. I wish Adobe would support an open standard like OpenCL soon for GPU compute processing. I have heard they will, but at launch time it is CUDA exclusive. Apart from CUDA, the Nvidia cards seem to have very little value - even the new ones which seem to be unavailable.

 

[LarryMcPhereson]

A Core i7 is the way to go. But AMD's upcoming Phenom II X6 might be a killer product. These apps are multi-threaded, right? Six cores at $300 is just too tempting.

As for GPUs, its a real shame buying an obsolete GTX 285 just for CUDA. I wish Adobe would support an open standard like OpenCL soon for GPU compute processing. I have heard they will, but at launch time it is CUDA exclusive. Apart from CUDA, the Nvidia cards seem to have very little value - even the new ones which seem to be unavailable.

The Supermicro board we were discussing is limited to the Xeon series so don't confuse them with i7 CPUs if you do go this route. I haven't heard any reviews of the newest dual i7 boards (yet) but have felt that (in the past) like Mac"Pro," they didn't provide as many RAM slots as I wanted to have access to invest in for system acceleration and expandability. These computers are a huge investment and I HATE GETTING BURNED BY MACs that won't be expandable enough to meet the future. I plan to do more reasearch on i7 mobos before I make my buys and they do look promising as well, perhaps more cost effective.

And yes, the other side of the coin is AMD and unlike Scratch, 3dMax and C4d, we are hearing that CS5 will take advantage of SLI eventually with its Mercury engine so if that's going to be your new FINAL CUT PRO (BWAHAHA!) it could provide the most expandable solution. Unfortunately,
as I researched this option, I waded through A LOT OF MOBO COMPLAINTS which stopped me cold in my tracks... Ideas?

 

[Stacey Spears]

It looks like CS5 uses all of the CPU cores for RED decoding. The GPU is only used for effects, such as dissolves, etc... The UI will tell you which effects are 32-bit float, multicore, and GPU enabled with icons.

When I was shopping around for the MB, the key thing for me was dual proc support and enough PCIe slots. Mac's don't offer a lot of PCIe slots beyond that limiation, their HW is solid.

The X8DAH+ MB has dual Intel chipsets so you get two full sets of PCIe lanes. The downside is that because it is Xeon based, they don't allow overclocking like an i7. These systems are designed for stability and uptime more than anything else.

I did have to disable hyperthreading because of some issues that occur when you have >16 cores. With dual 6-cores, you end up with 24-cores in total.

OpenCL was not finalized when Adobe started working on CS5.

 

[Tom.Wong]

Anybody check out the new matrox too? They claim equal results to the Cuda, without needing the quadro card...

 

[Subhadip Sen]

The Supermicro board we were discussing is limited to the Xeon series so don't confuse them with i7 CPUs if you do go this route. I haven't heard any reviews of the newest dual i7 boards (yet) but have felt that (in the past) like Mac"Pro," they didn't provide as many RAM slots as I wanted to have access to invest in for system acceleration and expandability. These computers are a huge investment and I HATE GETTING BURNED BY MACs that won't be expandable enough to meet the future. I plan to do more reasearch on i7 mobos before I make my buys and they do look promising as well, perhaps more cost effective.

And yes, the other side of the coin is AMD and unlike Scratch, 3dMax and C4d, we are hearing that CS5 will take advantage of SLI eventually with its Mercury engine so if that's going to be your new FINAL CUT PRO (BWAHAHA!) it could provide the most expandable solution. Unfortunately,
as I researched this option, I waded through A LOT OF MOBO COMPLAINTS which stopped me cold in my tracks... Ideas?

I was talking more on the desktop single socket Core i7 side of things. Sure, it won't allow 4K real time rendering, but it should be a powerful system still. I have to say, AMD's 4-socket 48 core Opteron solution might be worth considering if you are going server. If the Mercury Engine does scale to 48 cores, then it will be an interesting solution at the high end.

Hope to see GPU acceleration on ATI cards soon through OpenCL, DirectCompute, Stream, whatever. The HD 5800 cards are incredibly powerful. The HD 5970 approaches 5 TFlops of theoretical floating point power. That is just insane!

 

[LarryMcPhereson]

I have to say, AMD's 4-socket 48 core Opteron solution might be worth considering if you are going server. If the Mercury Engine does scale to 48 cores, then it will be an interesting solution at the high end.

Hope to see GPU acceleration on ATI cards soon through OpenCL, DirectCompute, Stream, whatever. The HD 5800 cards are incredibly powerful. The HD 5970 approaches 5 TFlops of theoretical floating point power. That is just insane!

Yes! You picked up on the other major mobo alternative I realized I left out about AMD! This one is exciting to me especially because of the fact that Supermicro does make another EEATX board for the Opteron which will fit with their 747. This is the other virtual build I want to consider and it will support SLI or so they say. Anybody out there build one of these? Also I don't want anyone to think I'm completely swearing off Mac, I just don't feel their price point or business tactics are fair (next to a PC/CS5 build) and I will wait to see their fiber optic version of the Mac Pro before I consider them again. That said, I'm not thrilled about some of NVIDIA's press releases either. These wars do not help us as consumers...

 

[LarryMcPhereson]

It looks like CS5 uses all of the CPU cores for RED decoding. The GPU is only used for effects, such as dissolves, etc... The UI will tell you which effects are 32-bit float, multicore, and GPU enabled with icons.

When I was shopping around for the MB, the key thing for me was dual proc support and enough PCIe slots. Mac's don't offer a lot of PCIe slots beyond that limiation, their HW is solid.

The X8DAH+ MB has dual Intel chipsets so you get two full sets of PCIe lanes. The downside is that because it is Xeon based, they don't allow overclocking like an i7. These systems are designed for stability and uptime more than anything else.

I did have to disable hyperthreading because of some issues that occur when you have >16 cores. With dual 6-cores, you end up with 24-cores in total.

OpenCL was not finalized when Adobe started working on CS5.

Thanks again for all of this! I wasn't quite clear and would love to know if you also needed to disable (or could you then enable?) hyperthreading when you made the leap to dual six cores? That would make a big difference considering the $1663 or so price tag for a single Xeon 5680.

Among the things I will say first attracted me to the Supermicro MBD-X8DAH board for a build besides the 18 DIMM Slots which was huge, was that any number of users at Newegg felt that it was a great foundation for 3D animation work station as well as for Adobe work. It is just so broad and expandable, I still see it as a benchmark achievement even without SLI. It certainly must be considered one of the serious PC work horses for serious film makers...