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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...

Brandon J.F. said:
Subhadip, if you come across any benchmarks for these chips please share them here. Sounds really interesting.
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Thus far, the only independent review I could find was this: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/reviews/sme-servers/2011/11/14/dell-poweredge-r815-40094404/. There's not much regarding performance, except a single Geekbench test, pitting 4x 16C Opterons versus "equivalent" 4x 8C Xeons. However, considering the cheapest 8-core Xeon is twice the price of the most expensive Opteron, I am not sure how "equivalent" the test really is. Still, the Opteron outperformed the Xeon system by 12%. Not much of a benchmark, but that's all we have thus far.

AMD has also published internal benchmarks: http://www.amd.com/US/PRODUCTS/SERVER/BENCHMARKS/Pages/benchmarks-filter.aspx, which unsurprisingly paints a pretty picture for the new Opterons vs Xeons, but it is better to wait for independent reviews which should be up soon. Unfortunately, the benchmarks will concentrate mostly on server and workstation workloads. Don't think many reviews will consider Adobe CS5 or X264 performance.

Here's some analysis from "experts": http://blogs.computerworld.com/19273/amd_16_core_server_cpus_trounce_intel_xeon?source=rss_blogs. Mind the hyperbole!
 
Okay, the results Brandon posted from xbitlabs and the coolaler.com site have me convinced that the 3930K is the way to go (if you're in the market for one of these, that is). The cost differential will go towards half a RAID card, or a couple of HDDs. Thanks for posting.
 
Here's a dumb question and a cutting edge option:

What specifically do you need those cores for?

One possible solution:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/maximus.html

Nvidia is teaming up a $200 Quadro with $2400 Tesla card to smoke pretty much everything, if you use Premiere or Maya, etc...
 
John Bellari said:
Here's a dumb question and a cutting edge option:

What specifically do you need those cores for?

One possible solution:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/maximus.html

Nvidia is teaming up a $200 Quadro with $2400 Tesla card to smoke pretty much everything, if you use Premiere or Maya, etc...
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This is only going to accelerate CUDA enabled tasks. Basically its an initiative to make CUDA resource management a bit easier for devs. So while great, it won't really affect things that are CUDA enabled for awhile, and it won't affect things that are NOT cuda enabled ever.

For instance, with Maya, none of the core application is CUDA accelerated, only a few plugins here and there.
 
DJ Meyer said:
This is only going to accelerate CUDA enabled tasks. Basically its an initiative to make CUDA resource management a bit easier for devs. So while great, it won't really affect things that are CUDA enabled for awhile, and it won't affect things that are NOT cuda enabled ever.

For instance, with Maya, none of the core application is CUDA accelerated, only a few plugins here and there.
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Correct, and it won't do much for RED footage either:

Table 12. Rendering times for the RED project.
Since most RED producers are probably on dual-CPU workstations, I tested preview on the Z600 using the Quadro 4000 card with playback resolution set to 1/4 and Use Maximum Render Quality not enabled for preview. Table 12 shows the results, which were better with the GPU, though not dramatically so.

red-preview.png


Table 11. Preview performance for the RED project.
From this particular RED-based project, it appears that CUDA acceleration is definitely a plus for rendering RED-based projects, though performance did not appear to scale with the card as the $423 Quadro 2000 performed similarly to the $1,700 Quadro 5000. If you’re producing RED source footage, you should prioritize CPU cores over GPU cores, and buy a dual-CPU workstation rather than the most expensive graphics card.
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http://www.streaminglearningcenter....aphics-card-for-premiere-pro-cs55.html?page=8
 
Justin Harrison said:
Hey I'm ready to pick up one of the 3930K chips but I'm stuck on finding a board for it.

So far I'm torn between the ASUS Sabertooth X79 and the Rampage IV. Any recommendations?

Thanks!
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Got an EVGA x79 myself. Asus makes good stuff though.
 
DJ Meyer said:
Got an EVGA x79 myself. Asus makes good stuff though.
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The entire ASUS X79 line also has (8) DIMM slots, while the three EVGA X79 motherboards only have (4) DIMM slots.

Also, MSI's X79A-GD65 (8D) has (8) DIMM slots.
 
Corey Culp said:
The entire ASUS X79 line also has (8) DIMM slots, while the three EVGA X79 motherboards only have (4) DIMM slots.

Also, MSI's X79A-GD65 (8D) has (8) DIMM slots.
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Yep.

Don't need more than 4, personally.
 
DJ Meyer said:
Bought a 3930x. The 3960x 's 3 more MB of cache not worth double the price.
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Depends what you're doing. For computationally intensive tasks, building compute or render nodes, it could very well be worth it. For a desktop NLE, general workstation and gaming system, not so much...

I'm wanting to build a new system here, but most of the new x79 motherboards are not compelling enough to get me to buy. Very disappointed.... The best one is the ASUS Rampage IV Extreme, but it's still lacking a few things. Second best is the newer, but lower spec ASUS x79 series. The EVGA board is a total disappointment. 3 slots? Really? WTF? Jeebus, the others are bad enough. There is not one single x79 motherboard on the market that uses all the available PCIe lanes. And people bitch about the Mac Pro... sad. It seems everyone else feels the same way, it's pretty damn hard to come across a Rampage IV Extreme LGA-2011 model in stock anywhere, at least it is for the two top-end models. People bought them up ahead of the CPU release.

At this rate I may just hold out for the upcoming Xeon boards and CPUs and then I can drop in dual 8-core goodness.
 
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Yeah, you can't use the i7 desktop CPUs in the SR board, only Xeon. I'm not sure what to make of that motherboard just yet, some really curious design choices there. For starters, they don't even have the same number of memory sockets per CPU bank. Which means you will only be able to populate the same number of slots per memory (CPU) bank in order to have dual interleaved quad-channel performance. Otherwise it falls back to extended addressing where both banks operate at the lesser mode allowed by either bank configuration and simply adds the RAM space of bank 2 at the end of the address space of bank 1...

For dual Xeons, I'll wait and see what SuperMicro brings us before I buy anything. ASUS sometimes has good models, sometimes not... Same with Gigabyte.

I may hold out and see the next round of LGA 2011 boards too. SuperMicro has a couple in the works, but no announced specs yet and Gigabyte has a couple larger boards with 8 DIMM sockets and more PCIe slots coming too.

While I'm at it I also have say that I refuse to buy a motherboard at this time, when it's all but 2012, that still has a standard PCI slot on it. WHAT-THE-F...??? Half or more the new motherboards hitting the market are still incorporating old PCI slots. Man the PC components industry needs a kick in the ass real bad right now. The best new motherboards available don't even improve on the Intel reference designs, other than adding an extra SATA controller in some situations. None are making an effort to integrate Thunderbolt... I guess they're just going to wait for the next chipset iteration in Q3 of next year that will roll the Thunderbolt header right into the chipset itself, so they have to do pretty much nothing other than attach the connectors. And they'll still be putting PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports on on the motherboards too... ugh. If Microsoft releases a 32bit version of Windows 8 (which they will, they're circulating 32bit alphas/ betas), I think I'm going to shank someone.

Sorry... /rant
 
The SR-2 and now SR-X are intersting boards but not without their pains. The primary one being, they are absolutely huge. There are only a handful of cases that will fit them.

But if you want to overclock dual Xeons, they're the only game in town.
 
Anyone build a system with either of these processors yet?
 
Getting my new system next week (i7-3930K 3.20 GHz, Asus Sabertooth X79 motherboard and the EVGA NVIDIA GTX 590).

Brandon J.F. said:
Anyone build a system with either of these processors yet?
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