Kiro's First Build

[Kiro]

Jenova69 and I came to an agreement via PM, but I ended up backing down for reasons I will mention below.  Just wanted to say that Jenova69, from the short conversation we had, is a great guy and I would have no problems purchasing from him.

 

Basically, I asked Jenova69 why he's selling the card.  He replied saying that he just doesn't use it often.  That got me thinking: how often would I use it?  Quite honestly, maybe 50 hours over the next couple years.  I'm not a hardcore gamer.  $280/50hours = $5.60/hour, which is expensive.  My GTX 550Ti should be able to handle modern games at low details, albeit it doesn't have single-gpu Nvidia 2D Surround support, but I think I can live with that.  I got so caught up in wanting to play Metro Last Light in high settings that I forgot my priorities.  So, I'm changing the direction of my build.

 

My plan now is to go more toward budget workstation class, geared specifically towards Autodesk Inventor (I do other things like Maya, but less often).  That said, in regards to GPU selection, these two graphs influenced my decision to purchase the AMD FirePro v4900 for $105 on Ebay:

 

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/26489i995AF41A5A8DEBC4/image-size/original?v=mpbl-1&px=-1

 

While the HD 7950 has similar performance to other Geforce cards, the plot (and several discussions) show that performance in Inventor is more CPU-intensive than GPU-intensive.  I'll talk more about this later.

 

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/15686i7227449323717FD1/image-size/original?v=mpbl-1&px=-1

 

Right away, you can see a significant gap between Geforce and Quadro performance in Inventor.  We're talking about nearly 300 part difference between consumer and workstation cards displaying at 15Hz. 

 

To compare the HD 7950 to FirePro v4900, we need to make a few estimates: From the previous graph, I said that the HD 7950 performance was similar to both the 8800 GTS and GTX 480.  In this current graph, the GTX 580 and GTS 250 are displayed, but the Geforce curve should be be a good enough representation for the HD 7950.  Also in this graph is Quadro 6000 and Quadro FX1800, a high-end and mid-end card.  The v4900 is an entry level card, but it competes with the v5800, which dominates the FX1800 in benchmarks.  Hence, the Quadro curve should be a good enough representation for the v4900.  Overall, I'm expecting a 200-300 part difference between the HD 7950 and FirePro v4900 before hitting 15Hz, ceteris paribus.

 

At $105 shipped on Ebay ($160 on Newegg), I can't complain (still need two active displayport-to-DVI adapters).  Sure, I could have went with the similarly priced v3900, but that uses GDDR3 instead of GDDR5, which doesn't do so well in some benchmarks.  The Quadro 600 is in the same price range, but it mostly falls behind the v4900.  With the cheaper price, better performance, three monitor Eyefinity, and driver support, the AMD FirePro v4900 is a solid choice.

 

As aforementioned, Inventor is cpu-limited.  Aside from rendering, most of it doesn't support multiple cores and multi-threading, making my FX-4170 a poor choice.  That said, it also means that money I would have spent on the HD 7950 wouldn't need to go towards another AM3+ cpu (Opteron 32xx series don't seem promising) unless I do more rendering, which I probably won't.  I don't think I'll spend the effort downgrading to a Phenom II x6.  The GA-970A-UD3 motherboard does support ECC, but from what I gather, it's unnecessary for my usage.  8GB RAM should be okay for now.  Money would probably go toward software, specifically Autodesk Product Design Suite Ultimate at student pricing.

 

All in all, looking within the next month or so:

• Play games with my GTX 550 Ti
• Remove the SSD from my dying laptop, put it into my desktop, format it and make it dedicated for CAD/3D work
• Swap GPU's and boot up from different hard drives as necessary (gaming vs CAD/3D)
• Purchase Autodesk Product Design Suite Ultimate for Students

For reference, I use SolidWorks at school.  If I remember correctly, the computers have i3 processors, 2GB RAM, and a GeForce GT 520.  The result = bad.  Couldn't even do 30 part assemblies without glitching and bogging down.  Ended up having one of my group members do the project on his gaming PC: i5-2600k, 8GB RAM, dual GTX 460's in SLI.  Not only could he run the 60 part assembly fine, but rendering time was measured in hours and not weeks.  He played Skyrim on Ultra while it rendered.

Edited December 16, 2012 by Kiro

[Kiro]

Been having quite a few problems after I made that last post. ^^

 

I've probably only used this computer for maybe four days at this point.  Started noticing problems when Google Chrome wouldn't open.  When opening Device Manager, I get a MMC snap-in error.  Can't view my system specs: the page is mostly blank.  Load times are slow.  Disk Defragment gets stuck at 15%.  Windows Update fails.  Get a set of Symantec and Windows errors upon logging in.  System Restore to before I installed the new components didn't fix anything. Still have the same issues in Safe Mode.  Managed to boot up Ubuntu from a USB and did a virus scan with AVG and Avira with no results.  Even when booting from the USB, the display is randomly distorted, though completely distorted when waking up from sleep (invisible task bar, blank windows, etc.).

 

Going to try using a different hard drive and performing a clean install, but I honestly don't think the hard drive is the root of the problem since I have similar issues with a completely different OS booted from a USB.  Everything is at their stock clocks; the only thing I've attempted to overclock is the GPU, which has since been reverted back to stock clocks.  Nothing has been touched in the BIOS.  Haven't explored much since I'm still finishing up finals, but I have no idea what the problem could be.  Guess I'll have a day of iterative testing to see if I could reproduce the issue with a clean install, adding components back in one by one.

[Kiro]

 

A few updates:

 

Swapped out a HDD for my SSD and reformatted.  No problems so far, other than the installation making a System Reserved partition on a different hard drive; moved it over after I noticed.

 

The FirePro v4900 is installed.  Haven't really checked it out yet.

 

Changed the fan set up a little.  Now the top fans serve as exhaust, and the CPU cooler pushes upwards.

 

Tried overclocking my FX-4170.  Managed to get 4.90 GHz for about 1.5 hours ([email protected] VCore) with Prime95.  Currently stable at 4.80 GHz ([email protected] VCore) with max temps under load at 56C.  Playing with the base clocks at all would cause all sorts of problems even with low clock speeds.  Going to mess around a bit more, but I don't think I'll be able to get much higher on air.  Apparently, Bulldozer gets unstable above 55C, though I don't usually run into issues until core temps breach 57C.  Still, trying to keep temps around 55C and voltages below 1.5V if possible.  LLC is set to Extreme.

Edited December 28, 2012 by Kiro

[VaporX]

Sounds like you are going to top out at 4.8 which is a solid overclock. Do not get to worried about the temps if you are peaking at 56C under Prime95. Under real gaming conditions you will never hit that temp as CPU usage almost never stays at peak except in folding and benchmarking.

[cjloki]

Nice work

 

 

Was your 955 the black edition?

yes, you did a nice job there sir, looks good and very upgradable when the time is right !

[Kiro]

I should have mentioned this in the first post, but as of Page 2 of this thread, my focus has changed direction to be a dedicated workstation desktop.  I'll be keeping my old desktop as a general use and casual gaming PC.

 

I've run Prime95's In-Place Large FFT test for the last couple hours at 4.848 GHz ([email protected]) with no errors while still maintaining under 56C.  So, at least I know I have some headroom and stability shouldn't be an issue at 4.80 GHz, even when the weather gets warmer.  I've read that the Northbridge Frequency doesn't do much for Bulldozer CPU's so I'll leave that alone.

 

I actually did consider the upgradability of this set-up, but only for the short term.  If Steamroller is AM3+ and can't compete with the comparable Intel of its time, I'll probably do an Intel build.  For now, if I need more cores, I'll go for the FX-8320.  I like how the GA-970A-UD3 supports up to 32GB RAM, which is much more useful than the 4GB limitation on my old board.

 

Edit:

 

One thing I forgot about is that the CoolerMaster fans I bought have sleeve bearings (including the Hyper 212+ fan), so that they'll wear faster in horizontal orientation.  Not a big deal in the short run, but it's something I'll need to keep an eye out for.  Another reason to upgrade the CPU cooler, I guess.

 

Edit 2:

 

Left Autodesk Showcase ray tracing the sample engine file overnight.  Fully utilized my processor, which never went above 48C.

 

Edit 3:

 

Swapped out the stock Hyper 212+ fan with the Scythe Ultra Kaze and removed the side panel fan.  With the same CPU settings, the core temps reached 54C max, a 2C difference from before.  Still won't allow me to increase the multiplier or frequency any higher than before, but I'll probably keep it there for now.

Edited January 8, 2013 by Kiro