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New Build Critiques/advice


tdksp84

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I will disagree, at high end photo and movie work the 32 gig will come in handy. As for the 7970 vs the 680, while the 7970 looks great in benchmarks AMD is plagued by the fact that the driver support and the apps is just not there as well as nVidia. With a 6 core hyper threaded CPU and 32 gigs of RAM I am not sure the video will add all that much anyway, your system should easily handle the work load on pure CPU.

 

If your program has proper support for AMD cards with GPU Compute then he is correct the 7970 is the better choice, But if that is not your major area of concern and the video card is for gaming then the 680 is a sure win.

I'm not saying more memory won't help, I'm just saying it's probably not needed for what he's doing. If CAD and video editing/decoding was his main thing, then I'd probably say go for 32GB's.

 

CUDA (with Nvidia) has it's advantages, mainly for AES encrypt/decrypt, video encoding, and PhysX, don't get me wrong, but for CAD, OpenGL with compute decompression and texture rendering, the HD 7970 wins hands down.

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The first thing I want to do is thank everyone for the info and help with dialing this build in. Once again OCC comes through with flying colors.

 

I appreciate the info on the graphics cards , especially the 7970 info and the WC systems. I think, since the kids are building this, I will stay away from the plumbing side of things on this build. I want them to do the work and self-contained is probably the safer way to go and dad's wallet goes far, but not too far ;-). They are pushing to make this a gaming build, but the 7970 looks like it may be the better all-around card, although, based on their comments last night, I am not sure how much time I am going to get on this!

 

I did find Newegg has some pretty good deals today on the G Skill 32GB memory and the Pyro SE SSD is at a great price point today. Those are on order right now, so that takes care of that.

 

I have some more work to do on picking the graphics card, so that is on tap for the weekend.

 

I am a bit unsure at this time about the Motherboard. I appreciate the comments so far, but is there something that I am missing and maybe have overlooked on the MB's that are available outside of the two I put up in my original post. I am open to more thoughts on that if you all are willing.

 

Again, thanks for the input and look forward to further thougths.

 

Also, thanks El_Capitan for your blog.

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Thanks for checking it out! BTW, I used to live in Seattle!

 

 

I know Somerville as I grew up in NY, worked in Pughkeepsie for 5 years. Looks like we headed to opposite sides of the country! Still a Yankees fan, however. lol

 

I have the kids rooting through your blog and this site on a daily basis as I want them to do the research and I will follow along as I know mostly where this build is heading.

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I know Somerville as I grew up in NY, worked in Pughkeepsie for 5 years. Looks like we headed to opposite sides of the country! Still a Yankees fan, however. lol

 

I have the kids rooting through your blog and this site on a daily basis as I want them to do the research and I will follow along as I know mostly where this build is heading.

Well, you won't be a fan of many Seattle sports teams...

 

My blog doesn't have much info, yet. This site doesn't have too much info aside from the reviews, but a lot of good feedback from other members helps a lot more, if you can ask the right questions. One question we haven't asked is what resolution will your kids play games at, and what games?

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You really can't go wrong with the X79 Extreme6/GB IMO and I think the GameBlaster card are worth the extra $20 then the ASUS P9X79. It's one of the best bang/bucks X79 board I know and don't let the price fool you, it's a great performer.

 

If you really need it for CAD, then go with what El_Capitan said and get the 7970. Plus most of them comes with a free Dirt3 coupon :biggrin:

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As for the 7970 vs the 680, while the 7970 looks great in benchmarks AMD is plagued by the fact that the driver support and the apps is just not there as well as nVidia.

:withstupid:

 

Benchmarks != Real World Performance

 

It is the same with 3D Mark... just because a video card completely dominates another in 3D Mark doesn't mean it will do the same in games or have better multi-GPU scaling. If for some reason someone really wants to put all their eggs in benchmarks (such as LuxGPU) just find out what people who do 3D Rendering for a living use. From my albiet limited exposure I see them using Nvidia cards. So if I was the OP I would find out what most people running CAD for a living use. Keep in mind, most of the burden for rendering and CAD will be on the CPU and Memory.

 

- RenderStream Blog

- Luxology Forums

 

Two examples.

 

EDIT:

First benchmark I seen with CUDA testing, which is what most 3D Renderers want to know. Double precision is pretty meaningless as all the common software uses single precision.

 

BSN*

 

MaximumPC

 

"One of the cooler new features from an actual application perspective is bindless textures. Prior to Kepler, Nvidia GPUs were limited to 128 simultaneous textures; Kepler boosts that by allowing textures to be allocated as needed within the shader program, with up to 1 million simultaneous textures available. It’s doubtful whether games will use that many textures, but certain types of architectural rendering might benefit."

 

Source

"An obvious answer is to only use float textures where it is needed. This approach is difficult because the texture slots for GPUs must be known beforehand, and on CUDA there is a 128 texture limit. Cycles uses the last 28 for internal purposes, so there are 100 to work with. Siphoning any portion of those off to become float textures impacts that aspect of the budget"

 

Sorry to the OP, I know he isn't a 3D Rendering Artist... but it just goes to show when your livlihood depends on extreme calculations simple benchmarks don't provide enough information. The more I read from the 3D community, I would probably go with a 560ti right now to do 3D rendering and wait to see what GK110 brings. Far as CAD goes, I would definitely try to find some CAD community forums and see what their verdict is. I do know the majority of the rendering community is pretty much nothing but Nvidia users.

Edited by Fogel

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Well, you won't be a fan of many Seattle sports teams...

 

My blog doesn't have much info, yet. This site doesn't have too much info aside from the reviews, but a lot of good feedback from other members helps a lot more, if you can ask the right questions. One question we haven't asked is what resolution will your kids play games at, and what games?

 

I know one game is BF3 and another is Dirt 3, I believe. I haven't really given the monitors and resolution a lot of thought. I think I am behind the curve on what is out there. I would like two monitors at a minimum, with three at the most, but two to start. I am looking for 24" monitors. I am about 3 weeks from finalizing the parts for this, but have grabbed a few things that Newegg had great deals on. I am digging through MBs and graphics cards. I do keep coming back to the 680, but maybe because it is new...

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I know one game is BF3 and another is Dirt 3, I believe. I haven't really given the monitors and resolution a lot of thought. I think I am behind the curve on what is out there. I would like two monitors at a minimum, with three at the most, but two to start. I am looking for 24" monitors. I am about 3 weeks from finalizing the parts for this, but have grabbed a few things that Newegg had great deals on. I am digging through MBs and graphics cards. I do keep coming back to the 680, but maybe because it is new...

Well you don't game on two monitors. You either game on 1 or 3. A second monitor can be used for other programs such music, internet, temp_monitoring but any card at the moment can support that minimal load. If you want to game on 3 monitors I would seriously consider two graphics cards you will take a serious penalty in performance going to 3. So while you think about it in the next 3 weeks... think about how much 3 monitors cost and 2 high graphics cards.

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Well you don't game on two monitors. You either game on 1 or 3. A second monitor can be used for other programs such music, internet, temp_monitoring but any card at the moment can support that minimal load. If you want to game on 3 monitors I would seriously consider two graphics cards you will take a serious penalty in performance going to 3. So while you think about it in the next 3 weeks... think about how much 3 monitors cost and 2 high graphics cards.

 

Sorry, I wasn't clear. Gaming will only be done on one monitor. I want the second monitor for when I am using the system for work that I am doing. I hate bouncing around on one monitor.

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