Please Reveiw my potential 3d workstation

[stevem]

Steve,

I don't think there's a single Opteron mobo planned, much less actually RELEASED, that does not have separate DIMMs for each CPU. You know why? Because it would be plain dumb.

Perhaps Tyan counts as dumb, too?

First and foremost, the cost saving would be minimal at best. The Opteron chips themselves already account for a major part of the system cost, the mobo a minor one, and the cash saved on leaving out memory sockets for one CPU even less.

Let alone form factors, topology, trace layouts, etc... It's called pricing-to-market (PTM)...

Second, you'd lose a lot of the benefit of having two CPUs to begin with, resulting in a lot of wasted money rather than saved when both CPUs get starved of data. You'd have an on-die memory controller sitting there doing NOTHING, which means a lack of several gigabytes per second of useable bandwidth as well as halved maximum memory capacity!

As already stated - not unless you have a NUMA aware OS under heavy memory bandwidth situations. The beauty of Opteron PTP is the collateral gain in aggregate bandwidth from both local & remote memory.

Third, performance hit would be considerable. It's not smart to save money where it results in the biggest possible performance hit in a system, especially if it means the smallest possible cost saving.

Switching from SCSI harddrives to 10k RPM SATA might be a worthy cost saving for a rendering box or small server, but skimping on a few plastic DIMMs? Jesus!

Yep, that magic acronym again - PTM.

Got any more bright ideas while you're at it?

Yeah, sure... Obviously not as many as you, though...

 

[London Geezer]

psssst.... You DO know that you can softmod a Geforce into a Quadro, right.... I just SoftQuadro'ed my 5900Ultra into a Quadro3000... Total savings, around £2000... :|

 

[KimB]

That is an option, but from what I've read, there are still differences in performance, even though the GeForce FX is detected as a Quadro. Anyway, the money savings may make it worth it.

 

[London Geezer]

That is an option, but from what I've read, there are still differences in performance, even though the GeForce FX is detected as a Quadro. Anyway, the money savings may make it worth it.

Not sure about performance, but from personal experience, Maya is more stable now, and that's what i need the most. Definately worth it. Also, there is a hardmod you can perform relatively easily, and still it's a 2k saving which is not little...

 

[T2k]

That is an option, but from what I've read, there are still differences in performance, even though the GeForce FX is detected as a Quadro. Anyway, the money savings may make it worth it.

Not sure about performance, but from personal experience, Maya is more stable now, and that's what i need the most. Definately worth it. Also, there is a hardmod you can perform relatively easily, and still it's a 2k saving which is not little...

PSSSST, dont tell anyone your card is nowhere near to a FGL X1 or X2, not even a Quadro200... you didn't save a cent - coz' it's just a crappy wannabe not a $2k card.

 

[London Geezer]

PSSSST, dont tell anyone your card is nowhere near to a FGL X1 or X2, not even a Quadro200... you didn't save a cent - coz' it's just a crappy wannabe not a $2k card.

Might be a "wannabe", but as a GeforceFX it could not keep Maya running for more than 5 minutes (even without doing anything), as a Quadro (as wannabe as it can be), it works flawlessly. Same hardware. So there... And if you actually read the post, i said i didn't notice performance changes (which is just too high to notice anyway), i only said it runs much better with Maya.

 

[T2k]

PSSSST, dont tell anyone your card is nowhere near to a FGL X1 or X2, not even a Quadro200... you didn't save a cent - coz' it's just a crappy wannabe not a $2k card.

Might be a "wannabe", but as a GeforceFX it could not keep Maya running for more than 5 minutes (even without doing anything), as a Quadro (as wannabe as it can be), it works flawlessly. Same hardware. So there... And if you actually read the post, i said i didn't notice performance changes (which is just too high to notice anyway), i only said it runs much better with Maya.

:lol

Same hardware - no, it's not.

 

[KimB]

:lol

Same hardware - no, it's not.

Yes, there is a performance difference in applications like Maya with the "soft quadro" mod.

 

[T2k]

:lol

Same hardware - no, it's not.

Yes, there is a performance difference in applications like Maya with the "soft quadro" mod.

Let me help you out: that's why it's not the same.

 

[KimB]

Maybe you should be a bit more explicit in your replies, then, T2k. Your post was rather ambiguous.

 

[ninelven]

edited

 

[London Geezer]

T2k, whatever, if u care to read people's posts maybe we can talk...
Anyway, yes my guess is that it's because of the drivers' change, but if it works, who cares...

Also, some people would argue that they actually ARE the same hardware (all the Geforces have exactly the same hardware as the Quadros of equivalent power, with the eeption of the FX5950), but that was not was i was talking about anyway...

 

[Sage]

I would be interested to know what tiny hardware modifications are made the the NV3xGL core to make it SO MUCH faster than even a faster NV3x core but in workstation apps only?

 

[KimB]

Mostly it's from enabled features that are useless in games.

 

[Sage]

what features, please detail what features these are?

 

[kickercav]

After reading more posts on this topic I requested an updated quote for a dual processor system and this is what they offered:

-Dual Processor Intel XEON 3.06GHZ/512 cache
-2gb ddr ram
-Seagate 80GB serial hd SATA
-floppy
-cd-rw
-windows XP pro

For video cards they gave us 3 choices:
-ATI FireGL X2 256T/256mb DDR AGP8x
-Wildcat VP880 PRO 256mb DDR AGP 8x (by 3d labs)
-Quadro FX1100 128mb ddr AGP 8x

Question I have about the video cards offered is which one would be the best one to purchase. Any reconmendations for the cards stated above?

And the last questions I have is what AMD Opteron dual processor would be the equivilent of the proposed XEON 3.06 dual processor CPU? For the price of this XEON processor ($575 each) could I get a better (faster) Opteron and what would it be?

Thanks again!

 

[arjan de lumens]

what features, please detail what features these are?

IIRC, hardware-accelerated antialiased lines. Enabled in Quadro series, artificially disabled in Geforce series (which are thus forced to do them in software).

 

[Sage]

what features, please detail what features these are?

IIRC, hardware-accelerated antialiased lines. Enabled in Quadro series, artificially disabled in Geforce series (which are thus forced to do them in software).

nope, hardware accelerated lines are just a luxury, they are either done in hardware or not done at all and thus don't incur a performance hit when the hardware doesn't suport them. You can use FSAA, of course, but that incurs the standard performance hit.

I am actually aware of the differences in featureset, but unless the people who are disagreeing with me have a clear understanding of what those features are then there's no point in my wasiting my time arguing with someone who will mindlessly regurgitate nVidia PR (not referring to anyone on this board, but I've run into this problem on another and it ended up with the only person that I have ever put on any ignore/block list.)

 

[Sage]

Kicker- go to cgtalk.com and do a search, ignore all posts made by mr CgFX as he is a fool and unwitting arm of nVidia PR. To be honest, there are a lot of people there that don't know much about hardware and like to throw around stupid PR buzzwords like HyperThreading, but there's also a good number of competent users that can usually be sorted out.

 

[KimB]

what features, please detail what features these are?

IIRC, hardware-accelerated antialiased lines. Enabled in Quadro series, artificially disabled in Geforce series (which are thus forced to do them in software).

nope, hardware accelerated lines are just a luxury, they are either done in hardware or not done at all and thus don't incur a performance hit when the hardware doesn't suport them. You can use FSAA, of course, but that incurs the standard performance hit.

Line antialiasing can be done analytically, and doesn't need the same performance hit as FSAA (or any performance hit, for that matter). I believe this is the primary cause of performance differences.