Please Reveiw my potential 3d workstation

[mangrove]

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

I bought a similar system (beefier in storage, lesser RAM and GFX) just after the 3.06 Xeon came out, and although someone casually mentioned it before, it needs reiterating: THIS SYSTEM WILL MAKE YOU DEAF. It can not be put in a normal office. People with sensitive hearing will turn insane and kill people. This is no exaggeration! The Xeon comes with a 6000RPM Delta fan that is the most offensive one I've ever heard; two of them makes twice the noise, and as they are temperature-controlled, the both of them always sing a slightly different duet, leading to a high pitched two-toned howl that will scare small children, make grown men cry, and attract every cat who's in the mood for love. If you plan on going hunting, take this system with you; put it in one end of the woods and place yourself with a nice gun at the other end, and you will be able to shoot every critter in the forest. I could go on about this.

Eventually we put this system in the server room and drilled a hole in the wall for cabling so we could separate unsuspecting users from The Machine. Now all is fine, if not for the high temperature of the server room; something will break this summer because of that system, but still it is winter, so why care?

I would seriously advise you to check out noise levels and aftermarket cooling solutions for the Opteron (there are very few for the Xeon). This was probably my last Xeon system.

 

[London Geezer]

I bought a similar system (beefier in storage, lesser RAM and GFX) just after the 3.06 Xeon came out, and although someone casually mentioned it before, it needs reiterating: THIS SYSTEM WILL MAKE YOU DEAF. It can not be put in a normal office. People with sensitive hearing will turn insane and kill people. This is no exaggeration! The Xeon comes with a 6000RPM Delta fan that is the most offensive one I've ever heard; two of them makes twice the noise, and as they are temperature-controlled, the both of them always sing a slightly different duet, leading to a high pitched two-toned howl that will scare small children, make grown men cry, and attract every cat who's in the mood for love. If you plan on going hunting, take this system with you; put it in one end of the woods and place yourself with a nice gun at the other end, and you will be able to shoot every critter in the forest. I could go on about this.

Eventually we put this system in the server room and drilled a hole in the wall for cabling so we could separate unsuspecting users from The Machine. Now all is fine, if not for the high temperature of the server room; something will break this summer because of that system, but still it is winter, so why care?

Oh my god that was the funniest thing i've read in a long time, i have tears in my eyes by how much i was laughing...

 

[T2k]

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...

Ok, my mistake, I misunderstood something.

For the noise issue: yes, it's VERY LOUD (dual X3.06)! I mean, compared to your SoHo-machine's noise level.

Here I have lots of 'em so I normally don't care about the noise - but my particular dual X3.06 machines - xw8000s - are VERY LOUD. I don't know why but even with 'Automatic' fan speed settings (BIOS) significantly louder than the same xw8000 w/dual X2.8...
Ice on the cake: QuadroFX... it makes even louder at bootup... Dual Opteron machines are way less noisy here.

EDIT: Of course, dual Opterons still louder than average home machines.

 

[Sage]

LineAA is not even done on softquadro'd card or GeForces. It's not a cause of a performance hit from doing it in software because it's simply not used. It's other features that affect performance in workstation apps but I suggest you go out and learn about them yourself then come back here and we'll aregue whether they make a major difference or not.

 

[KimB]

The other thing to keep in mind is that nVidia has a different driver set for the Quadro graphics cards. I am not sure exactly how the softquadro mod works. Do you use the Quadro drivers with the softquadro mod?

Anyway, you also have to consider that besides hardware features (which I haven't read about in years, and I really don't feel like looking up), there is the fact that workstation applications require different types of optimizations for good performance than games. This can easily be seen when you look in the past at hardware designers who typically created workstation graphics cards but decided to enter the consumer sector. Very frequently have the drivers been very poor.

So, it is possible that even if the "Soft Quadro" mod is not used along with the Quadro drivers, cards that use the "Soft Quadro" mod may use a different driver codepath, which would obviously cause different performance characteristics.

 

[Sage]

no, the whole point of using SOftQuadro is to make the drivers use the Quadro codepath, that's exactly what they do...

and if you aren't even aware of the quadro-specific features then how are you qualified in any way to argue about them? Why are we even having this conversation if you're not even willing to put the effort into learning what we are talking about? This is quite pointless...

 

[KimB]

Heh. I was only attempting to explain why the SoftQuadro mod increased performance. I was giving a reason that I had read some years ago, back when the original Quadro was released. Do you not believe that some of the performance increase is due to specific features being enabled via Soft Quadro?

 

[Sage]

Yes, there are some specific situations in which a Quadro is much faster than a GeForce (and that's due to things done in the drivers, not core differences) however under most circumstances the only difference in speed is due to workstation-app driver optimisations.

 

[{Sniping}Waste]

The X1 might be the way to go. I picked up mine for $150 US used and the same place had new OEM for DELL for $175.
My used X1 is a enginering sample sent to Dell for testing.