To CPU or to GPU?

[Aenslead]

Hello, everyone.

I'm looking for a piece of advise here. Where should I spend my budget on?

I can purchase:
Supermicro X8DAL-i for $310usd, for dual Nehalem based Xeon 5500 CPU's
A couple of Xeon 5504 for 250usd each (the price of a Core i7 950!), total of 16 threads.
12GB DDR3-1333 Unbuffered RAM (about 200usd)
Quadro FX 580 video card (or GeForce price quivalent, I beleive GTX275) $230usd
$1250usd aprox
or

Core 2 Quad 9550 at $280usd
8GB RAM DDR2-800 (80usd)
Gigabyte P45 motherboard (95usd)
Quadro FX 3800 video card (800usd)
$1255usd aprox.

What would AutoCAD Civil 3D, Inventor, 3ds Max, Maya, Adobe CS4 suite, benefit most from? A ton of CPU's or a great vcard?

I've been reading a lot lately about CUDA and GPU accelerated apps, and how Premiere Pro uses RapidHD to compress H.264 video and Photoshop is GPU accelerated ad well. Autodesk recomends the QFX cards for all of their software and NVIDIA claims 5x more performance than similarly price GeForce cards.

Is this true? Where would I bennefit the most?

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Aenslead
NVIDIA claims 5x more performance than similarly price GeForce cards.
Is this true? Where would I bennefit the most?

It's half-true. Workstation graphics cards are mostly the same as desktop cards. The difference is that workstation cards often have more memory and their drivers are a lot better. Have you seen driver updates where ATI or Nvidia will say something like "30% frame rate improvement in Fallout 3" because of driver optimizations? Workstation cards see huge gains like that in CAD and CAM because the drivers are optimized for those applications. Don't cheap out on the video card. Buy one that is specifically designed for workstations.

Not sure about how much CPU power you need, but hands down you absolutely do need graphics performance.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I was reading a Premiere Pro 4.1 thread in DVXusers and a guy with a tiny machine was able to edit in real time and scrub with a dual core on XP, I think he said laptop, but with a monster workstation card.

EDIT: ahhh here is the thread

 

[sgrinavi]

How about an Ausus P6T WS ($300), a W3520 ($300) and 12 GB of Gskill DDR3-1600 ($200)? You can get a pretty good workstation graphics card for $500-600, or so, if you look hard enough. I would not go less than an FX5600, FX4800, FirePRO V8700. I have not tried the new V7750, but is it supposed to be damn nice. I tried an FX3800, but I was not impressed. The V7700 is a GREAT value, but getting long in the tooth.

I'm a big fan of workstation graphics cards for reliability and superior view port fidelity. In my expericene the performance of the workstation cards are better, although some would not agree.

 

[Eureka]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: Aenslead
NVIDIA claims 5x more performance than similarly price GeForce cards.
Is this true? Where would I bennefit the most?

It's half-true. Workstation graphics cards are mostly the same as desktop cards. The difference is that workstation cards often have more memory and their drivers are a lot better. Have you seen driver updates where ATI or Nvidia will say something like "30% frame rate improvement in Fallout 3" because of driver optimizations? Workstation cards see huge gains like that in CAD and CAM because the drivers are optimized for those applications. Don't cheap out on the video card. Buy one that is specifically designed for workstations.

Not sure about how much CPU power you need, but hands down you absolutely do need graphics performance.

In that case, wouldn't it be possible to take a regular desktop GPU and hack it to run the workstation drivers?

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Yes, you can do hack desktop cards but you aren't guaranteed stability or support (from Nvidia/ATI).

 

[Aenslead]

And the new line of cards does not allow that hack anymore. I think 8600GT was the last of those hackable cards.

So... what y'all saying is to stick to a good GPU and a mid-class CPU?

The vcard at 450usd price is the FX1800, and spec wise, its far slower than a FX3800.

Will CUDA be making more wins in the professional arena? AS with Adobe and Autodesk for other ISVs, like... say... Bentley, Solidworks?

GPGPU?

 

[theeedude]

Are there CAD apps that can take advantage of 16 CPU threads on a regular basis?

 

[heyheybooboo]

Check over at Guru3d for info on 'soft modding' Radeons into FireGLs. Relatively simple process which increases OpenGL performance 300-400% with the FireGL drivers.

I've done 2 2900pros without a hitch. I believe HD3870s and maybe HD4850s have now been modded to their FireGL brethren (including 64-bit drivers last time I checked).

My Sapphire Radeon 2900 pros are 'dead ringers' for the ATI v7600 FireGL reference cards. I think I could now 'mod up' to the v8600 but haven't really given it a second thought. I moved from a z-128 FireGL AGP Pro card and the difference (as you can imagine) was remarkable.



edit: I fergit.

There are some great deals at the Egg on the Phenom 955 and Asus motherboards. I point that out because the Phenom (and Asus) support ECC RAMs.


edit again:

Originally posted by: Aenslead ~~~

Will CUDA be making more wins in the professional arena? AS with Adobe and Autodesk for other ISVs, like... say... Bentley, Solidworks?

GPGPU?

Probably a little early in the GPU processing era - in the next year or so after the GPUs go 'on-die' with the CPUs we will see some major leaps (I hope.).

Sorry - just again realized your are most likely not in the USA.

 

[sgrinavi]

Originally posted by: Aenslead
And the new line of cards does not allow that hack anymore. I think 8600GT was the last of those hackable cards.

So... what y'all saying is to stick to a good GPU and a mid-class CPU?

The vcard at 450usd price is the FX1800, and spec wise, its far slower than a FX3800.

Will CUDA be making more wins in the professional arena? AS with Adobe and Autodesk for other ISVs, like... say... Bentley, Solidworks?

GPGPU?

I think the only AutoDesk app that takes advantage of CUDA is Moldflow. The FX1800 is DOG, the FX3800 is not a great deal better. There is a big step when you go to the FX4800. Look at ATI if you want to save some cash, their professional cards are cheaper.

Originally posted by: senseamp
Are there CAD apps that can take advantage of 16 CPU threads on a regular basis?

I am pretty sure that most of the new gen Autodesk apps will take all you can throw at them. I know 3dsMAX 2010 renders are lightening fast on my i7 with 8 threads.

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo
Check over at Guru3d for info on 'soft modding' Radeons into FireGLs. Relatively simple process which increases OpenGL performance 300-400% with the FireGL drivers.

I've done 2 2900pros without a hitch. I believe HD3870s and maybe HD4850s have now been modded to their FireGL brethren (including 64-bit drivers last time I checked).

My Sapphire Radeon 2900 pros are 'dead ringers' for the ATI v7600 FireGL reference cards. I think I could now 'mod up' to the v8600 but haven't really given it a second thought. I moved from a z-128 FireGL AGP Pro card and the difference (as you can imagine) was remarkable.

I did a lot of soft modding before giving up and going with the real deal Sure, the OpenGL bench marks are the same, but the viewport fidelity is not there and they are not as stable as the real deal If you are just fooling around or working at home once in a while then, sure, go for an ATI soft mod, if you are doing it for a living then the professional solution is worth while.

Of all the ones I tried softmodding the sapphire 3870 with 1 GB of GDDR4 to a V7700 was by far and away the best performing gamer card I tried. It still did not perform on par with my real V7700 and is not even in the same league as my v8700.

 

[Modelworks]

CPU is the way to go for now.
The only thing that I know of in 3d work that uses GPU for rendering is some variants of Mental Ray, 3d coat, cloth simulations.
I really don't see the need to get a professional card now unless you have the cash and want to spend it. The important thing is it needs to have lots of on board memory. Anything like a 8800GT card and up will work fine for most people. I use a 8800GTS 640MB card with scenes that are in the 10 million poly range and it works fine.
Multiprocessor support with autodesk apps is kind of mixed. Most of their stuff, max, maya, will use all the cores you have to render the scene, but if your scene contains things like cloth simulations or particles then they will only use 1 core to process that data. People have complained about that but autodesk says there are problems making those calculations multithreaded.

I would definitely go with quad core, but I would not spend the money for the quadro cards. I have used both and the little performance gains I have seen do not justify spending 4x as much. Spend the extra cash on a faster cpu it will benefit you more.

 

[evolucion8]

Get the most CPU powerful setup that you can get and get a powerful midrange workstation card. Not many applications today are able to take advantage of GPU's performance.

 

[Aenslead]

I just read AT's review on the MacPro 2009. It seemed ridiculous that not only did it give modest performance improvements over past version, but that it also lost in some benches!

So, should I ditch the whole Xeon 5500 series idea, get a nice X58 mobo, a 950 CPU and wait until 6-core CPUs appear?

Midrage... as in, QFX1800?3800?