18 replies to this topic

[John Atchley]

Are there still some computer experts out there?

Particularly wondering if SP would take advantage of going from a Radeon R9 290 to a 295X2?

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Gzwsxr

Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker....xr/by_merchant/

 

CPU: Intel Core i7-5930K 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor  ($548.99 @ NCIX US) 

CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X31 69.5 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($72.98 @ OutletPC) 

Motherboard: ASRock X99 Extreme6 ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard  ($221.98 @ Newegg) 

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws 4 series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2800 Memory  ($502.98 @ Newegg) 

Storage: Plextor M6S 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  ($133.98 @ Newegg) 

Storage: Samsung XP941 Series 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive  ($501.98 @ Newegg) 

Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($198.99 @ NCIX US) 

Video Card: HIS Radeon R9 290X 4GB IceQ X² Video Card  ($288.98 @ Newegg) 

Case: Nanoxia Deep Silence 3 ATX Mid Tower Case  ($102.09 @ Amazon) 

Power Supply: EVGA 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply  ($99.99 @ Newegg) 

Case Fan: Noctua NF-F12 PWM 55.0 CFM 120mm  Fan  ($19.50 @ Amazon) 

Case Fan: Noctua NF-F12 PWM 55.0 CFM 120mm  Fan  ($19.50 @ Amazon) 

Total: $2711.94

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-02-19 07:27 EST-0500

[Jim Crook]

John, I can't really answer your question on the Video Card,  but the specs you list

above look like a pretty potent setup.  Do you have your Pilot's Licence to operate

that ;-)

 

JimC

[Chris Stewart]

not much.

GPU rendering is already so fast that the difference between a 290 and 295x2 is still very small. 

 

The slow high quality renderings are done in Ray Trace mode using the CPU which would benefit from the new 8 core chip (or maybe a 12+ core Xeon or a rendering farm ;-)). 

 

I have a 290 and it makes it hard to move the view point because it moves so fast.

 

You will also see very little benefit from the extra memory.

 

Samsung just came out with a new model SM951 which is faster and may be available within a few months but hard drive speed is not a bottleneck for Softplan so I do not consider this a good value.

 

The only time I need to wait on Softplan even with my four year old i3 CPU is RayTracing renderings.    

 

That system would be good for some computer games though.

[John Atchley]

Oh, I see I have reverted to being a newbie despite having been around since at least v7

[Joseph Smith]

Just some observations:

 

Your CPU 2 threads/per core will greatly increase render mode speeds.  Your GPU is very good but looks like there are faster ones, texture mode and other 3d modes uses GPU I believe.  Your RAM price seems spendy...i'm not sure of your CL but the lower the number the faster the RAM.  Also, why 2 SSD's?...one smaller one for OS and main programs would be sufficient. Secondary larger standard hard drive for data & storage is good.

 

I think you could work out 800.00 from this build.  Good Luck!

 

Check out this link for GPU benchmark tests

 

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/

[John Atchley]

Thanks. The R9 290 is pretty far up in that list right in with some very expensive ones. Its a price point issue at this point. Want the ssds for my photo business. They arent too expensive these days and worth the price IMHO. Not sure about the ram. Ill look into it.

[Chris Stewart]

The problem with the very high end is that they make it sound like it is a big advantage and they charge a very high premium but the difference in performance between high end and the next tier down is almost always extremely small and only shows in benchmarks which run extreme tests.

[John Atchley]

Chris,

 

I am confused 

In your first post you made it sound like I should look for a faster card. In the last like faster cards are overpriced.

[Chris Stewart]

Nope -in the first post I said that the difference is very small and my 290 was already so fast that it was hard to move around in SoftView.

 

I also said that RayTracing did not benefit from the graphics card but would benefit from more CPU cores.

 

If you need a game to run at 2560x1600 res or higher and more than 60fps than a a 295x2 would help but Softplan does not need it.

 

Even a completely finished and furnished model with all the settings enabled (except reflections) does not tax my i3 with an R290 and 16GB of Ram except when I RayTrace  (and I believe the reflections are still calculated by the CPU)

 

If you are doing a lot of RayTraced images every day than the Intel 5960x would be worth the cost. 

[Chris Stewart]

There is also not much benefit from the 5930K over the 5920K 

 

In my experience the difference between 3 and 3.5 GHz is very small and modern motherboards make it easy to overclock so you could run the 5920K at 3.5 or more.

 

The 5930K has more PCI lanes but they are not really that much of a benefit.

 

You will also see very little difference in performance between the Samsung xp941 and the Samsung 850

 

And even with my largest Softplan model, an image viewer, media player, Paintshop Pro with a 17mb photo loaded, a browser and assorted other programs my 16Gb of system memory is only at 62% usage, 

[John Atchley]

Just thought I would update how things went. Stayed with the original parts list except got an XFX 290x 8GB GPU. The Nanoxia case with the liquid cooling is unbelievably quiet. I cant even tell the thing is running. Of course I am half deaf so thats no benchmark. Installed Win7 Home only to realize it wouldnt take advantage of the 32GB of ram. Installed win 8.1 only to find I couldnt find any drivers for my HP500 or my HP Z3200 printers. Tried to go back to win7 and totally screwed up the entire system somehow. Could not boot. After several weeks of screwing around it turned out that I had a bad power supply. Installed a new one and win 7 ultimate which I had from an old computer and everything works fine. Still just a computer although the rerender speed is fats enough to make me use render mode again.

[Keith Almond]

Awesome Computer John, Glad you got it running again.

[Thomas Davis]

see this previous post

 

http://softplan.com/...chmark-ratings/

 

The website listed in that post has both desktop and laptop benchmark ratings on both the CPU and the Video cards.

 

[D M]

I'm reeeal old, .. the last time I understood talk like this was back when I had a 486DX2 w 16 meg of ram.

[John Atchley]

Thats nothing. I had a Sinclair ZX81 with 1kb of memory. I remember trying to program it to say Hi Bob and all I could get was I Bob

[Keith Almond]

John, I had one of those too .... You must have been in Britain at the time, I believe it was called a TIMEX ZX81 over here. I remember getting one of the 16kb RAM packs, and every time you touched the table, it wobbled and crashed the programme.

[Chris Stewart]

Thanks -I don't feel so old now,

My first computer was a 386 with 1mb ram (although my dad had an 8086 but think it still had 16kb and he's 85)

[Joseph Smith]

Commodore 64 with that 5.25" external floppy.  Pretty sure flashlights & toasters now have more processing power than the the C64.

[John Atchley]

Keith, you are correct. Mine was a Timex although I seem to have Sinclair more firmly implanted in my brain from anticipating their release way back when