I need to build/spec up a really fast workstation for some developers.. mainly for graphics, large dataset modelling and also number crunching. OS will most likely be Linux..

Anyone built or use a dual opteron system?? or a dual xeon system?

For a budget of around 5k, what are the best components to get?

thanks for any info..

Tin

 

Tin,

I use a dual Xeon system to good effect for number crunching work (numerical weather modeling and other long chain calculations).

Switched into hyper threading mode and writing/compiling for four logical processors I get good/very good throughput.

I do run WinXP Pro on it though....

Box is a Dell Precision 530 Workstation (current Dell offering is the Precision 650) and I think that came in a way under £5K so you may be able to buy off the shelf within your budget rather than having to build yourself. Dell support RedHat Linux on these boxes now so that would save you some driver etc. hassle.

Cheers

Ian

 

Thanks Ian, whats the full spec on your Dell?

We have a Precision 650 here with 2 x 2.8ghz xeon, with 2gb ram running w2k, its nice and fast and used for small seismic models.

BUT the other requirement is that the new system, has to have 4GB of ram, hence a 64bit cpu (or two) would be required.

Thanks

Tin

 

Tin,

My 530 is speced with a pair of 2.3Ghz (IIRC) Xeons, 1.5Gb RAM and a fairly fast SCSI disk system. Graphics are not all that though (not needed).

If you are going 4GB RAM then you might want to build yourself to keep costs down.

Looks like you are up against the real high end PC workstation market and the pre-built systems go for premium money.

Of course, you'll want to check for compilers if you are going 64bit as well.

Baby Crays, e.g. EL range of air cooled vectors are cheap these days

Cheers

Ian

 

Might be worth getting a quote from Armari

FWIW, Jon Honeyball was raving about the performance of Opterons recently in PC Pro.

Chris.

 

Thanks Ian and Chris,
will spec one up from Armari and see how much it goes to..

one thing I'll have to try before giving it to the users, is some benchmark proggies, whats a good benchmark game nowadays? quake3 still doing the rounds?

cheers

Tin

 

At risk of being laughed out of town, have a look at a dual 2GHz G5 from Apple running Mac OS X or something like Yellow Dog Linux.

 

I have built myself one using 2 x AMD Fx51 chips with 2Gb ram. The speed is awesome esp with Suse Linux Pro 64 bit edition. Cheaper to build yourself.