System Design

[Tiggerz]

There isn't really a topic for those of us who design entire systems, so I thought I'd post here.

I am speccing out my next system. Looking to spend around $14k or so.

The following componants are just ballpark - will change as I do the research.

Case: Enermax FS-710B Server Case - probably with a 450w psu. I'll mod it, probably with window, lights and some lazer cut graphics.

Motherboard: Not sure on this. It needs to be dual CPU, RDRam, AGP4x or higher with a PCI-X slot or two. Biggest problem is most of the really good boards dont have AGP.

CPU: P4 3Ghz although more probably two Xeon CPUs. The beauty of these is that they talk to each other and do the load balancing. Also support hyperthreading. Xeons have a much higher bandwidth than normal CPUs so you can run slower units for the same performance.

Hard Drives: Probably 3 x Maxtor Atlas 10K 36Gb SCI Units. I shall be using Raid 5 with 512byte block level striping.

CD/DVD: Yamaha CRW2100S SSCSI unit. Would like a SCSI DVD unit as well. Would really prefer plextor as they have a rep for quality.

Memory: At least 2Gb ECC RDRAM. May go for 3GB - depends on the board. Will be Kingston.

Video Card: Am looking at the Matrox Parwossname.. Depends in which form factor it is released on. Will be running a couple of monitors.

Sound Card: Most likely the Creative Audigy Platinum Ex.

Monitor: Hopefully the Samsum 24" TFT.. May run a couple of smaller tfts.. Need to be digital.

Network card: Intel Gigabit - if I can get PCI-X on the board, then will use a server card.. If not desktop will suffice.

SCSI: Happy with the ARC-2100S from Adaptec.. Have been using their products for years..

Don't want anything IDE in this machine. And want to go bandwidth over speed.

I might run six drives as two logical units rather than just three as one logical unit.. Good thing about this is you can load the OS on one and Data on the other unit. Should be able to dedicate a CPU to the OS and a CPU to the application space. This way I don't get OS impedance when running Apps.

Andy

[Binky Stunt Cat]

why not wait and go the whole hog with a Hammer System??

[Tiggerz]

The problem with going Amd is akin to standing on a nail then sawing the opposite leg off trying to fix the cause of the pain.

Not wishing to start an amd vs intel discussion here. The Hammer architecture from what I have seen of the specs so far, only seems to be a market catch-up solution.

[_N_]

mate, you are looking for a flaming from some of the local AMD fanboyz, :D

dual xeon is not too expensive, http://www.computerdisposals.co.nz/store/cart_detail.asp?prod_cat1=Desktops

for 5K you can get an alright system, so yours should be out of this world, :D

also, I'm glad that some has realized that SCSI HDD's kick ass, that's a very good investment,

I just wish I had a system like you :(

[Tiggerz]

I got my first scsi unit in 89.. still use it - it was an original 2940.. Gave me about a 30% boost in data throuput. the pentium 200 thats in the machine still gives a duron or celeron 1ghz a good run for its money.

The thing I like about scsi systems is that when you change your machine you can just take out the card and drives and bung them in the new one.. so no need to keep buying new and faster disks.

[GooGlo]

Dude, What are you running ATM? I suggest you wait for the intel equivilent of hammer if you dont like AMD.

Next question: WHY?? What would you do on this?

[Artifice]

he would read his e-mail on it.

[Gh0s7 L3mUr]

Originally posted by Tiggerz


Sound Card: Most likely the Creative Audigy Platinum Ex.


*pulls up comfy chair and popcorn... wait for the famous "Creative" speach from whetu*

But seriously have you looked at the Hercules GameTheatre XP?

[Tiggerz]

ATM ??? hmmm hadn't thought of that.. now there is an idea :)


I just need a decent workstation at home to do development on.

However, I have a DTS 6.1 cinema system I would like to integrate into it.. Should be good for the gaming experience.. house shakes when we watch movies.. Woofer hits the tummy a bit heavily too. Have my eye on a good 300" projector next.


My hobby is imiging - so want a good display for that.

And - am mainly building a high spec system because I can..

Then I might overclock it just for fun.

[Binky Stunt Cat]

Originally posted by Tiggerz
The problem with going Amd is akin to standing on a nail then sawing the opposite leg off trying to fix the cause of the pain.

Not wishing to start an amd vs intel discussion here. The Hammer architecture from what I have seen of the specs so far, only seems to be a market catch-up solution.
please tell us "AMD Fans" how a 64 AND 32 bit Chip with onboard memory controler is a "catch-up solution" to anything Intel's produced???

[GooGlo]

By ATM I mean "at the moment". I was asking what your current specs were.

It sounds like you dont really need all this huge money sucking performance. Surely you would appreciate a $5000 doller saving by going with something slightly slower?

[Tiggerz]

64 bit. Hammer.. by whos definition.. As far as I am aware they are all to be IA32 implemented in hardware with a few 64 bit tweaks to make them seem faster.

The GPRS are still all 32bit, the SIMD have moved to 128 bit which will get round the current requirement to use the Intel SIMD instruction set for performance.

Both the EIP and Stack are still 32bit so dont see any changes there. The new RIP is supposed to be 64 bit, but the implementation is 32 bit non extended. I suspect this is done to maintain supposed 64 bit compatibility.

The floating point at MMX stuff are all still 32 bit.

They do have 8 new GPRS registers that are 64bit, but since there isnt a compiler that will support this, I don't see them being of much use in the short or medium term. These will be zero filled when running IA32 code anyhow.

There is some focus on 64 bit addressing which would be good. Except that you can't switch between 64 bit mode and 32 bit mode as the upper order bits become undefined and un-reliable. This means that the OS must be completly 64 bit or coded not to work with the upper 32 bits when switching modes. Don't think that will happen within the next decade.


Looking at this design it seems to me that its just there to give AMD base compatibility so that it can run XP64.

The technique used by AMD to migrate to 64bit is the same one used in the 386 cpus by Intel. It didnt work then either. AMDs main problem is insisting that they need to maintain backwards compatibilty with legacy customers. This is the same as saying that we cannot afford to use our existing customer base.

I think that what they are doing is really good.. Its their first attempt at it, so if they come up with some good product I shall probably take a good look at it.. After all, cheap fast processors are what we are all after.

My real gripe is that they chose to do hardware implimented IA32 compatibility - especially at a time when the other CPU vendors are all moving to software based IA32 compatibility.

I'm not surprised that they did it tho. We all new intel were going software compatible, but until the itanium was released exactly how was not known. To put it another way, in order to see intel side-step amd needed to be on the same playing field. I think that this is where they are..

I would expect to see a 9th generation processor architecture in 2-3 years from now.

At the end of the day - this is what is called a transition architecture. Its good that we have it.. It will be faster and better than AMDs current architecture.. Thats hitting so many bottle-necks now they need a product on the market soon just to maintain market share.

[Tiggerz]

Originally posted by GooGlo
By ATM I mean "at the moment". I was asking what your current specs were.

It sounds like you dont really need all this huge money sucking performance. Surely you would appreciate a $5000 doller saving by going with something slightly slower?


I have a dell inspiron laptop (well hugley weighty luggable) with 15" tvt, dvd, cdrw, scsi zip, ultra fast hd. pcmci multi-function gsm modem, pcmci lan-card, bluetooth adapton. pocket pc..

I am going to upgrade the network part of this to run 56k wireless/bluetooth gprs so I can operate an effective mobile office.

I do my development using 3 machines at the moment.. Want to merge into one decent machine.

At the end of the day, the new system will just be a standard dual cpu workstation.. I was thinking about getting an IBM intellistation, but since the price will be similar I figured I can builid better.

[Binky Stunt Cat]

so why is it that Intel are gonna be doing EXACTLY the same thing in producing a 64-32 combination chip? And even tho there is XP64, there realy aint much out there to justify going to a wholy 64bit system yet.

[Wibber]

HA! dream much? the monitor alone it $12-14k.

14k is a ridiculous amont to spend on a system..unless you can write off the 40% drop in value within the first year in your tax.........

if your a intel fanboy get a dual Xeon 1.7ghz, with a 21" CRT , and your precious raid 5 array.. oh wait thats still pushing 14k!

BTW if you need bandwidth more than speed, you don't need a dual processor system, you'd be better off with a new P4 533fsb/ Kt333 166 fsb athlon.

and as a workstation desktop chip the hammers will be great, I'd rater have a 4-way hammer that a 4-way Xeon anyday, you cannot tell me it gonna be slower, without talking through your ass.

NB: I'm a gigabyte fanboy (:P) not amd, I use AMD cos they have an excelent price/performance ratio.

[Tiggerz]

First of all, the OSs that support itanium are Win64, Linux, HP-Ux and one called Modesto - which I have never heard of before.. Sounds a little modest to me :)

ok. First of all this will be about Itanium. And the first thing I will say is that Itanium is not and I repeat NOT a 64bit version of the pentium. For this post I shall refer to pentium based architecture as IA-32.

It is a true 64 bit processor using an entirely new instruction set based on EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing). It has 64 bit addressing (+8 bits ECC) which is why people refer to it as a 64 bit processor. It also has 128 bit integer and floating point registers.

Unlike the Hammer architecture.. The Itanium runs only in pure 64 bit mode - I shall refer to this as I-Mode. That is, it boots, initialises devices and runs only in I-Mode. The Hammer works only in IA-32 mode and must be switched in software to 64bit mode.

Itanium is designed to run in parallel with up to 512 other itaniums. Hammer has only demoed with up to 4 processors.. Although I have not seen a spec on their max scaleability.


The Itanium has IA-32 implimented in a binary compatibility layer. What this means is that not only can the Itanium run IA-32 programs, but those programs can make calls to Itanium based software routines. The hammer cannot do this.. On the hammer, you are either purely in 64 bit or in 32 bit - no mix and match.

Not only that, if the future architecture of IA-32 is modified by the addition of new instructions, the Itanium will still be able to run them.

To add a metafor to this.. Think of the Itanium as being a C-190 transport aircraft.. You can drive it along the ground, but it works better if you fly it.. Think of the IA-32 compatibility as bing a car with a IA-32 engine.. You can drive the car around and park it in the hold of the C-190.. Every now and again, you might upgrade the engine of the car.. It doesnt effect the C-190..

Think of Hammer as being the car - with a special high performance engine.. Its still required to drive the car and must work the same way..

[DiSCLAiMER]

I was just going to out of courisity see how much the mentioned parts would be at ascent, but wibber beat me to saying that the monitor would take almost all the budget! Not to say ascent is the cheepest, but they have a good range of stuff on their website, and I seriously doubt other suppliers are one tenth the price :P Maybe when I have some time I'll go through and price up my own drool type system, then I'll think of ways to get the most likely $50k plus needed to support it. When your dreaming, its kind of hard to stop adding more and more things to your dream configuration :P

I was also wondering why one would *need* such a powerful machine? Unless you are sending spare cpu cycles to the underpriviledged children of etheopia, or celeron users, I dont understand. "Imaging" is not that resource intesive, and if you are doing okay with what you have now whats the point. I guess it would only be justified if you were doing a large amount of 3D renedering type work, which I know nothing of! Actually I don't know too much about "imaging", so don't know if what you describe as "imaging" is intensive or not.

Hell, I'm a developer and to be honest, while I'm coding my machine sits almost idle, as it doesn't take much cpu to translate keystrokes to charactes on the screen!

At work we recently have upgraded our test server to a dual processer athlon mp, with 2gb ddr ram, 2x 60gb hd's (need to get more space, that was a dumb decision), and a couple of other things. We use VMWare on this machine, and configure each testing/staging enviroment to use 256MB ram. We are now happily able to run upto 6/7 enviroments at once, or increase one enviroment to say 512MB and close another down, etc. Sometimes we leave an enviroment maybe running for a week jsut doing normal processing to ensure we have no bugs/memory leaks/compatibility problems/issues etc in our software. Our application is hugely cpu intensive when processing. This machine more than does us, and at one time 3 or more different developers may be using it. (The production servers at our client sites are all dual PIII's with 1gb or more of ram, and scsi hd's, etc).

[Deviant]

Why stop at 10k rpm drives, I can get:

CHEETAH SCSI (10,000rpm)
Model..............Capacity RPM MB/Sec Seek Time Cache NZ$
ST318406LW/LC 18.2 10,000 160 5.2msec 4 Mbytes $485.00
ST336706LW/LC 36.4 10,000 160 5.2msec 4 Mbytes $793.00
ST373406LW/LC 73.4 10,000 160 5.2msec 4 Mbytes $1,718.00
CHEETAH SCSI (15,000rpm)
ST318452LW/LC 18.4 15,000 160 3.6msec 8 Mbytes $651.00
ST336752LW/LC 36.7 15,000 160 3.6msec 8 Mbytes $1,075.00

Plus you need to do some reading on the Hammer architecture
Start with this,
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1546&p=1

Some of what you will learn is this:
8 new 64-bit general purpose registers (GPRs) as well as 64-bit versions of the original 8 x86 GPRs, SSE & SSE2 support along with 8 new SSE2 registers. Also designed for multiprocessing, really easy scaleability to any number of processors, 2,4 and 8 versions shown in this artical

It isn't meant to be the perfect 64bit processor (64 bit only), that would be suicide by AMD, but it is a good transitional CPU to take us into the future, so good in fact that intel are planning to do the same with P4, whether they do or not I don't know, but they do have pland incase Hammer knocks them for 6.

Me may see Intel trying to play catch up.


Some more prices you may be interested in:
Dual Xeon P4 Intel 860 Chipset
P4DC6+ $1,772.00
P4DCE+ $1,433.00
Quad Pentium II/III Xeon Reliance HE Classic Chipset
S2QE6 $4,361.00
S2QR6 $4,776.00
Dual Xeon 2.2Ghz+, max 2G 600/800MHz RDRAM, 2x64bit PCI, 4x32bit PCI, 4xAGP Pro,
1xEthernet, Dual channel Ultral 160 SCSI
Dual Xeon 2.2Ghz+, max 2G 600/800MHz RDRAM, 2x64bit PCI, 4x32bit PCI, 4xAGP Pro,
1xEthernet, AC'97 Audio
QUAD P3/2 Xeon 400MHz-700MHz CPU,16G ECC SDRAM, ATI Rage 8MB Video, 2x64bit PCI,
4x32bit PCI, 1xEthernet, Dual Channel Ultra 160 SCSI
QUAD P3/2 Xeon 400MHz-700MHz CPU,16G ECC SDRAM, ATI Rage 8MB Video, 2x32bit PCI,
1xEthernet, Dual Channel Ultra 160 SCSI
RAID Card
ARO-1130CA2 Adaptec RAID controller $589.00
1U RACKMOUNT SUPER SERVERS
SYS-5010E Intel 815E,PIII FCPGA 600-1000MHz, 1U Rackmount, AGP $1,737.00
SYS-5010H Intel 815E,PIII FCPGA 600-1000MHz, Ultra 160 SCSI, 2x SCA Hot-Swap drive Bays, 1U Rackmount $2,373.00
SYS-6010H $3,305.00
SYS-6010HI ServerSet III HE-SL,Dual PIII up to 1400MHz (FCPGA), ATI Rage, 2xEthernet, 250W PSU, 1U Rackmo $2,695.00
SYS-6010L $2,930.00
SYS-6011D $2,761.00
SYS-6011L $2,930.00
2U RACKMOUNT SUPER SERVERS
SYS-6021F $3,692.00
SYS-6021I $2,085.00
4U RACKMOUNT SUPER SERVERS
SYS-6041G $4,216.00
SYS-8060 ServerSet III HE, 4U Rackmount, Quad PIII. Xeon Server, Ultra160 SCA, 16GB SDRam $8,171.00
SUPER SERVERS
SYS-8050 Full Tower ServerSet III HE, Quad PIII. Xeon Server, 10 x Ultra160 SCA, 16GB SDRam $8,950.00
ServerSet III HE-SL,Dual PIII up to 1400MHz (FCPGA), Ultra 160 SCSI, 2x SCA Hot-Swap drive Bays,
2xEthernet, 250W PSU, 1U Rackmount
VIA Apollo Pro 266T, Dual PIII up to 1.26GHz (FCPGA), ATI Rage, 1xEthernet, Promise ATA 100
RAID onbaord , 400W PSU, 2U Rackmount
ServerSet III HE-SL,Dual PIII up to 1.26GHz (FCPGA), ATI Xpert, 1xEthernet, Dual Ultra160 SCSI,
4SCA hot-swap bays, 300W + 300WRedundant power supply PSU, 4U Rackmount
ServerSet III HE-LE,Dual PIII 600-1000MHz (FCPGA), Ultra 160 SCSI, 2x SCA Hot-Swap drive Bays,
1U Rackmount
VIA Apollo Pro266T, Dual PIII up to 1.26GHz, 4G DDR, ATI RageXL, 2xEthernet, Dual Ultra 160
SCSI, 2SCA hotswap bays, 250W PSU, 1U Rackmount
ServerSet III HE-LE, Dual PIII up to 1.26GHz, 4G ECC SDRAM, ATI RageXL, 2xEthernet, Dual Ultra
160 SCSI, 2SCA hotswap bays, 250W PSU, 1U Rackmount
ServerSet III HE-SL,Dual PIII up to 1.26GHz (FCPGA), ATI Rage, 1xEthernet, Dual Ultra 160 SCSI,
6SCA hot-swap bay, 400W PSU, 2U Rackmount

[Deviant]

ran out of room, but some of the stuff is aproaching 10k +GST.

[Tiggerz]

Originally posted by Wibber
HA! dream much? the monitor alone it $12-14k.

14k is a ridiculous amont to spend on a system..unless you can write off the 40% drop in value within the first year in your tax.........

if your a intel fanboy get a dual Xeon 1.7ghz, with a 21" CRT , and your precious raid 5 array.. oh wait thats still pushing 14k!

BTW if you need bandwidth more than speed, you don't need a dual processor system, you'd be better off with a new P4 533fsb/ Kt333 166 fsb athlon.

and as a workstation desktop chip the hammers will be great, I'd rater have a 4-way hammer that a 4-way Xeon anyday, you cannot tell me it gonna be slower, without talking through your ass.

NB: I'm a gigabyte fanboy (:P) not amd, I use AMD cos they have an excelent price/performance ratio.

Ooooh wicked..

[BAIT MODE: ON]


don't know where you get your pricing from.. Monitor is 5k nz, scsi adaptor is 1200 odd, drives are between 1k and 1.8k depending on the config.

ok - 4 way hammer vs 4 way xeon. yup the xeon is faster. You can get a 4 way P4 Xeon 2.4Ghz system TODAY. Where is your hammer system huh huh.. must be running so fast is gone warp speed - no-one can see it.

Why would I want an outmoded 21" crt (19" viewable) when I can get a 24" TFT - 24" viewable monitor that is way better. I use a 15" tft now and the image is way better than any crap crt.

Oh, yes, I can write off the costs of the machine. Actually, the depreciation rate is 60% over 5 years and is fully tax deductable for me at the moment.

You do actually understand about what a WORKSTATION is do you. Have you seen the price of most of the decent ones on the market. Heck most of them start at 15k. I suspect that your probably using some namby pamby single CPU desktop word processor system with a kids graphics card in and a block mode IDE disk thinking that 1.45Mhz is real cool.

Try rendering a 30 second advert on that system and just see how many days it takes before it falls over.

[BAIT MODE: OFF]

[DiSCLAiMER]

CHEETAH SCSI (10,000rpm)
Model..............Capacity RPM MB/Sec Seek Time Cache NZ$
ST318406LW/LC 18.2 10,000 160 5.2msec 4 Mbytes $485.00
ST336706LW/LC 36.4 10,000 160 5.2msec 4 Mbytes $793.00
ST373406LW/LC 73.4 10,000 160 5.2msec 4 Mbytes $1,718.00
CHEETAH SCSI (15,000rpm)
ST318452LW/LC 18.4 15,000 160 3.6msec 8 Mbytes $651.00
ST336752LW/LC 36.7 15,000 160 3.6msec 8 Mbytes $1,075.00


Wow, have I been asleep lately. I havn't bothered to look at the price of SCSI drives for quite some time, but they appear to have dropped a bit since I was last drooling ova massively large SCSI drives.

*starts dreaming again*.... I'll have scsi.... one day. Oh yes, she shall be mine :P

[DiSCLAiMER]

don't know where you get your pricing from.. Monitor is 5k nz, scsi adaptor is 1200 odd, drives are between 1k and 1.8k depending on the config.


don't know the number of your stolen goods dealer, but I want his number :p jks.

The price for the monitor is wayyyy too low. Here is a price from ascent:

http://www.ascent.co.nz/mn-product-spec.asp?pid=104166
Samsung Syncmaster 240TFT, 24", TFT LCD monitor, Pnp, TV Tuner, DVI
$13,780.80 (excl GST)

Now, to cover me, you didn't specify the model or actual brand of the monitor, this is just a "random" 24" lcd I picked out.

[Tiggerz]

Originally posted by Deviant
Why stop at 10k rpm drives, I can get:

CHEETAH SCSI (10,000rpm)
Model..............Capacity RPM MB/Sec Seek Time Cache NZ$
ST318406LW/LC 18.2 10,000 160 5.2msec 4 Mbytes $485.00
ST336706LW/LC 36.4 10,000 160 5.2msec 4 Mbytes $793.00
ST373406LW/LC 73.4 10,000 160 5.2msec 4 Mbytes $1,718.00
CHEETAH SCSI (15,000rpm)
ST318452LW/LC 18.4 15,000 160 3.6msec 8 Mbytes $651.00
ST336752LW/LC 36.7 15,000 160 3.6msec 8 Mbytes $1,075.00

Plus you need to do some reading on the Hammer architecture
Start with this,
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1546&p=1

Some of what you will learn is this:
8 new 64-bit general purpose registers (GPRs) as well as 64-bit versions of the original 8 x86 GPRs, SSE & SSE2 support along with 8 new SSE2 registers. Also designed for multiprocessing, really easy scaleability to any number of processors, 2,4 and 8 versions shown in this artical

It isn't meant to be the perfect 64bit processor (64 bit only), that would be suicide by AMD, but it is a good transitional CPU to take us into the future, so good in fact that intel are planning to do the same with P4, whether they do or not I don't know, but they do have pland incase Hammer knocks them for 6.

Me may see Intel trying to play catch up.

<snip for brevity>


Actually being a little more on the serious side (and not baiting the amd folks).. 14k may seem lots in the local currency but in mine its a little under ukp 4k+gst.. so its not that bad.

Also, its not a dream machine.. Its actually a replacement for a machine I built about 6 years ago. That machine is still going and working just fine.

You might notice is that all I have really done is just specc'd a server board with a scsi drive array.. nothing fancy with that. The componants there just get me in the ball park. I am sure there are better price/performance/quality options around. I need to start somewhere.

The three maxtor 36gb drives come to 1938+gst and the adaptec card is around 1200+gst. I'm not sure if I will run it in system or as an iSCSI implementation.. The latter will allow me to use the array with all my machines so will be more cost effective.

I'll give you an example of something I was working on yesterday. I tried to scan a 24 bit A4 image at 1200 dpi and save it as a tiff file. Normally this would give me a 500mb file which after I have chopped out the bits I dont want gives me a single file about 150mb is size. I then need to spit this to a printer to do an A3 proof. This requires a disk swap file of about 1gb or so. The entire process takes just over half an hour. I would have liked to do all 10 images, but ran out of time. While all this is happening, the entire system is unusable as it all becomes disk i/o bound.. On my scsi system I dont get the last problem.

On the AMD front I think its pretty good what they are doing.. I saw the demo for the 4 way system the other day.. was pretty good for a first attempt. And it was just a demo, you never know what they actually have in the box.

Remember that the Hammer is aimed at the P4 not the itanium. Intel have said publicly they intend the P4 to remain IA-32 for desktop and low end workstations and servers.. They have Itanium which is aimed at workstations and high end servers.

The memory rule for dual cpus is 512mb base + 512mb per CPU just to get it off the ground.. I'm adding another 512mb for application space. Depending on the price of ram and board config, it may be cheaper to just put a straight out 3gb in.

All of the stuff I am speccing is based on what is here now. Not sometime in the future.. When I get round to buying the stuff I will respec to what is available then with the same budget.. Maybe will be able to get some of the higher priced stuff cheaper or there will be new stuff on the market.

I'm not considering Hammer now - because it isn't here. If it is available when I make the purchase and it meets the price/performance criteria that I have set down, then I may consider it. Until then, its not on my list..


The AMD info you posted above is in their tech spec, I have read it as part of the developer docs.. I think I posted something similar in an earlier post. The big difference is in their Long Mode which you switch into when you run a 64 bit app. Problem is that it does not run in mixed mode - that is a 32 bit app cant call 64 bit routines and vice-versa. However, that doesn't mean that this wont have been fixed by release.

If hammer does end up giving intel a run for our money - good on them.. It can only be better for us. It would be good to see a 3Ghz cpu from AMD - especially if they price it well like they usually do.

[Geek4Life]

Originally posted by GooGlo
Dude, What are you running ATM? I suggest you wait for the intel equivilent of hammer if you dont like AMD.

Next question: WHY?? What would you do on this?
THINK (or possibly SETI), what else would one do.

[Deviant]

Tiggerz, Lets get this straight, your machine now is 6 years old, and you are going to splash out 15k on a new one. It doesn't make alot of sence to me. Wht not by a 5k machine, and upgrade every year. In 6 years time you would have saved heaps and still have a fast machine.

BTW, workstation can be anything, even a old celeron, depends on the work, workstation for graphics is of course different, but the term workstation is too broad.

[Binky Stunt Cat]

hey guys, why do we bother?
he's gonna get that rig no matter what we say/suggest, so whatst he point in trying to convince him otherwise.....

[mird-OC]

right on Binky. personally i'm sick to death of the type who ask for other peoples opinions just to give themselves a reason to preach.

sounds like a lovely system tho. i hope you... enjoy... it.

[shag]

Love u guys:)

Ok, so I couldn't think of anything useful to add to this thread but it's been good reading and I just thought I'd spread the love. If only there was some way of giving u all hugs I would :p

Now run along and play nice kids ;)

[Jazzed]

and here I am trying to save a lousy $1600 for an upgrade kit.......

<cries into his beer sitting all alone at the end of the bar>

[utopian201]

so if a graphics card is designed for games in mind, does that make them 'kids' graphics cards?? good on ya!

and 1.45Mhz *is* real cool

and if u really wanted high performance processors, you wouldnt go for intel/amd let alone Xeon

[Tiggerz]

I made the post hoping that people would suggest different products that would fit each category I was looking at.

Only Deviant thoughtfully provided some good prices and some alternatives.. Which was good.

One chap posted the price of the Samsung monitor which was also good.. I was aware that it was about that much.. With a bit of luck should be able to talk Samsung in to supplying it for half that amount.. Like all high end product, its often better to talk to the manufacturer direct. Well, its worth a try anyhow.. If not will look at the IBM unit..

One of the important things to learn about spec'ing machines is to understand the use that it will be put to and specify the right hardware for the solution. Obviously there is a budget, but budgets are not based on available cash, there is also cost to the customer to take into consideration as well.

I'll give an example.. If I buy a machine for software development and it takes me 1 minute to do a compile. I do ten compiles a day, and therefore use up 10 minutes of my time each day just waiting for compiles. This not sound like much, but consider this. If I charge my customers $100/hour then every week I charge my customers $100 for doing nothing. This is not good for the customer.

Now lets assume in my previous example that I used in another post that it takes me half an hour to scan and print and image for a poster that a customer has requested. In a normal day I can do 10 images. Now the customer asks me to do 20 images - so using a cheap machine I end up charging the customer $1400 for two days work. Now, If I spend more money on a machine that saves me 50% of my time.. I only charge the customer $700. Now if you were the customer, which would you prefer.

Ok, now I buy the higher spec'd machine. It saves me 50% of my time, this means that I can finish the first job and start another in the time that it used to take me to do just one job. Also, I am likely to win more work because of my reduced costs. Now consider a concept of total cost of ownership. In this case, since the machine is used for a business, I can depreciate the machine at a certain amount over 5 years. This means, after 5 years I get the cost of the machine back through tax deductions. Now not being too much of a silly chap. Every time I depreciate the machine, I take the money and put it in an account that goes towards the next machine. This means, every 5 years I get to spend the same amount on a new machine with the latest and greatest bits in it.

Now lets take the $700 I earned from the customer. Within that amount I deduct an amount which is equivilant to the cost of doing business, the rest is profit. Within the cost of doing business is a charge called TCO - total cost of ownership. A cost applied to the real cost of the machine + software + maintainance over a 5 year lifecycle. This charge is deducted from the customers payment and placed in an account. After a while this adds up for me to be able to replace my machine.

The net effect of this is a basic rule of doing business... Always use other peoples money. In my case, I get the customer and the tax department to pay for me getting a new machine every 5 years.

Now lets take another real example. A couple of years ago I worked for a large corporation. They had 150 developers doing an r&d project - which is paid for using the corporate budget, or to put another way - is not customer funded. The cost of having a single developer sitting at a desk was about $1k/day. Now it took each developer approx 4 hours to build a snapshot of the product so that they could work on it. Something they had do to roughly once per day. I spec'd them some new workstations which cost a pretty peny. However, the end result was that they saved 3 hours per compile. I't doesn't take a rocket scientest to see how long it took the machines to pay themselves off in saved time per developer.


Am also hoping that if I get a good box.. Will be a good gaming machine.. There is always a bonus somewhere if you look for it.

nb: The acutal DV depreciation value of a computer is 48% over three years.. If you then sell it in the last year below book value, your the loss is a claimable expense.

Anyhow.. Enough of all that rubbish.. What I am after is a high bandwidth machine with a good monitor..

[Deviant]

He we get a bonus business lecture for free. It all makes sense, and I know other people who do it, lucky B-stards.

I actually knew all that and would love to be in that boat, but what about using a really slow machine after 5 years, it must be so out of date by then. Why not upgrade every 3 or so years?

[Geek4Life]

They're all valid points and it's a system that I definitely wouldn't mind having. All though with that money I would purchase differently.

I do have one plea to make though:

Could you please put it's spare cycles to good use and help the RNZ and OCNZ team at THINK. The link is in my sig to sign up.:D

[Gh0s7 L3mUr]

G4L you Think wh0re :D (jks)

I think Tiggerz we'd all love to be in you position but I was thinking the same as Deviant. Surely it would be possible to upgrade componentry during that 5yrs, using the "fund", and still retaining the devaluation benefits on the other older Components. For example, upgrading the mobo next year when they release them with 3GIO therefore being able to take advantage immediately of the increased bus speeds. Same I could suggest with the graphics cards. As I can't even imagine with the rate they are pushing them out, how insanely slow the GF4 Ti4600 will be in 5yrs time. And from what I can gather all future graphics cards from next year will be 3GIO cards as they are dropping AGP. And so although 5yrs down the track you have a completely new system, you haven't during that time watched you performance (and therfore income) drop.

Just a thought. :)

[Sydog]

If your getting a tft screen, and wanting a high end graphics card to play games on, you should first go somewhere and try out some of the latest games on one in a shop.

Even if I did have the money I wouldn't buy a tft for the sheer reason of they aint no good for gaming maa.

Even Alex from DragonPC said that his one is pretty crap for games. Altho you cul have dual view or whatever and run a crt aswell

[Geek4Life]

Originally posted by Gh0s7 L3mUr
G4L you Think wh0re :D (jks)
Just a thought. :)
How'd you figure that out.

Well my dad has had cancer twice (still alive), so I've got a reason to be in the fight.:p But yeah, I'm a THINK whore.

[Hans]

I don't wana get into the arugments of all the workstation, 5 year time frame, "funds", etc.

However, don't you think 5 years is a bit too long by today's standard? In the ages of 386 or 486, manufacturers takes a long time before pushing out any new products. It's very different now.

Even by Moore's law, CPU's speed increases by 100% each 18 months. In the old days, it wasn't such a big increase, i.e. 33 Mhz to 66 MHz, etc. However, we have 2.4GHz to 4.8 GHz, now that's a lot of difference.

IMHO, if you care about work efficiency then 5 year time frame is too long. It might be better if you can save some money and upgrade every so often, e.g. 2 years? Just my 2 cents.

[Gh0s7 L3mUr]

Originally posted by Geek4Life

How'd you figure that out.

Well my dad has had cancer twice (still alive), so I've got a reason to be in the fight.:p But yeah, I'm a THINK whore.

Glad to hear your dad's still going strong. I've lost a few people too it as well.
Tiggerz machine would rock the ocnz/radiactivenz team up the leader board :D

[Hans]

BTW, it's the same with GFX cards. In the days of 2D, it's perfectly okay to upgrade every 12~18 months. But now?? An old "ultra" card would be outclassed by a new "budget" card, e.g. TnT 2 Ultra vs GF4 MX-440. Tell me, what did you pay for that Ultra and how long ago was that?

[Geek4Life]

Originally posted by Gh0s7 L3mUr


Glad to hear your dad's still going strong. I've lost a few people too it as well.
Tiggerz machine would rock the ocnz/radiactivenz team up the leader board :D
You added that extra 'c' in to RadiativeNZ again ;)

I know of around 14 P4's and 14P3/Celery that would be crunching if THINK would run as a service.

[Wibber]

? 4k nz for a 24" TFT? really? can I have one? actully I'll take two :), Ive seen em for 4k pounds but thats a pretty good rate!

like I said, I'm not an AMD fanboy, I'm just cheap :D, there are working demo opterons, and I'm pretty damn sure they would smackdown the Xeon 3ghz demo machines that are probably also floating arround.

If you can show me place where you can buy that sytem for 15k retail then I will lick your boots :)

helpfullness : get one of those cube cases, add dynamat and 15k scsi drives to your list. and have you considered going for 0+1 rather than 5?

BTW I haven't got and word processors installed :) cept notepad, and my machine oly crahes when running dos apps (like MOO :D )


and sorry if my post bnefore sounded like a flame, it was just early/late, and you sounded quite pretentious :)

[Sydog]

one thing

[mird-OC]

Originally posted by Geek4Life
I know of around 14 P4's and 14P3/Celery that would be crunching if THINK would run as a service.
i'm currently running THINK as a service on all my machines using firedaemon... do a search on the UD Message Board (http:/forum.ud.com) for firedaemon for more info... apparently it's also possible to set the UD screensaver as the logon-screen screensaver too.

[Tiggerz]

Gh0s7 L3mUr

Not actually sure if its possible to do it piece by piece for depreciation purposes. I think its done on the purchase price of the enitre unit. I have certainly thought about buying the bits over time. No reason why I cant buy a mobo one paycheck, graphics card the next.. etc.

I know when I insured the last machine that it was a nightmare. I had to have the policy change so it was insured on the purchase value, not the replacement value that is normal. Also, I had to list every single componant, spec and price as the machine was custom built.

Good idea that chap.. might think about this some more.


I've found 5 years to be about right.. My upgrades have been 90, 95 and 2000 (went laptop).. 2002/3 is not 5 years, but I have changed what I do so its why its a short cycle this time.

[Geek4Life]

Originally posted by mird-OC

i'm currently running THINK as a service on all my machines using firedaemon... do a search on the UD Message Board (http:/forum.ud.com) for firedaemon for more info... apparently it's also possible to set the UD screensaver as the logon-screen screensaver too.
Cheers I'll have to look into it.:)

[Tiggerz]

Well I talked to Samsung last night/this morning.. The cheapest they could let me have a 24" was $9k+tax- mainly coz its a new product.. was worth a try.. Its also wide uxga which I wasn't keen on.

However the plan B option was for two smaller units - they had the 18" at 2700 each + tax. There is also the option of going for the 19" which has the resolution closest to what I want.

NEC have some good priced options as well, slightly higher spec'd but for a similar price.. Not sure how much a discount I can wheedle.. hopefully 30%.. I also have the option of dropping down from uxga to sxga which will half the price..

I have an ulteria motive on the scsi drives. I can secure 3 x 36gb units for about $1700. I have dropped the requirement for the Adapetec controller after speaking with Intel.

Intel have allowed me access to the linux iSCSI drivers (note the i in front). Which means I can attach the drives to a small linux box and dispense with all the drives in the other systems. Thus I can run SCSI over IP. Using raid 5 gives me better performance and fault tolerance than 0+1.. I'm going to run 512 byte block striping on these units - which will give me balanced read/write times. I might do this long term, at the moment it pays to stick them in system.

Speaking of mainboards - I need to fire off an email to matrox.. Need to find out if their new graphics card will be running on PCI-X or not.. Hope it will be as the board I have in mind will be running the E5700 chipset. If its agp then might go for the 860 chipset. Both use the 2.4Ghz Xeons which I might only get one to start off with. Both boards are $1400 and come with Adaptec AIC7930W dual ultra160 zero channel raid, gigabit ethernet on board.. So this will save a heap of dosh.

I get two choices of ram.. RDam at nz$1000/Gb or DDR200 at $600/Gb although I will be allowed to run the new 133Mhz(533Mhz quad pumped DDR) in this board as well.

So what are we looking at in price:-

Mainboard: $1400
Disks: $1700 (3x36gb).
Ram: $1800 (3gb)
Graphics: $2000 (just a guess here for the matrox)
1 18" TFT $2700
2 x Xeon $2000 (2.2Ghz)
----------------------------------------
$11,600

Double the price of the monitors for two. Gst is a bit funny. Some of those prices are inc gst, the others are + gst (not inc discount) and the monitor is just +gst.

[Wibber]

damn you get good prices.... mind if I ask how?, are you (your company) related to the suppliers, or is there some not- ver advertised trick to getting the hell deal?

[Tiggerz]

I shop around.. I find out who the manufacturer is, contact them, find out their prefered supplier - contact them - get ballpark prices.

Then I look at the prices overseas.. Sometimes its cheaper to buy from the US or the Uk or from Singapore and buy an international warrantee than it is here. You need to set up good contacts when doing that.

Once I get some prices, then I go to the new zealand suppliers and give them ear ache about their markups..

Also, some-times its a matter of who you know in the industry. Also you have to do your research and know your product. No point in talking to a manufacturer if you don't know your products, technologies and road-maps inside out..

Never tell them you are a gamer or a home user.. Soon as they figure this out - you'll get re-directed to a retail store.. These two markets are so small, its not worth the manufacturers getting out of bed. Its only worth 15-20% of their sales quotas.