Help me choose i7 3930k vs E5-1650 for workstation.

LMAO - what a sales gimmick. They are both sandy bridge e series but the xeon is an ep package.

Stability? you want Xeon with ecc ram.
For Speed you want i7 w/ddr3

The E5 and the I7 are virtually the same core-wise. The e5 has 4 cores and 8 threads on a qpi system architecture while the i7 has 6 core and 12 threads on a standard pc system architecture. Since socket 2011 is not near EOL neither is either CPU but expect sales of both these to drop as Ivy-E comes on line hopefully sometime in the second quarter of this year and joins sandy-e. Intel has certainly not announced any EOL intentions for either of these.

DX DO,

For the most reliable and accurate system for your applications, I would suggest a Xeon (6 core or multiple CPU) > ECC RAM > Quadro / Firepro combination- and the E5-1650 happens to be my current favourite Xeon. Up to a point, an i7 > non-ECC > GTX /Radeon system will work well, but the demanding applications or large and/or complex files you're using mean that the double precision, error correcting RAM, and the anti-aliasing Quadro drivers - all very important for rendering and animation- will substantially improve the quality of the kinds of imaging work you're doing. Computer systems fall into the "weakest link", "whatever can fail will fail" category and that is especially true of running complex 3D modelling and rendering applications. I tried a double Xeon / ECC system with a GTX 285 graphics card and on small files it worked well, but when the file was large or complex, it created bizarre shadows and artifacts, would not open viewports in Solidworks, would crash Sketchup, CAD models had jagged edges, and renderings would run for 25 minutes and then lock up. Some of these problems I thought would have been CPU related, but changing to a Quadro FX 4800 solved everything- I had a Xeon > ECC > Quadro system.

If you look at the Passmark CPU benchmark list, eight of the top ten CPU's are Xeons and the E5-1650 is number 14. >

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

I have not used the E5-1650, but if I were building a new system (I use AutoCad, Revit, Solidworks, Sketchup, Adobe CS), that would be my choice > six cores for rendering, a good clock speed, high memory bandwidth, and -for a Xeon- a reasonable price. My suggestion >

1. Xeon E5-1650 6-core 3.2 /3.8GHz $600

2. ASUS P9X79-E WS LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 SSI CEB Intel Motherboard $500

3. Wintec 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) ECC Registered Server Memory Model 3RSL160011R5H-32GQ $ 300

4. NVIDIA® Quadro® K4000 VCQK4000-PB 3GB GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 Workstation Video Card $800

5. SAMSUNG 840 Pro Series MZ-7PD256BW 2.5" 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) $249.99

6. 2- WESTERN DIGITAL 1TB HARD DRIVE SATA 64MB 6 Gb/s WD AV-GP $172.06

7. LIAN LI PC-A75 Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case $182

8. SeaSonic Platinum Platinum-860 860W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified Full Modular Active PFC Power Supply $200

9. Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit - OEM $189.99

10. Noctua NH-D14 120mm & 140mm SSO CPU Cooler $84.

11. ASUS Black Blu-ray Burner SATA BW-14D1XT $99.99


TOTAL > about $3,400


Because of the way ECC RAM works and the quality/reliability emphasis (instead of frame rates) of the Quadro, such a system will not be the fastest for games, but the quality of results and reliability for work will be wonderful. Also, this is not disproportionately expensive > such a system will not cost as much as Maya alone.

Cheers,

BambiBoom

[Dell Precision T5400 (2010)> 2X Xeon X5460 quad-core @ 3.16GHz > 16GB ECC > Quadro FX 4800 (1.5GB) > WD RE4 / Segt Brcda 500GB > Windows 7 Ultimate 64 > HP 2711x ]