Planned system first AMD what do you think.

[DS_Grouse]

This will be my first amd build. I have spent a few days configuring it. I play some games but am not a hard core gamer. I mostly do large panoramic photo rendering as a hobby. Thus more storage, and computing power are key.

Here is what i currently have and will be moving over to the new amd to fill out my holes.

2 Dell 1905 monitors
wireless MS elite key and mouse,
5.1 sound speakers.
2 wd 36gig raptors.
intuos 3 tablet.
2 gigs of 1 gig sticks of ocz ram
plextor 716a


Okay now on to my new system

Case
GIGABYTE 3D AURORA
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16811233002

PSU
Antec TRUEPOWERII TPII-550
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16817103931

MB
MSI K8N Diamond Plus Socket
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813130037

Chip
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ Toledo
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16819103546

Ram
OCZ Performance 2GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820146970

Video cards
eVGA 256-P2-N515-AX Geforce 7800GT 256MB (times two)
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16814130247

HDD (times 2)
Western Digital Caviar SE WD2500JS (sata 3.0g)
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16822144417


I think it is a solid stable build. I do have 2 concerns.

First Memory, i want to be able to get the most out of my 4 gigs of ram that this will have. Which means xp 64 bit. What issues other than drivers will i need for it. As i said before i make very large images, with scratch disks in the 10-20 gig range. Finished image size can range as low as 800 megs to 4 gigs each. This is my primary reason for going to dual core, 64 bit OS.

Second. I am wondering if that Antec truepower II is enough to power this system consistantly. I used the guides at these two sites to come up with a nessisary wattage of 485 watts. However no-one has been able to give me a definitive answer as to weather or not that PSU will be enough to support my new rig.

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/index.jsp

very nice allowed me to congifure nearly everything power wise. Way more upto date than.

http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/


and for giggles here is a sized image of mine.


140 8.2 megapixel 8 meg jpgs. (this cpu does not have the oomph to stitch tiffs.) Roughly 700-850 Megapixel image at full res. Estimated file size as a tiff would be 3 gigs.

 

[Vile]

That's a nice processor you're planning on buying 8)

 

[mdd1963]

A quality 550 watt PS will handle a pair of 7800 GTs just fine...

(Oh, and why a pair of GTs if not gaming? A single 7800GT has dual DVI out and will support both Dell monitors as is....perhaps you can save $300-$350...)

 

[Flakes]

A quality 550 watt PS will handle a pair of 7800 GTs just fine...

(Oh, and why a pair of GTs if not gaming? A single 7800GT has dual DVI out and will support both Dell monitors as is....perhaps you can save $300-$350...)

yep then you can get an even more powerfull CPU! :twisted:

if your not gaming then the dual GTs will be a waste.

 

[DS_Grouse]

I do game, quite a bit. about 50% of my time might be games.

I'm just not a jolt/mnt dew sucking dork who order's dominoe's every night and has not seen the light of day in 3 years.

I've got a wife, two kids, and a sweet audi that needs long windy roads.

 

[linux_0]

If you are going to be stitching very large TIFFs together then you will likely need more than 4GB of RAM.

The OS needs RAM as well and your image manipulation program will require RAM for itself on top of everything else and some operations may require 2 or 3 times the size of the image in RAM. Also windows tends to swap excessively no matter what you do and leaks memory like crazy.

To get around that you may have to invest in a workstation or server class Dual Opteron motherboard and more than 4GB of RAM.

The Tyan S2882G3NR-D supports single and dual core opterons and up to 16GB of DDR400 PC3200 REG ECC SDRAM unfortunately it only has 32bit PCI and 64bit PCI-X [NOT PCI-Express] slots so SLI is impossible.

Fortunately there is a similar workstation Dual Opteron board the Tiger K8WE S2877ANRF which supports dual single or dual core opterons and up to 24GB of DDR400 PC3200 REG ECC SDRAM and has 2 x16 PCI-Express slots however only one can be used for graphics because one slot is actually x4 while the other is x16.

Incidentally Linux or BSD would be more suitable for this type of work. 64bit support under Linux is great unlike XP64 and 2003-64 which have all kinds of problems and finding the correct drivers can be next to impossible sometimes.

I have personally built several Opteron servers and I can testify as to how well they run under Linux x86_64

 

[DS_Grouse]

If you are going to be stitching very large TIFFs together then you will likely need more than 4GB of RAM.

The OS needs RAM as well and your image manipulation program will require RAM for itself on top of everything else and some operations may require 2 or 3 times the size of the image in RAM. Also windows tends to swap excessively no matter what you do and leaks memory like crazy.

To get around that you may have to invest in a workstation or server class Dual Opteron motherboard and more than 4GB of RAM.

Incidentally Linux or BSD would be more suitable for this type of work. 64bit support under Linux is great unlike XP64 and 2003-64 which have all kinds of problems and finding the correct drivers can be next to impossible sometimes.

I have personally built several Opteron servers and I can testify as to how well they run under Linux x86_64

Most of the stitching aplications can, make use of larger ram, what they do is stitch multiple images into a block, multiple blocks into an image. The kicker is JPGs as they all must be loaded into ram to stitch. Where as Tiff's, Raw, and psd's are scratchdisked.

I am not entirely sure I can swing a dual dual core rig, I'd love to. On top of that outfitting it with more than the 4 gigs of ram is likely also out of my price range. I will look into it later today and see what i can build.

As for Linux, I have thought about making a dual boot system. I may do that. As of right now I do not know anything about it.

 

[linux_0]

Most of the stitching applications can, make use of larger ram, what they do is stitch multiple images into a block, multiple blocks into an image. The kicker is JPGs as they all must be loaded into ram to stitch. Where as Tiff's, Raw, and psd's are scratchdisked.

I am not entirely sure I can swing a dual dual core rig, I'd love to. On top of that outfitting it with more than the 4 gigs of ram is likely also out of my price range. I will look into it later today and see what i can build.

As for Linux, I have thought about making a dual boot system. I may do that. As of right now I do not know anything about it.

Dual Opteron motherboards start around $200 and you can get VERY nice ones in the $300-$400 range. Single Core model 2xx Opterons are quite inexpensive now. Dual Core model 2xx CPUs are significantly more expensive so I probably would not recommend them right now but it is a great upgrade path because a Dual Opteron board can support:

[code:1:c4cfd06c2a]
1 Single Core 2xx CPU <<<<< CHEAPEST starting at $180
2 Single Core 2xx CPUs <<<<< as inexpensive as 2x$180 = $360
1 Dual Core 2xx CPU <<<<< around $700
2 Dual Core 2xx CPUs <<<<< around $1400
[/code:1:c4cfd06c2a]

All 2xx Opterons are socket 940 by the way.


Linux is fast, stable, relatively very secure and has had true 64bit support for quite some time. It is also legally free and open source so you can do virtually anything that is technically feasible under it. There are also numerous image manipulation tools and libraries for it and several ways to automate and script them together to accomplish complex tasks.

I am not an image processing guru by any means however I have used netpbm, GIMP, Image::Magick, GD, etc and all of them are very good and very powerful. You can write some simple Perl, shell, PHP, etc code and do incredible things.

GIMP in particular is AMAZING it can do most of what photoshop can do without the price tag. GIMP runs on Linux, BSD, Solaris, windows and MacOX out of the box and since source code is available you can probably make it run on almost any platform.

You can check it out @ http://gimp.org/

Feel free to message me if you would like more info on netpbm, GIMP, Image::Magick, GD, etc.

Live long and prosper!

PS Linux with special software can run some windows applications and even certain games