new computer ***

[diogolivio]

Hi everyone,

I'am CAD profissional and I need a new rig for home. Until a few days I worked in a company but quit to became a free-lancer. I already have 2/3 projects to work on but the pc I have at home is such not fast enought to process 3D.

I already have some components, like monitors and hard drives, but I missing the essencials like, motherboard, processor, graphics card and memory. After few days looking at the possible hardware, this is what I came up:

* Quad Core Intel® Xeon® E5355
* 512MB nVidia Quadro FX 4500 SLI
* 8GB (8x1GB) 667MHz DDR2 Quad Channel FBD

I missing the motherboard and enough knowledge to understand if this is good for I want to do. Most of the time I only use PC to work only, but do like to play some games, so if yr input on this, is also greatly appreciated.

So, is this Ok or I could do better?

Thank you in advance.

Regards.

 

[diogolivio]

Thank you for your reply.

I did check "boxed" workstation, Dell actually, not HP...
But regarding this "boxes" workstation I think they might be a little limited due to warranty issues, i.e., if I want to upgrade the graphics card myself I will void the warranty because it has to be done by them.

As for the case, I had on the office one big tower with lots of room, it was quite simply but very effective. I didnt do a lot research on this, but as far I can tell the best option will be a cooler master or a chieftec. Other thing is the all ATX and BTX , which I still dont understand very well...

PSU, I saw the other day on a store, the cooler master igreen power 600w sli, it look good enough to handle the workstation.

The biggest problem is the motherboard. I hear that the best are the ASUS. I did check on their site, but for xeon they have like 10. Which to pick?

But, you're right, the best is to look for mobo,case and psu from a single vendor. At least if I mess up I only need to make one phone call. Besides the two you mention, any others come to mind?

Thank you for your help.

 

[deusex]

Looks all right to a regular gamerXD

"And then his Photoshop crashes and gives him a BSOD"

 

[NoNeeD]

* 512MB nVidia Quadro FX 4500 SLI

u wont be playing any games on quadro at least not very well. Might wanna try a 8800gtx im not sure how big the hit is on performance in CAD but from what i have heard workstation stuff is just overpriced and bad at games compared to normal cards.

tho i would would check with people who own 8800's and benchmarks on the internet dont trust me.

3. WHAT ARE THE MAJOR DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE CONSUMER-LEVEL NVIDIA® GEFORCETM FAMILY AND THE WORKSTATION-CLASS NVIDIA QUADRO® FAMILY?"


Since most consumer applications and games don’t create many pop-up windows, the GeForce family of GPUs supports only one clip region, whereas the NVIDIA Quadro family support up to eight clip regions. This would offer superior performance in applications that open many windows. The NVIDIA Quadro family of GPUs supports clip-plane acceleration in hardware - a significant performance improvement when it is used in professional applications.

Another feature offered by the NVIDIA Quadro family of GPUs is memory management optimization, which efficiently allocates and shares memory resources between concurrent graphics windows and applications. In many situations, this feature directly affects application performance, and so offers demonstrable benefits over the consumer-oriented GeForce GPU family. NVIDIA Quadro memory management optimizations ensure that all available graphics memory is used efficiently, preventing potential performance degradations or loss of functionality because of exhausting graphics memory. This is important for professional applications in both the CAD and DCC markets that use several graphics windows simultaneously, as well as define and use many textures.

Overlay planes let items be drawn on top of the main graphics window without damaging the contents of the windows beneath. Windows drawn in the overlay plane can contain text, graphics, and so on-the same as any normal window. Support for overlay planes is exclusive to the NVIDIA Quadro family of workstation GPUs and allows them to meet the needs of professional applications. Overlays are not supported on the GeForce family of GPUs.

Many workstation applications, particularly in the CAD market, offer the option of using antialiased points and lines (sometimes called "wireframe"). With this option turned on, component edges can be viewed as precisely as possible without encountering the aliasing artifacts that are associated with lines displayed on a rasterized display. Quadro offers antialiased lines in hardware while GeForce does not.

Quadro offers support for OpenGL Logic Operations in hardware. An example of this is a Digital Content Creation application where the XOR logic operation is used to draw sophisticated cursors, such as those in the paint operation of Alias’ Maya application. The XOR logic operation draws the cursor on top of the 3D scene for applications that do not support overplay planes. If the XOR logic operation is enabled, the performance drop of the NVIDIA Quadro is minimal when compared to that of GeForce.

NVIDIA Quadro GPUs provide several additional features and benefits for professional application optimization and certification by Alias, Adobe, Autodesk, Avid, Bentley, Dassault, Discreet, Multigen-Paradigm, Newtek, Nothing Real, Parametric Technology Corp. (PTC), SDRC, Softimage, SolidEdge, SolidWorks, and Unigraphics and others.

Finally, if you are lucky enough to have 3D glasses and an application that supports stero viewing, the NVIDIA Quadro GPU family supports a much faster quad-buffered stereo; the GeForce GPU family does not.

-----------------------

If you don't need those things i wouldn't bother with quadro if you do then well yeah.

 

[fredgiblet]

I did check "boxed" workstation, Dell actually, not HP...
But regarding this "boxes" workstation I think they might be a little limited due to warranty issues, i.e., if I want to upgrade the graphics card myself I will void the warranty because it has to be done by them.

This is true, but if it breaks they have to fix it, and they can probably fix it faster than you can. Additionally since your price range seems to be "whatever I need", if you get a 1 or 2 year warranty then you probably won't be looking to upgrade for a couple years anyway.

 

[cutthroat]

I'm not sure if this can still be done, but there used to be BIOS hacks to turn regular GeForce cards into Quadro's.

 

[ajfink]

While I understand this is meant to be a professional tool, I would suggest normal enthusiast desktop parts. Many can support 8GB of RAM (4 at least), they're cheaper and there is a much wider user base with experience (this forum and the many others are an example) and in general there is no performance difference. The lack of need for registered RAM in a workstation motherboard alone would be beautiful. If you feel you really need more horsepower than a QX6700, a dual-socket workstation is definitely for you. I just don't see the need in such extra expense oft justified.

 

[Joe_The_Dragon]

Have you looked at the mac pro?
also you may want a dual amd setup as that can use cheaper and faster ram as well as haveing more pci-e lanes with sli and amd is comeing with quad-core soon.
DDR 2 ecc is better then FB-DIMM

as for the exon system it is better to get 2 dual core exons then to get 1 quad core.

 

[Dante_Jose_Cuervo]

Yes, there is a way to change a GeForce into a Quadro, it's called soft-modding but it's a bit risky and takes a bit of technical knowledge.