Just a thought - with that budget you could easily afford a used professional GPU,
eg. Quadro FX 5500, 4500, etc. For working with wireframe (especially AA wireframe)
that would be a lot faster than a gaming card, with more accurate rendering aswell.
Gamer cards are cheap, but for professional tasks a proper pro card makes a lot more
sense. I've been accumulating some results on my site:
http://sgidepot.co.uk/sgi.html#PC
Lots more data to add for a whole range of other pro cards (I have a whole stack to
test, from an entry FX 1400 128MB to a rather large FX 5600 1.5GB, also including
two FX 5500s in SLI).
In your case, look at the Viewperf 10 results (not yet run V11 on many setups, and I
need to redo the V11 results now that my system has more RAM and Win7/U/64):
http://www.sgidepot.co.uk/misc/viewperf.txt
Note especially how the FX 5500 stomps all over a GTX 460 for 3DSMax, Maya and other
tests (Ensight is a curious exception), and it's a fast 460 I'm testing (EVGA FTW,
850MHz core - a lot quicker than a 5770). On the other hand, a used pro card might
not have some of the features mentioned by ElMoIsEviL, and AMD boards do have good
multi-display support, though I'd be surprised if you really needed more than 2
displays which pretty much any card can do these days, including all the pro cards.
Either way, check specs and compare with your requirements.
The Asrock motherboard wisecracker referred to is probably the Extreme6. I might get
one of these soon, with a 970. Not sure yet.
SSD-wise, I recommend a 120GB minimum. Remember that some of the space on an SSD
is used for idle garbage collection, etc., so a 60GB won't actually give you 60GB
to play with. 120GB is optimal, though with your budget you could easily afford a
much quicker SATA 240GB OCZ Vertex3. Personally though, I'd recommend the 120GB
Vertex2 as a baseline. For general storage, two sets of 1 or 2TB SATA each in RAID0,
treated as RAID1, would be wise. Again though, with your budget do note that you
could easily afford used SAS instead which would be a lot quicker, and the RAID
functions are done in hw, eg. LSI SAS3442E-R (cheap off eBay, I've bought loads).
All depends on how professional you want your system to be, but with $2K+ such
items are well within your reach, eg. I recently built a Dell T7500 and was able to
obtain some new 600GB 15K SAS disks off eBay for only about $225 each. Or as an
inbetween option, given your budget, you could use Enterprise SATA or better
reliability vs. consumer SATA (or a blend of both).
With respect to the 2500K/2600K, they're good, but if they're not overclocked (oc'd
for short) then for your needs a 6-core X58 does offer some advantages with respect
to threaded rendering, etc. Note that a 4-core on X58 would not be competitive with
a 2600K unless it was oc'd, but then the 2600K can be oc'd aswell. Whether or not
you want to delve into that is another issue, though it does offer major speed
improvements if you know how to do it (and it's not really that difficult these
days), eg. I've just finished building a 4GHz i7 870 system for my brother, which
gives CB10 (X-CPU) = 23415, and CB11.5 (CPU) = 6.87, beating a stock 2600K for CB10
(Anand review) and almost matching a 2600K for CB11.5, and all with a mbd that only
cost 65 UKP new (these results are 30% and 25% faster than stock speed respectively).
If you don't want to deal with overclocking though, then the 2600K would be best
in general, but remember a 6-core X58 will be quicker for highly threaded tasks
like rendering. Best of all would be an oc'd 6-core X58 of course, but then that
leads back to the equivalent option of being able to oc a 2600K aswell. Your example
950 config is not logical compared to a 2600K though. If you're not going to oc the\
950, then a 2600K is better.
RAM-wise, if you're not going to overclock, then there's a plethora of good 8GB
DDR3/1600 kits which are more than adequate. Just avoid the cheap stuff (Kingston
Value Ram? Nooo!). For oc'ing though, I've been particularly impressed with the
surprisingly low cost DDR3/2133 8GB Mushkin Ridgeback kit, though the GSkill Ripjaw
series is also good. The 4GHz 870 system I built for my brother has a 4GB DDR3/2K
Corsair kit which also works well. If you're not going to oc though, then 2GHz-rated
RAM is not necessary. Hmm, have to say btw, I did not like the Kingston HyperX 2GHz
4GB kit - I couldn't even get it to run at 1600 properly when the CPU was at 4GHz.
wisecracker has a good point about getting someone else to build a system for you,
especially if you like the idea of an oc'd setup. I do build systems for people,
but I suspect I'm on the wrong continent.
(I'm in the UK) He's also right
about 8-core Bulldozer possibly being a good contender for Blender, etc., but who
knows? I doubt Intel is standing still, and then there's unknown issue of pricing.
Are you in a hurry to sort out this purchase? If not, then learning more about the
issues involved while waiting for the BD launch might be wise, and in the meantime
prices should continue to fall.
NB: I actually have some good used pro cards for sale (less than half new price),
but you can probably get them cheaper off eBay. Just be careful you don't get mixed
up with the really old gamer cards of yesteryear which in some cases have similar
names.
(simply ignore anything with less than 512MB RAM). Obviously though, if
you want a proper warranty, etc. then buy new, which given your budget would tend
to push you more towards gamer cards though.
Oh, I'd be happy to run any tests if you like, if there's something more specific
you'd want checked.
Ian.
PS. If you're really more of a pro user, then get a 1920x1200 display, not
1920x1080. The extra height really helps for such work, eg. the display I bought
for my brother is an Iiyama 26" Prolite E2607WS. For myself I bought the even
better HP LP2475W H-IPS 24" 1920x1200, but that's a pricey unit (check the review
on trustedreviews.com). If you're doing animation/design though, then 1200+ height
is a must IMO.
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