Workstation with 2 Xeon E5-2630L at 2ghz or 2 opteron 6282 se

[eljosh]

Hey guys,
Which would be better? Because with the Intel I would only get 12 cores at 2ghz each, and AMD 16 cores at 3.5. They workstation would used for Maya work and rendering, or 3d modeling needs. Amd seems like the better choice because of the speed and amount of cores, but most of everyone uses Intel, like Apple in the Mac pros and on the consumer level. This is my first branch into the workstation area.
Thanks

 

[k1114]

The opterons are better but I'm confused as to why you are comparing a top of the line opteron that costs $1000 vs a mid range low power xeon that costs $650. Is the company you are buying from have them at the same price? And what company is it?

BTW the 6282 is 2.6 ghz(3ghz turbo on all cores) not 3.5.

 

[bfburkejr]

Maybe he is confusing the AMD 6220 8 core the runs at 3 Ghz/Turbo at 3.3Ghz all cores/Turbo+ or whatever they are calling it the chips will run half od the cores at 3.6 Ghz and turn the other half off. I am not sure if it turns of 4 at a time or if it turn off 1 for every core that goes to 3.6 Ghz., sorry. They are list priced at $523. This wouls be a much more "equal" comparison. The AMD's draw and average of 80 watts and have a Thermal Design Power of 115 watts. "The Thermal Design Power (TDP) is the average maximum power a processor can dissipate while running commercially available software. TDP is primarily used as a guideline for manufacturers of thermal solutions (heatsinks/fans, etc) which tells them how much heat their solution should dissipate." cpu-world.com One last comment, although I am not an expert or employed in the engineeering of cpu's or anything I do know that clock speed and core count are only indicators of processing power. There are MANY other considerations, such as chip architecture and motherboard layout (northbridge and south bridge solutions, number of memory channels (AMD's has 4 channel memory as long as you have 4 sticks of memory per processor), Memory speed the chip will work with and your hard drive solution which depends on North or south bridge chips for data throughput speeds. I may be off on a few of these but as I undertand it system speed is just that, it is not just cpu clock speed and core count. Yes they have a big impact, but sometimes a system with a slower clocked chip with less cores can beat a system with a faster clock speed and more cores. I no this actually doesn't answer any of your questions and raises more, but maybe now you will do more research and get a system that works best for your specific needs for the best price. Lastly it also depends on what you will be using the computer for most of the time. Games, Number crunching, audio, CAD_CAM etc. and don't forget your graphics solution will have a huge effect on your system speed. There are high end systems that can use extra unused graphics processing power toi augment the cpu's processing, but that is beyond the average home user. Good luck on your quest!. By the way I run an ASUS KGPE-D16 with 2 x AMD 6128 8 core 2Ghz MagneyCours CPU's with 16 Gb of pc 1333 registered Ram, and Intel Solid State 160 Gb drive for the OS, 2 x 1 Tb 3GB/s drives for long termprogram and file storage and an 8 Tb RAID run with ASUS's Pike 2008 card using 4 x 6 gb/s Western Dig. Caviar black Enterprise 2Tb drives + some other odds and ends. It is a music production Workstation basically. I am in the process of getting 2 X AMD 6282SE cpu's and increasing the RAM to 128 GB of PC1600 and a better Graphics card,probably an ATI7970 bases multi display card.
Peace,
B.Burke Jr.

 

[bfburkejr]

Hey guys,
Which would be better? Because with the Intel I would only get 12 cores at 2ghz each, and AMD 16 cores at 3.5. They workstation would used for Maya work and rendering, or 3d modeling needs. Amd seems like the better choice because of the speed and amount of cores, but most of everyone uses Intel, like Apple in the Mac pros and on the consumer level. This is my first branch into the workstation area.
Thanks

I did a little research on the intel chip. It is actually faster than it would appear for a few reasons. However it is not THAT fast. on to my suggestion. Seeing how you will be using your workstation for Graphics Rendering, I would go with AMD and an AMD/ATI Graphics card solution. The CPU I would recomend is the 6262HE. It is a 16 core chip that runs at 1.6Ghz and all cores turbo at 2.1 and some or half at 2.9. The price is $523 list. if you have the $ get a 4 socket board and start with 2 cpu's if you don't have the $ for 4. With 4 installed you will be getting 64 cores for $2092 the same as 2 of the 6282se's. As long as MAYA is programed to take advantage of that many cores and you get 4 sticks of registered ram per CPU the memory will run 4 lane. This is the same chip that Cray Supercomputer's use in their top computers as they draw only 85 watts each so they will be easy to keep nice and cool and not drive your electric bill through the roof. Also you have to figure in the savings on Electric over time inyour system. First yoiu have to pay for the wattage to run it then for the wattage to cool it, it can add up in a year. Of course they use upwards of 500,000 cpu's in a system, but hey your not the US Government. It is just a solution that is out of the box a little, but seeing that you aren't going to be gaming and just rendering which can have your workstation running all night long or for days on a sequence, it might be a good way to go. There is also what I wrote in my first reply. Of course looking at the date you might have already built your workstation. I gues what I am saying is keep an open mind and look at more than two or threesolutions. Best of luck!
Peace,
bfburkejr

 

[eljosh]

I did a little research on the intel chip. It is actually faster than it would appear for a few reasons. However it is not THAT fast. on to my suggestion. Seeing how you will be using your workstation for Graphics Rendering, I would go with AMD and an AMD/ATI Graphics card solution. The CPU I would recomend is the 6262HE. It is a 16 core chip that runs at 1.6Ghz and all cores turbo at 2.1 and some or half at 2.9. The price is $523 list. if you have the $ get a 4 socket board and start with 2 cpu's if you don't have the $ for 4. With 4 installed you will be getting 64 cores for $2092 the same as 2 of the 6282se's. As long as MAYA is programed to take advantage of that many cores and you get 4 sticks of registered ram per CPU the memory will run 4 lane. This is the same chip that Cray Supercomputer's use in their top computers as they draw only 85 watts each so they will be easy to keep nice and cool and not drive your electric bill through the roof. Also you have to figure in the savings on Electric over time inyour system. First yoiu have to pay for the wattage to run it then for the wattage to cool it, it can add up in a year. Of course they use upwards of 500,000 cpu's in a system, but hey your not the US Government. It is just a solution that is out of the box a little, but seeing that you aren't going to be gaming and just rendering which can have your workstation running all night long or for days on a sequence, it might be a good way to go. There is also what I wrote in my first reply. Of course looking at the date you might have already built your workstation. I gues what I am saying is keep an open mind and look at more than two or threesolutions. Best of luck!
Peace,
bfburkejr

Thanks man, I actually haven't built the system yet, got busy at work so could finish my research. Yea, that was my big question with intel vs AMD, do the more cores from the AMD work better in a hyperthreading workflow. And the power bill question it doesn't really matter too much, because I will use it at my office.