[russh]

Hello All,

Im just about to upgrade my machine, and have one minor question that I can not seem to find supportive info on. Sandy Bridge / Ivy Bridge / Haswell??

From what I have ready, Sandy Bridge is old hat now so forget that

Haswell, seems to have been developed more for the ultra book / tablet market, so has optimized power consumption.......would that have a performance reduction under CFD laod?

So would I be right in thinking the Ivy Bridge is best choice??

[evcelica]

Sandy Bridge-E is the best choice for CFD Computing applications as it has 4 memory channels. This includes the currect XEON line and the i7: 3820, 3930K, 3960X, 3970x.
This is different than Sandy Bridge without the E.

Ivy-Bridge-E and Haswell-E lines have not been released yet, but they will be better than sandy bridge E when they are released. Ivy bridge E releases in less than a month with their consumer products. Haswell-E will be another year yet.

Haswell-E > Ivy Bridge-E > Sandy Bridge-E > Haswell > Ivy Bridge > Sandy Bridge

[russh]

Im glad I asked the question now then!!

So by the sounds of it, it will be best to wait for a month for Ivy Bridge E to come out right??

[scipy]

Maybe first tell us about your budget, since Erik just upgraded you from Socket 1155/1150 & dual channel RAM to something that's 2-3x more expensive (Socket 2011 & quad channel - when talking about i7's) or 5+ times more expensive when talking about Dual E5 Xeons.

Don't wait for 10-12 core IB-E CPUs if they're out of your price range...

[russh]

Hi Spicy,

I would say my budget would be around the £1000 mark.

I believe they will be releasing the i7-4820K which will be a 4 core 8 thread IB-E which looks set to be around the £280 mark

At the moment, I had planned.....
CPU - £235
Mother - £220
Memory - £150 (I will add to the memory later)
Graphics - £220
HDD - £80 (this will be for a OS and Program SSD drive, I have a 2tb drive already to add for files system)
Cooling - £70 (Water)
PSU - £40


Cheers

[scipy]

Well, first off - not spicy, but ok.

The CPU is not really the biggest price difference in the whole configuration. The motherboards for socket 2011 are literally 2+ times more expensive than socket 1150 counterparts. Quad channel memory isn't that much more expensive, but you need 4 sticks minimum (while on dual channel you can get away with 2x8 GB for example). Socket 2011 CPUs come with no cooling and the coolers for this socket aren't really dirt cheap. Socket 2011 motherboards don't come with onboard graphics (since those are run by the processor anyway) so you need a dedicated graphics card anyway..

All in all, socket 2011 might be out of your price range.. because if you are going with it, you need at least a 6 core cpu to make it worth your while (6 core i7-3930K is going to be twice as fast as a 4 core i5/i7-4670/4770) because otherwise you've payed too much for a motherboard and everything else and got maybe 20 % performance boost compared to a Socket 1150 solution. Not worth the money.

Either increase your budget slightly and go with a 6 core socket 2011 cpu, 32-64 GB RAM, ATi/AMD FirePro V4900 or go with a i5-4670K, 16-32 GB RAM and stick with the onboard graphics.. I'm not going into the rest of the setup (MBO, SSD, HDD, case, PSU, bla bla) cause that should be similar for both setups, except the MBO obviously.

[russh]

Hi,

Firstly, apologies for the typo scipy

Im not sure Im following your suggestion of an i5. I put in my budget £235 for the CPU and £220 for the mother.
Based on this, my budget would allow for the sandy bridge-e (i7-3820) at £239, and I could get the asus P9X79 LE for £183 (or the pro for £234)

Am I missing something in terms of the i5-4670K being more powerful?
The i5 also only has 2 memory channels, while the SB-E has 4


By the way, Im currently running a Quadro FX 1400, but with the upgrade I have budgeted £220 for the graphics card. This is because I will also be using the machine for CAD use, so while the Quadro has been a fantastic card (and still is), Im thinking of a high performance main stream card instead, something like a Sapphire HD 7950 BOOST 3GB GDDR5 or a Gigabyte GTX 660 Ti 3GB GDDR5 6008MHz

[scipy]

I guess you didn't really read what I wrote.

If you go SB-E it's ONLY worth doing if you go 6 core and not quad core. Otherwise you can go IB and faster dual channel RAM for a LOT less money and have similar performance. It will NOT be "more powerful", but it will be less money..

Direct3D graphics cards are useless for any CAD/meshing. They'll do it, but no better than an onboard graphics of a i5 will. That said, if you don't plan on handling huge assemblies or manual repairs of 10+ million element meshes, then you're probably fine with a "gaming" graphics card.

[russh]

oh ok, now I understand

Just read up about Intel HD Graphics 4600 that's on the i7, I didn't realise they were so powerful, always assume a dedicated one was far Superior. The HD 4600 is even solidworks approved!!

Would it be worth me just sticking to the HD 4600 as my graphics then, and putting the graphics card money in to CPU / Memory?

[scipy]

No.

Intel HD 4600 is only onboard i5/i7 chips of the socket 1150 (dual channel). If you put more money towards an i7-3930K (socket 2011), that one DOES NOT have onboard graphics and you need a dedicated graphics card then.

Either go i5, onboard graphics, 32 GB of fastest RAM (2400 MHz CL10) or go i7-3930K (socket 2011), 32-64 GB of up to 2133 MHz RAM (even that might not get recognized by some samples of the 3930K, so might aswell go 1600 or 1866.. frequency doesn't make that much of a difference when you have quad channel) and a dedicated graphics card.

[russh]

Hi Scipy,

Thanks for all the advice, pretty glad I asked before I bought now as by the sounds of it I would of wasted a whole load of money.

So in terms of the graphics, I was in the thinking of a card with as much memory as I could afford, has I went the gaming card route (even though I play no games!!), so would it be far better in performance to drop down from the 3GB gaming card to a 1Gb quadro card (like the HP Quadro 600 1GB GDDR3 which is £167)

Im currently running a Quadro FX 1400, but at only 256Mb its starting to be a bit twitchy and slow on graphics / rendering.

[scipy]

Forget about Quadro. At the moment, any AMD FirePro card eats the competing NVIDIA card in the CAD/meshing segment.

I've recently tested my FirePro V5800, a friend's FirePro V4900 and a configuration at work with a Quadro 4000. You can look up the pricing, but the new generation V4900 had within 5 % performance of my V5800 and both cards kicked the shit out of the much more expensive Quadro 4000. So, at the moment, the recommendation is FirePro V4900.

[russh]

Thanks Scipy, will take a look now



Just looked......wow, that's pretty darn cheap. Would save the £100 out my original Graphics Card budget!

[JBeilke]

Originally Posted by scipy

Forget about Quadro. At the moment, any AMD FirePro card eats the competing NVIDIA card in the CAD/meshing segment.

I've recently tested my FirePro V5800, a friend's FirePro V4900 and a configuration at work with a Quadro 4000. You can look up the pricing, but the new generation V4900 had within 5 % performance of my V5800 and both cards kicked the shit out of the much more expensive Quadro 4000. So, at the moment, the recommendation is FirePro V4900.

Windows or Linux?

There might be a reason that the Quadros are recommended for Linux.

[russh]

I think I can get a Firepro V5900 for £150, so think that could be the graphics card sorted

[russh]

I think Im going to go for a socket 2011 CPU, as this will hopefully future proof me for the Ivy Bridge-e / Haswell-e CPU's which I can upgrade to at a later date (Haswell's being release next year so gives me enough time to save for a good 6 core)

Does that make sense??

What is a good 2011 motherboard on the markets, the Asus P9X79??

[kyle]

Originally Posted by scipy

If you go SB-E it's ONLY worth doing if you go 6 core and not quad core. Otherwise you can go IB and faster dual channel RAM for a LOT less money and have similar performance.

That just isn't true. SB-E has 4 memory channels, IB only has 2. This is true regardless of processor and number of cores. Memory bandwidth is the most important metric, not number of cores.

I'd actually argue that quad core SB-E might make more sense than a hex core SB-E. The two additional cores just subdivide your domain further without increasing total memory bandwidth. There is some benefit in that the six core CPUs have a little more cache, but that may or may not be worth the extra cost.

[russh]

Really lost on what im meant to get now

[scipy]

Yes.. Ofcourse. But dual channel only becomes a bottleneck after the 3rd core (at 3 cores current generations of i5/i7 have a 95 % scaling efficiency when talking about memory intensive solvers - coupled, at 4 cores it drops to ~85 % which can still be considered OK), the fact is most people who have a quad core CPU will use 3 cores most of the time to have 1 free for miscellaneous work while something is being solved in the background.

Scaling efficiency on quad channel RAM is much better (~84 % at 6 cores) but then it drops quite a bit after that and is ~ 68 % on 8 cores (tested on an E5-4640). If you take the fact that a quad core i7 for Socket 2011 has a locked multiplier and that even though it has a pretty high frequency of 3.6 GHz, any i5 (IvyBridge/Haswell) with a better IMC and the ability to see RAM beyond 2133 MHz (talking about 2400 MHz CL10 which is pretty wide spread now and the price difference between even 1600 MHz and it is not that huge any more), plus the fact that they're "unlocked" and able to go above 4.0 GHz even on stock box coolers means that they're going to get pretty damn close to an i7-3820 for a lot less money.

This is why it's only worth going LGA2011 if you're going 6 core.

As a matter of fact, here's some results I've gathered. This is just a comparison of a i7-3960X locked to 3930K default settings (lower clock, no turbo) at 4 cores and an i5-3570K:

i7 @ 4 cores/threads @ 2133 MHz CL9 RAM (Coupled solver, Fluent 14.5, 8GB test case) = 9,451 seconds/iteration
i5 @ 4 cores/threads @ 2133 MHz CL9 RAM (Coupled solver, Fluent 14.5, 8GB test case) = 10,308 seconds/iteration

So, the i7 does it in 8,31 % less time (i7-3820 = 253 €, i5-3570K or the replacement i5-4670K = 190-200 € | LGA2011 motherboard ASUS P9X79 = 210 €, LGA1150/1155 motherboard = 80-100 €) and the i7 configuration is 54 % more money for < 10 % performance? That's not really a smart choice.

If you went for a 6 core CPU like an i7-3930K (500 € + same motherboard) you'd have something that can do an iteration in 6,786 seconds on all 6 cores. Now, that is 34 % less solve time at 236 % more money than an i5 - still not really worth it, but at least you can overclock now and at 4.5 GHz it'll do it in 5,89 seconds (42 % less time). So at least you're in the neighborhood of having something nearly 2x faster for a bit more than 2x the money.

In reality, even that is not a "best buy", but it's less hassle than setting up a mini-cluster of a few nodes and everything is under the same operating system, which some people appreciate.

[scipy]

OK. Just take my word for it and get the following:

http://geizhals.de/msi-x79a-gd45-8d-...r-a722507.html

- ASUS board is 50 € more and you will not see a difference.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/INTEL-XEON-E...item2580e9c92b

- you seem to be from the UK, order that and enjoy the 6 core i7 performance at less than half the cost. You do not need hyperthreading anyway.

http://geizhals.de/corsair-vengeance...9-a809410.html

- get any 8x8 GB kit of 1600 MHz CL9-9-9-24 RAM (try and make sure it's a single kit of 8 sticks as you are probably going to have less problems getting it to work properly). I've gone for the 2400 MHz 8x8 GB but the processor's internal memory controller will not let it work with anything other than 1600 MHz (even though CL8, but it's still shitty compared to what 2400 MHz CL10 could've been). If you don't have the money then go for a 4x8 GB kit so you have an option to upgrade later, still 1600 MHz CL9!

http://geizhals.de/amd-firepro-3d-v4...9-a705597.html

- you will not see a noticeable difference between this and a nearly 2.5x more expensive V5900.

Miscellaneous crap:

- get any SYNCHRONOUS MLC solid state drive such as http://geizhals.de/ocz-vertex-4-128g...g-a759195.html or a Corsair Force GT series or a Samsumg or Intel or whatever, as long as it's synchronous.
- get a decent case with some cooling options
- get a decent power supply of 600-750 W (the price difference is non-existent so just look at warranty and get at least 5 years.. I'd go with an OCZ ZT 750 W series such as http://geizhals.de/ocz-zt-series-750...w-a692695.html)

Enjoy your machine.

P.S. All Socket 2011 processors (eBay ones too) come with no cooler/heat sink - so, order a Socket 2011 compatible cooling solution. Since the Xeon is not overclockable, a stock Intel RTS2011AC cooler will work without problems.