BOXX 'World's Fastest Single-CPU Workstation'

[mman74]

What's this?! Powerful machine. No-one questioning whether it is capable of playing a popular FPS begining with "C"? What is this site coming to?

 

[Little Lost Linden]

I bet Second Life would purr on that system.

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

Wow. That could be put together to be something really quite impressive. Put a Xeon CPU in there, some ECC RAM and 7 watercooled single slot 480s connected to an external watercooler and you'll have yourself a seriously mean CUDA based machine.

 

[Draven35]

[citation][nom]hellwig[/nom]Has NVidia demonstrated scalability to that level with its workstation graphics cards? I know they're doing their whole GPGPU thing, and not rendering video games, but can their CUDA technology handle that? I just want to know if this is something practical, or more just "hah, look what we did".[/citation]


Yes, CUDA is set up to handle scalability beyond SLI even. They are presently showing CUDA apps runnign across networked machines at SIGGRAPH.

 

[jsm6746]

what water cooling are they using on this? cuz that block looks like the h50, without the branding, but if that's the radiator on the front, it looks pretty large... and i don't see anything going to the gfx cards... i'm guessing you'll use the network for storage?? where's all the sdd drives in a raid setup??

 

[Draven35]

didn't say it was cheap!

 

[pcworm]

[citation][nom]nevertell[/nom]Maybe I am wrong, but once, some "I know everything about everything guy", who actually is pretty educated, told me that cuda doesn't use sli, but it uses some other way of linking the gpus together and that it scales better than sli AND it works with pretty much as many cards as you can plug in the motherboard.[/citation]
well actually in older versions of cuda, u even had to disable SLI to run your program on more than one GPU, although its not the case nowadays

and yes, although it highly depends on proper programming, cuda pretty-much scales on any number of GPUs

 

[Draven35]

CUDA may not have used SLI under older versions of the drivers. I have used in the past few days, several systems using CUDA across multiple Quadro 5000s. (Some were even using Fermi-based Quadros that are in other machines)

 

[eddieroolz]

Just image all that (workstation) graphical horsepower....mhmm...

 

[dEAne]

Just a workstation? huh - thought the casing doesn't show much it can handle the load.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

4 GPUs....But can it play......nevermind :lol:

 

[dragunover]

[citation][nom]borisof007[/nom]Idk why, but 1200 watts doesn't seem enough for an extreme OC'd i7 with 4 video cards.[/citation]
Depends on the power supply manufacturer. If it's someone like Seasonic, Silverstone, or maybe Antec, then it's possible.
However, you have to figure in that the GPGPU apps aren't going to be able to utilize all of the processing power and therefore wattage of the whole system.

 

[quanticfx]

We use Boxx's 4850 Xtreme workstations for building high end CAD and BIM models. The HDDS are mounted behind the MB on the other side of the backing, it can fit 8 of them in if needed. The systems are extremely stable and we have yet to have any problems with them. In the business environment, at least ours, the lower key the case the better.

 

[koga73]

such a shitty case for such nice hardware

 

[joebob2000]

The question we must ask (can't believe no one else did): Will it run Crysis?

If so, where on the Top500 list does this machine go?

 

[JPHD]

yea... but can it play Crysis 2? sorry couldnt resist.

on a serious note, a rig like that deserves a meaner looking case.

 

[tommysch]

Thats a pretty decent CAD workstation!

 

[tommysch]

[citation][nom]joebob2000[/nom]The question we must ask (can't believe no one else did): Will it run Crysis? If so, where on the Top500 list does this machine go?[/citation]

Its a workstation...

 

[Niva]

I don't know about people saying they don't like the case, I personally love the Boxxx cases. Especially if it's solid aluminum.

 

[enforcer22]

[citation][nom]danwat1234[/nom]This is not a 'Single-CPU Workstation', its a 'quad-CPU Workstation' or 'hexa-CPU Workstation'.Just because it is one CPU package != one CPU.Lol I'm 24 and I feel old.[/citation]

Actualy yes it does. There is in fact a difference from a multi cpu and a multi core system.

 

[Trueno07]

It looks so funny. 4 GPU's and a water cooling unit, but at the bottom of the case is that little tiny black fan.

 

[beayn]

[citation][nom]fatkid35[/nom]"wolrd fastest"? where's the proof. some numbers maybe? i could say i have the worlds biggest ding dong, but i gotta whip it out and measure it to prove it. lets see some numbers for the extreme E peen![/citation]

It's kind of a rhetorical statement like Apple's "It just works." They don't have to prove it and it probably isn't true, it's a selling point.

ATI once advertised it had the world's fastest 3d graphics card. The ad showed me charts of other 3d video cards and ATI's was indeed the fastest. Unfortunately my $150 ATI 3D RAGE couldn't render the 3d Text screensaver in Windows 95 at more than 1 fps, let alone play Quake 2 in hardware acceleration mode. I quickly found out the 3dfx Voodoo card was actually the fastest 3d card, blowing everything else out of the water and had been doing so long before ATI created that ad. Technically they weren't lying since the Voodoo was a strictly 3d addon card, not a full graphics card, but it was still an inaccurate boast.

 

[WarraWarra]

Now this is more of a workstation than the latest Apple mac Pro.

Yup don't see no hd's, maybe one 2.5" ssd below the dvd drive.
Will likely have a small hd/ssd to buffer and use nas as main storage.
Would expect at least external fibre channel to NAS or something onboard.

Scaling nvidia, they used to be able to do a full 4/6/8 SLI where Ati was stuck with barely 4 cards at one time cross/quadfire.

Things might have changed. Can really use one of these before breakfast. Not sure what I would be able to get to keep me busy the rest of the day while waiting for this one to do it's job rendering.

 

[WarraWarra]

Amazing how some people think this is a basic entry level home pc instead of a workstation.

Funny how the lines are starting to blur when you need this as a entry level gaming pc' and need 8 to 12 of these just to do a avg days work at home and still can not complete normal daily computing tasks with 8 or 12 of these.

 

[merleman]

Notice how close the tops of the video cards are to the side of the case? That is because there is room for six hard drives on the other side of the motherboard. At least that is the case in their air cooled workstations.