Computer for architecture

[bambiboom]

Realistically, the Adobe/Autodesk software side of it is not a major concern. The extent of the Adobe stuff we use is minimal. A bit of post production in Photoshop, and that's really it. With Autodesk, it's Revit, and we're not rendering in it, so if my own machine can handle it, this one will be fine. The only remotely demanding Autodesk software with be 3ds. They're getting much better at supporting multithreading, and even with that, the actual final renders, which will be still shots with 3ds, will be done with Octane or VRay, both of which are GPU heavy. On the actual modelling side of things, as the complexity of the model increases, the demand is put on the CPU and RAM, as opposed to the GPU, which really is just used for anti-aliasing. Autodesk still has a bit to go with the multithreading, but they've been making progress, which is encouraging at the least. Video rendering will be done in Lumion, which is a mixture of both CPU and GPU, and we do little or no post production on our videos. As far as the system goes, the spec is definitely enough to handle Lumion, revit etc. It's 3ds with things like RT rendering that will be the real test.

I like the idea of doing a mid-point system and evaluating it over a few months. I'm already lined up to do 4 videos in lumion on separate projects, but my computer's cpu and gpu makes it a time-consuming challenge. That being said, they're nearly ready to give the go-ahead on this machine. Once it's up and running and we do evaluation, it'll tie in with me testing out things like Octane, 3ds and UE. We can see how the machine handles it and make adjustments as necessary.

The good thing with the GTX 10 series is that it IS 3/4 way sli compatible, they just won't be releasing a new high-bandwith bridge any time soon. So you can do it, but it's not as straightforward as anticipated. I'm actually now leaning towards the 1070, because it's a bit cheaper and still offers more than enough performance for our current situation. I think the 1080 is more "gaming" driven, but for the architecture field, 2 x 1070s in SLI should cover us for what we're looking to do.

nbarrett,

A sensible approach.

There is a new GTX 1070 review on this site, and in the limited range of the test- only games- the GTX 1070 is still faster than the Titan X and variably than the GTX 980 Ti. I would vote for 3X GTX 1070 before 2X 1080 as there are then 3X GPU's and 6144 CUDA cores to 2X GPU and 5120 CUDA cores. The GTX 1070 is very tempting. But- when we be seeing used ones?

Cheers,

BambiBoom

 

[nbarrett]

Yeah at $449 for the founders edition, the 1070 definitely has a lot of pluses. I'm hanging on a bit for some of the 3rd parties to release their modded versions. Some of them look like they'll have much better cooling and some better clock speeds, so I'm hoping they start to come out by the end of this month. It's tough to decide which to go to, but it'll most likely be one of the main ones like ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte or Zotac. I'm struggling to find any information on release dates for them, the only ones available at the moment seem to be the founders editions ones, and they seem to really vary in price. Even on amazon they're past the $1000 mark.

3 x 1070 would be ideal, but in the interest of doing things like benchmarks and evaluations, 2 should suffice. Lumion, for example, has its own benchmarking setup, and the scores for using it with Titans are already immense. So running it with 2 x 1070s would be really interesting!

You didn't by any chance come across any release dates for the non-founders edition versions of the 1070s?

 

[bambiboom]

Yeah at $449 for the founders edition, the 1070 definitely has a lot of pluses. I'm hanging on a bit for some of the 3rd parties to release their modded versions. Some of them look like they'll have much better cooling and some better clock speeds, so I'm hoping they start to come out by the end of this month. It's tough to decide which to go to, but it'll most likely be one of the main ones like ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte or Zotac. I'm struggling to find any information on release dates for them, the only ones available at the moment seem to be the founders editions ones, and they seem to really vary in price. Even on amazon they're past the $1000 mark.

3 x 1070 would be ideal, but in the interest of doing things like benchmarks and evaluations, 2 should suffice. Lumion, for example, has its own benchmarking setup, and the scores for using it with Titans are already immense. So running it with 2 x 1070s would be really interesting!

You didn't by any chance come across any release dates for the non-founders edition versions of the 1070s?

nbarrett,

As Quadrocentric as I am, the GTX 1070 is very tempting. When will there be used ones for > $300?

Here is release information for the EVGA GTX 1080 > $700

The EVGA 1070 is also the "Founder's Edition" reference card > $449.

From the GTX 1070 review this site: This is a bit ambiguous- is he talking abut he reference card or the non-reference cardds:

"Prepare yourself for the same debate, then, as Nvidia lifts the veil on GeForce GTX 1070 performance. The company tells us the Founders Edition card will sell for $449. Meanwhile, board partners are readying their own designs starting at an MSRP of $379. Availability isn’t expected until June 10th though, so it remains to be seen if those prices hold or if launch-day demand drives them up. Such is the trouble with paper launches."

With such strong performance, the price difference from 1070 ($379 for non-ref) to 1080 ( $600? non-ref) for an additional 20% performance seems unnecessary.


Cheers,

BambiBoom

 

[nbarrett]

Yeah I'm with you on the 1070 vs 1080. I'm not convinced that the difference in price justifies a relatively small difference in performance. I still think it's worth my while hanging on for a bit till the non-referenced 1070s come out. There isn't much information around of when this would be, but I'm hoping it'll be this month.

I'm back having a sneaky look at dual cpu mobos that will take 4 x gpus, and with an eatx size. They're not too easy to find. I'm going to have a bit of a look this morning. But motherboards are far too complicated when I haven't had any coffee yet.

 

[bambiboom]

Yeah I'm with you on the 1070 vs 1080. I'm not convinced that the difference in price justifies a relatively small difference in performance. I still think it's worth my while hanging on for a bit till the non-referenced 1070s come out. There isn't much information around of when this would be, but I'm hoping it'll be this month.

I'm back having a sneaky look at dual cpu mobos that will take 4 x gpus, and with an eatx size. They're not too easy to find. I'm going to have a bit of a look this morning. But motherboards are far too complicated when I haven't had any coffee yet.

nbarrett,

The GTX 1080 and 1070 will both be more expensive and out of stock until probably the end of the Summer when there will be a slew of Gigabyte, MSI. and etc. That will be when I'll be buying a cast-off used GTX 980 Ti from the "latest thing only" crowd. There was a good cartoon in The New Yorker a couple of years ago: a random pile of monitors and CPU's on a table with a big sign "Day Old".

Motherboards can wait two minutes: Good coffee is the elixir of life and the first essential of architectural work. Some say caffeine is addictive but I can stop any time I want to, but I don't want to.

But motherboard are important. If you're set on having four GPU's, the first thing is going to be the layout of the PCIe slots, any of the layouts with 7 x16 slots will mean there can't be any other PCIe device.

Over the next cup, have a look at PCIe expander chassis as this might solve the problem. On that I like in principle is the CUBIX Xpander which takes off one or two x16 slots to run 4 to 16 slots via Firewire in an external chassis. That one has a pleasantly, harsh, brutal industrial look. There a are a lot of these oriented to the gaming crowd. The performance is not as good as direct connection, and a better technology than Firewire is probably Thunderbolt connections. I'm curious about the GPU expanders the "Magma" though that's getting expensive.

Keep in mind through all this that starting with a single Xeon E5, you'll have 40 PCIe lanes so the first two cards may both run at x16, but any additional will be at x8. I've read however, that this is not really noticeable, but might be a consideration to start with one CPU or two GPU's and if that is not sufficient, add the external stack.

Looking though motherboards there doesn't seem to be any realistic 4 GPU motherboard except the Supermicro X10DRG-Q. I was looking into a modified Caselabs case but I think the special spacing of the GPU slots will not align.

In my news, I've bought a Samsung SM951 M.2 256GB and M.2 to PCIe adapter card so that should wake up the z420. Meanwhile, I'll wake up with another espresso.

Cheers,

BambiBoom
(Seaco Aroma, Peet's Coffee, Italian roast > espresso)

 

[nbarrett]

All things considered, the asus z10 seems to be my best option (http://www.asus.com/ca-en/Motherboards/Z10PED8_WS/). It's 2011-3 CPU, but it'll take ddr4, which I'm only noticing that the 2011 based dual cpus don't usually support. It also has enough slots to cover all my ram and gpu needs, so i think it's the front runner at the moment. I'm not too worried about the lack of free pcie slots. A sound card would be a factor if this was going to be my home pc (i do some music producing), but realistically, it's moot for work. I'm still going to hang on till the end of the summer for this though. I think it'll be August or September at this rate. Good call on the SSD though. I never expected to see an increase in performance until i actually went and bought one!

Also, good call on the espresso. I'm on a siphoned dark-roast small batch italian coffee at the moment. It basically tastes of chocolate and charcoal... the way all coffee should be!

 

[bambiboom]

All things considered, the asus z10 seems to be my best option (http://www.asus.com/ca-en/Motherboards/Z10PED8_WS/). It's 2011-3 CPU, but it'll take ddr4, which I'm only noticing that the 2011 based dual cpus don't usually support. It also has enough slots to cover all my ram and gpu needs, so i think it's the front runner at the moment. I'm not too worried about the lack of free pcie slots. A sound card would be a factor if this was going to be my home pc (i do some music producing), but realistically, it's moot for work. I'm still going to hang on till the end of the summer for this though. I think it'll be August or September at this rate. Good call on the SSD though. I never expected to see an increase in performance until i actually went and bought one!

Also, good call on the espresso. I'm on a siphoned dark-roast small batch italian coffee at the moment. It basically tastes of chocolate and charcoal... the way all coffee should be!

nbarrett,

The ASUS Z10PE WS does give very good performance. The 8 RAM slot version is a bit more open spacing.

It's true that LGA2011 use DDR3 but for version 1 and v2. All Xeon E5-2600 v3 series will use DDR4 as those are LGA2011-3.

As mentioned, I like to have the options for peripherals for example a RAID controller- of which I think your system is prime candidate though it may be linked to the office server, and as you mentioned, a soundcard. All my systems have duplex, MIDI sound cards, but the good feature of soundcards is that a USB interface is much more controllable, portable and not necessarily terribly expensive anyway. A laptop and USB sound interface is a portable recording studio.

These days I. using the soundcard more to run music and videos, but I've made hundreds of recordings live (Oktava M012 / Peavey VMP2) and MIDI (Yamaha S90) though an M-Audio 192 PCI card. The dedicated sound system is an ancient HP M9624F with a Core2 Quad Q6600 and still works perfectly well, but I have M-Audio 192 and M-Audio 2496 cards in every system at work and at home.

Now, I think it's time to combine soundcards and coffee and listen to Bach Cantata BWV 211.

Cheers,

BambiBoom