Purchasing the best Xeon Processor for a single workstation
+1 for @mcgyvr suggestion. Or the E3-1280V5 for a bit extra MHz.
http://ark.intel.com/products/88171/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1280-v5-8M-Cache-3_70-GHz
http://ark.intel.com/products/93742/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1585-v5-8M-Cache-3_50-GHz
Tough to suggest something but it's rarely an exact science. If you do more rendering than anything else, consider going with more cores, but that'll bump up the price and compromise on core speed. But those 2 chips are solid for Inventor with light rendering use.
The 2630 is no good, the clock speed is too low. Obvs it'll work but you'll feel the sluggishness.
The E5-1650 V3 is a good choice, I think we've got a couple of them in the office. Solid high clock speed at turbo and 6 cores/12 threads for that extra edge at rendering over standard quad cores.
I'd say out of the LGA2011-3 line that's the best in the budget. I put a E5-2687W-V3 in a workstation used for FEA, there's a video of it being benched against an i7 4790K on my YouTube channel. It's a good demo of how clock speed is king for Inventor, a $2000 CPU was thrashed by a $300 i7
Nice comparison.
The only place to be considering a Xeon-based workstation, IMHO, is when you have an Enterprise-level agreement with Dell, HP, etc. to source dozens (if not hundreds) of identical boxes on a regular basis. The per-unit purchase cost and service becomes competitive with the small-unit suppliers.
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If you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, expect friction burns.
"I don't know" is the beginning of knowledge, not the end.
If you are going to fly by the seat of your pants, expect friction burns.
"I don't know" is the beginning of knowledge, not the end.
Apologies if this is known but Xeons are cut from the same cloth as i7's, Intel simply offer a higher spec in the Xeon range.
Other than the very expensive Extreme range of i7's (6950X etc) the i7's are generally all a 4 core variation of the same chip, then with the Xeons they offer the 6, 8, 10, 12, 18 etc core chips which are intended for servers, VM hosts, that kind of thing.
The performance difference between a 4C Xeon and a 4C i7 on the same platform, the same clock speed, is pretty much nothing, they'll perform absolutely identically. Xeons can utilise ECC memory but that's not really much help to Inventor, it'll still crash out with or without ECC RAM.
The main difference is back in the labs. The Xeons go through much higher stress testing, because they're designed for 24/7 server use in mission critical environments, they have much more lab time behind them hence the price premium.
There's more to it than all that, but the same spec Xeon to i7 will perform the same. A higher spec i7 will perform better than a lower spec Xeon, and vice versa.
TLDR; I'd never buy a Xeon for my home PC, but I'd always put a Xeon into an office workstation. Exactly the same applies to Quadros vs GeForce.
@mcgyvr wrote:
Neil,
Thanks for the good explanation there..
I just stated what I did above because it could save the OP quite a bit of money vs them thinking the xeon is going to perform better because its more expensive..
Processor speed is king..
Yea good shout too. If it was my money I think I'd be looking at the highest spec i7 in budget rather than lose some performance paying for that Xeon premium.
Actually with my money I'm waiting for the Kaby Lake architecture to release next year, I need to knock @mdavis22569 off the top of the performance charts!
@Neil_Cross wrote:
@mcgyvr wrote:
Neil,
Thanks for the good explanation there..
I just stated what I did above because it could save the OP quite a bit of money vs them thinking the xeon is going to perform better because its more expensive..
Processor speed is king..
Actually with my money I'm waiting for the Kaby Lake architecture to release next year, I need to knock @mdavis22569 off the top of the performance charts!
LOL ... I'm planning my next one too. However on a serious note, ty for the information. I'm not a 100% familiar with the Xeon's ... I'm just use to my comfort zone of I-series.
I think the new Nvidia Pascal Architecture is going to help make things run smoother as well...
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Mike Davis
Certainly won't do any harm, however when I upgraded from a 970 to 1070 I noticed precisely exactly zero improvement in Inventor performance, but it won't have gone backwards that's for sure. The increase in VRAM is where it's at for what Inventor needs.
I very nearly quickly upgraded again to the new Titan but at £1000, I figured I best wait to see if they drop a 1080Ti first. Dual 1080Ti's mmmmm
Yea 3DS Max could have a completely different set of requirements to Inventor, so any advice we give on a spec optimised for Inventor might not be appropriate or the best for the money for Max.
I found this post, it's a few years old but there's a guy in here who clearly knows his CUDA cores from his stream processors, so there could be some valuable info in this post for you http://forums.cgarchitect.com/75337-3ds-max-gpu-impact-rendering-gpu-vs-cpu.html regarding hardware choice for Max.
Good luck.
p.s. Really nice portfolio you have there, very different and unique.