Corona - Titan black SLI or Titan Z?

[Juraj]

Since you want "much more" rendering power, than current hexacores don't cut it. But if you would find the xeons to be over budget,
you can also wait until mid September, where Haswell-E i7 arrive. But, only the highest model 5960X is going to be Octacore @ 3.0Ghz for 999 euros.
Plus 250 euros for new motheboard (new X99) and possibly for the sake of novelty DDR4, but that will have its heavy price (for very little benefit in CGI). But this solution would bring you roughly 30perc. more performance
of i7 4930k. i7 5930k is even bigger dissapoitment, it's not even worth waiting for, unless you are extreme overclocker/game enthousiast, and you really want DDR4 memory.

But since you were looking for super-overpriced monstrosity like TitanZ, then you probably can afford Xeons and should :- )

[Cyanhide]

As of now i'm at 3529€
But that doesn't give me dual xenon tho
NTEL XEON® E5-2697 V2 22NM 2.7GHZ 30MB LGA 2011 12 CORES 24 THREADS ( this one is currently ranked 1 )
ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS
CORSAIR 16GB (2X8GB) 1600MHZ CMP16GX3M4X1600C7 ZWART (x2 )
NOCTUA NH-U14S
CORSAIR 650W RM650 RM SERIES CP-9020054-EU
SAMSUNG 250GB 2.5 INCH 840 EVO SERIES BASIC MZ-7TE250BW (2)

Now, i'l be spending my whole day figuring out which would be more interesting for me, go for a cheaper Xeon and buy 2, or stick with this monster and add one over time. ( if that's even possible )
Honestly, this is proving to be harder then I thought lol.

but finding different xeons is not easy as well, not a lot of retail sellers who sell them, and I don't want to buy this from internet.

[Juraj]

You don't need the single top CPU, not if it will give you mere 5perc. overall performance in the end lol, but for double the price.

That's why I suggested 2667/2680 or 2687 if you want to spend bit more. But not 2697 lol.

Also, stop counting the cores. It's not important. The math goes like this: Total amount of Cores (exclude HT), multiplied by Turbo frequency for all the cores. =Total multithreaded performance.
But then again, you also need strong preference for less but higher clocked cores, so you have high single-threaded performance for workstation tasks.

Regarding the other component, are you trying to build the full computer or are you upgrading ?
Because you can keep your previous PSU (750W) and use single 780 GTX for example. It's fine. Two xeons only take 300W.

Adding single Xeon and adding one later is not good option. It just won't work well, if at all with Z9PE-D8 board. Also, memory slots are allocated per CPUs, so to saturate quad-channel, you need 8 dimm sticks.
Because of value/price, it's efficient to go for 8x8GB= 64GB total. You can keep corsair, just make sure it's low-profile.

Noctua U-series is excellent choice, I have them on xeons too. I only run 2 fans, but you can keep 3 fans (1 in middle for two U14S).

Regarding Xeon availability in Europe, yep, that's tough. I was only lucky to get them from Germany, and had to wait about week. Make sure to get the correct street price, don't overpay.

[Cyanhide]

I see I see, well I looked for those you mentioned first, but they don't sell em, that why I took the other one.
I'm going for a full new build, I'l keep this computer for games and some small render stuff.

Aha, about the PSU I heard a lot of different answers, some say you need 1200 watt, other 750 watt.
The 8x8 RAM configuration is interesting, this will save me a euro or two. As long as I stay at 1600MHZ ( + low profile ) it should be good.
About the coolers, I heard great things about them, and they are fairly cheap.

These are the only 2 xeons they sell aswell.

XEON® E5-2630 V2 22NM 2.60GHZ 15MB LGA 2011 6 CORES... 600euros
XEON® E5-2620 V2 22NM 2.10GHZ 15MB LGA 2011 6 CORES...  440euros

Remind me if your ever in the neighborhood of Belgium to buy you a drink lol.

[Juraj]

Well, I personally run 1000W Goldflower, because two xeons and small GPU only take up to 450+/-W, so it runs completely passive. I am noise-freak.
Each Xeon (with exception of high clock/turbo WS models) are  115W (or bit more if they turbo all cores), GTX780 is 250W under full load, the rest is meaningless, count 50W for convenience.
So Dual-Xeon with active-PSU and single 780 would draw 230+250+50=530W in average, so if you like proofing, 650W, or possibility of second GPU, you can go up to 1000W. Bot not 1200W :- )

Yes, you need 1600Mhz. Even though Asus officially states 1866 support, I've seen people struggle to get it, mine even had problems with 1600 heh....on latest bios.

Bellow 2660 are not worth considering. They are too low clocked to be worth the overal PC cost. 2660v2/2670v2 are the low budget option (should be able to get street price of around 1200-1400Euros for each),
2667v2/2680v2 are middle ground (1500-1600) euros for each, and workstation 2687WS is highest you should go, it's quite expensive with only little benefit from single-thread performance.
Don't really consider the rest.

It's worth contacting custom builders, they have access to direct sellers (B2B, not consumer), and can ask around which wholesale sellers can order it.

The total cost for full workstation, without GPU(you already have one spare), with middle choice (2667 in preference for singlethread/2680in preference for multithread), with high-end components (platinum 1000W PSU Goldflower/Seasonic, Fractal XL2, Noiseblocker 140mm case fans) should not exceed 5000 euros in total cost with VAT. If you are direct VAT payer, than -20perc. so 4000 euros.

[Cyanhide]

I see I see,
Well your 5000 euro range is pretty accurate, you really cant get anything descent beneath the 5k mark. VAT is good for me, I get it back via taxes, so yeah. But I'm gonna ask my dealer if they can buy them directly. Might cost some extra.

Guess it won't be this month, still thank you.

[Juraj]

No problem, didn't want spam this thread :- D (feel free to email me later if you want assistance).

If you can wait until mid-September, Haswell-EP like will arrive. i7 5930k will be still hexacore sadly (so roughly 10perc.~ performance upgrade just due to architecture), 5960X will be Octactore, and v3 Xeon range will come too.
All of them will support DDR4 memory and will come with slightly higher cache. It won't be rather dramatic improvement again but just another food for thought/alternative.

[orsobruno]

Hi everyone! i notice this conversation while i'm trying to understand if the 2680v2 coul be a better choice over the 2695vs... i have find a site wich sells the two with a difference of 400€, the 2680v2 at 1600€ and the 2695v2 at 2000€, i'm plannig to buy one of them becouse i could not wait till the xeon v3 coming out in september, but i can't figure out wich one could be the better choice for me...i mean, 800€ are an important difference in the total cost of the workstation, and i'm trying to justificate them with the performance gain...but will the 2695v2 overtake the 2680v2? becouse i see that the 2680v2 is a 10 cores processor, while the 2695v2 have 12 cores, if i do the math i have 12x3.2=38.4 GHz and 10x3.6=36 GHz...

i would like to understand if this is a right count, or it means nothing in render time...becouse i really don't know if it could be better to have more core but lower clocked, or vice versa....

Sorry for the intrusion in you conversation! I hope you could give me a better opinion than the benchmark page of cinebench :S

edit:

Of course I'm planning to buy two of them...

[Juraj]

Numerobis had posted on CGArchitect http://forums.cgarchitect.com/76503-render-node-configuration-light-new-v-ray-licensing-scheme.html this chart:



Regarding rendering performance, I do not think it's personally worth to go for higher cored models than 2680v2, because the additional performance increase is negligible, even if price difference would be small (but it isn't).
If additional budget is present, it's possible to rather think of 2687v2 WS, because of its high native/turbo clock, but again, it comes at price with only benefit for single-threaded tasks, rendering performance would again be close to identical.

Your overall math is correct, the ratio between  'number of cores/frequency' only affects single threaded tasks, which benefit purely from higher clock, while overall multi-threaded performance can be derived by multiplying the cores by frequency.
In the latter regard, all the higher end Xeons are very close to each other.

[orsobruno]

Thank you very much Juraj!! With that in mind i can now make the right choice and go for the 2680 V2...and with the money that i save by taking the cheaper one, i can think about the new i7-5960x in september :)

Thank you again for you rapid answer!

[Juraj]

Thank you very much Juraj!! With that in mind i can now make the right choice and go for the 2680 V2...and with the money that i save by taking the cheaper one, i can think about the new i7-5960x in september :)

Thank you again for you rapid answer!

That's the spirit !! :- ) I am looking towards one too, can't wait haha. DDR4 + GTX880. I wonder how it's going to overclock (seeing as the base clock is only 3GHz)