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Newbie
Group: PB Employees
Last Login: Tuesday, August 31, 2010 1:51 PM
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| What would you use to run all this 3D software (3D max / Anark etc etc) ?? It must be Dell (Company Standards /chris!!). 1. What Processor and how many ? 2. RAM Requirements ? 3. ROM Requirements ? 4. Graphics Cards ? 5. Windows Platform (64bit i think) ? 6. Any other things ? I am basically looking for the "daddy" of computers.
Tim Messer Parsons Brinckerhoff
29 Cathedral Road,
Cardiff 
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Wookie Wrangler
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Messer (11/30/2006)
It must be Dell (Company Standards /chris!!).
F THAT CRAP!
I'm fighting right now with NY to get me a Boxx...
WS Dual Xeon X5355 (quad cores!)
6GB DDR2
Quadro FX 5500
74GB 10K
150GB 10K
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Christopher J. Leone
Parsons Brinckerhoff
75 Arlington Street, Suite 9
Boston, Massachusetts 02116
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Member
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Last Login: Tuesday, May 25, 2010 11:36 PM
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| Chris.. good luck with that one. I suggeted looking at a boxx machine a few years back - I swear I heard them laughing when I walked away Anyway we currently have Delll Precision 490's with a Xeon 3.2ghz Dual Core, 3gb of ram (we actually ordered 4, but somewhere along the line we both lost 1gb.. I'm lookin at you IT ..), Dual layer burner, Nvidia Quattro 3500 videocard and win xp 32bit and 10 000rpm scsi drive for our primary drive and were getting a 2nd drive installed as a scratch disk for photoshop etc. I think for now both Mike and I are happy.
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Luke Cottle
Visualisation Specialist
Parsons Brinckerhoff Australia Pty Limited
www.pb.com.au  
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"old dog"
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Wookie Wrangler
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I do already have a Boxx (2 years old). But I need a new one now....so it's not impossible to get one.
I don't know why everyone wants to use an inferior machine with home made Dell parts and constantly worry if the HDD will fail. 
Alone in Boston I really need the best solutions possible, if I'm down because my machine is down then work ain't getting done. There isn't anyone to pick up my slack. My HDD's need to be the best because I can't put anything on the server, too slow and not enough storage. So I need more then a cheaply made inexpensive machine.
If I do go Dell this time around then that 2 year lease thing sounds great, and I would totally take advantage of that starting around 20 months in. 
__________________________________
Christopher J. Leone
Parsons Brinckerhoff
75 Arlington Street, Suite 9
Boston, Massachusetts 02116
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"old dog"
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Wookie Wrangler
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loydering (12/1/2006)
To be totally honest, we've had very few problems with any of our workstations. I can understand your concern for the HDD. Do you think you could finagle an external fire-wire HHD for bsack-ups if the Boxx negotiations fall through?
Well, we have had several HDD failures here...including mine. I already do have a 320GB Lacie Storage Drive which I backup to DVD.
I have also had 2 Western Digital Drives fail...I don't recommend them...the Lacie seems really stable. The SCSI Ultra320 15K drives that I have in the Boxx are SOLID and fast as hell.
Anyways....looks like the Dell is the way to go, Tim I would just say spec out the most expensive machine and if they come back with it cost too much then just down spec it. But, def. go for the new Quads.
Also, I heard that Max really doesn't take advantage of a SLI setup so you are better off just getting 1 really good card. the Quadro FX 5500 has 1GB of Ram...but Dell doesn't offer that right now. You could alway order a workstation with a cheap card and add it on later...
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Christopher J. Leone
Parsons Brinckerhoff
75 Arlington Street, Suite 9
Boston, Massachusetts 02116
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Wookie Wrangler
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Well scratch that most expensive one thing I said...I just spec'd one for 10K w/o monitors....don't think that will fly.
The video card options are disappointing Dell seems to be into the whole Quad MON thing...I don't think Max likes this setup much...I rather just have a single card.
Also, right now Dell only has available the Xeon E5320...Boxx has the X5355....
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Christopher J. Leone
Parsons Brinckerhoff
75 Arlington Street, Suite 9
Boston, Massachusetts 02116
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Veteran
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LukeC (11/30/2006)
Anyway we currently have Delll Precision 490's with a Xeon 3.2ghz Dual Core, 3gb of ram (we actually ordered 4, but somewhere along the line we both lost 1gb.. I'm lookin at you IT ..),
You probably have 4 gigs installed int he system, but the combination of Windows and something with the Dell hardware prevent anything over 3 gigs being shown in Windows 32 bit. If you upgrade to a 64 bit OS, you'll suddenly get the 4th gig.
THOMAS SHANNON
SENIOR DESIGN VISUALIZATION SPECIALIST
PB Project Visualization
http://www.pbprojectviz.com/
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Über Geek
Group: Administrators
Last Login: Monday, June 14, 2010 6:03 PM
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Our most current spec is the Dell 490s. We started with the 690s but realized later that we don't need such a big case. The SLI assertion is correct as far as max is concerned. All SLI will get you at this point is support for a ton of monitors or 2 of those tasty Dell 30” monsters. Anyway, I spec’ed out a 490 the other day and came up with the following: Dell Precision 490 2 Intel X5355 Quad Core Xeons 4 GB RAM 160 GB HD Dual Layer DVD Writer QuadroFX 3500 A few observations on the graphics card. The QuadroFX 3500 is just slightly slower than the 4500 though a lot less expensive. If you need to shave some $$, this is the place to do it. Once you jump to the 5500, then you see some performance increase justified by the price increase. By the way, the 5500 are sometimes hard to come by. As far as the hard drive issues are concerned, it is rare that you would have so many failures in one location. The IBM/Hitachi drives had some problems with reliability several years resulting in a few class action lawsuits, but all in all most drive manufacturers have a decent track record. Interestingly, Lacie uses Maxtor and WD drives for their internal parts. SCSI is always going to be faster than a SATA solution on a per drive basis. However, once you compare price and storage space along with RAID, that becomes a non issue. SATA II has really leveled the playing field by adding 3Gb and multitasking capabilities. A 1 terabyte RAID 5 array using SATA II compared to a similarly configured SCSI system will cost 1 quarter the price and have nearly the same performance. Once you bring them into a comparable price range, SATA II would have many times the space and better performance. One way to save money when purchasing system form any manufacturer is to order the minimal RAM and hard drive configurations. This is where they get you, particularly Dell, IBM, HP and Apple. In the case of Dell, get the basic SATA II 160GB drive, then purchase several 300GB drives through a separate vendor and install them manually. It’s always better from a performance standpoint to utilize one drive for OS and applications and another for data. Mind you, I do not mean separate partitions but separate drives. All partitions get you are two drive letters on one drive. Using two drives on the other hand, OS and application data is saturating on one bus while data, especially large data sets inherent in visualization, compositing, AV and CAD/GIS, is saturating a separate bus and drive. A quick tip for all you PB people, do not use the Dell web site to gauge pricing. While the displayed price might be high, it is always very different once you place a quote through our procurement channels. It would be inappropriate to give specific pricing on this forum, the system above is significantly less expensive than the web price. As is with most things, it is the economy of scale that gives us these great prices and is the case with all of our vendors, for the most part. Our pricing on the new render racks we recently purchased was very good considering what we purchased. Our render racks are HP DL140 1U rack mounted server class machines. Their configuration is identical to the 490 workstations minus the QuadroFX card, DVD burner and hard drive. Those are items least effective in a render node. All you really need is lots of RAM and lots of CPU. Again, purchased through our PB procurement channels, the price is awesome. Not to mention 24 hour turnaround (or less) on replacement and repair; great for when you have that big job that needs every available resource. What ever manufacturer you decide to go with, the new Intel Xeons are smoking fast and I would highly recommend them over the AMDs at this time. It was just last spring that we were moving away from Intel in favor of AMD, but with the purchase of our first 690, that all changed. I’m sure Tom can attest that Alaskan Way went so much faster because of the new machines. In fact, senior Thomas is first in line for one of those new screaming QUADS!
Mark Kauffman
Technical Lead / PA
Project Visualization TEC
Parsons Brinckerhoff, Inc.
Kauffman@pbworld.com
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