Worth a try, don't you think?

Glen Loyd

Lead Design Visualization Specialist  | Parsons Brinckerhoff
www.pbprojectviz.com

SteveJ

I put together a pricing comparison between the main brands with similar configurations; in this case, Boxx, Dell and HP. The attached PDF also provides pricing comparisons between the rack server offerings from these same manufacturers.

A few observations regarding vendor-built compared to home-built computers that I have noticed over the past few years. First of all, price. Seven to eight years ago, it was easy to out price the biggies when building your own system. Not only could you get the specific parts you wanted (or needed), but at a significant price savings.

These days, it’s a very competitive market. Yes, you probably could build your own system at a slight cost advantage (maybe a few hundred dollars if you’re lucky) but then you must build it and maintain it. While for some of us computer gearheads, such a feat is mere child’s play. However, the reset of the mortals must service and repair these custom speed demons; sometimes, easier said than done.

Having a store bought or manufacturer built machine does have it’s advantages with the warranty support they provide. Some computers are like some car companies. They sell a ton of computers at discount prices but lack any real good service or reliability. I’ll take a solid machine over a rampaging speed demon any day. Who cares if you have an overclocked processor if you get BSOD several times a day.

As you will see in the PDF, I based the configuration on the current DV spec here at PB. Here are the specs:

2 Intel XEON X5355 2.66GHz Quad Core Processors, 8MB L2 Cache, 1333MHz FSB

4 GB FBDIMM 667MHz RAM

80 GB SATAII 7200rpm Hard Drive

Nvidia Quadro FX 3500 PCI-E Graphics Card or better

DVD±RW Dual Layer Writer

1394 Firewire

I also included pricing for the new Quadro FX 4600 on the Boxx and HP systems to give an idea of pricing of these systems with the newest graphics offering. By the way, I had a question asked about the Quadro FX 3500 compared to the 4500 and came up with this. The 3500 is just slightly slower than the 4500 by maybe 5% but at 45% of the price. The 4500 does provide you with more RAM compared to the 3500, however this will not really provide you with any real advantage unless you’re running Eon, Anark, or Navisworks in presentation mode. Now the 4600 is definitely worth the $1000 price premium weighing in at almost twice the performance. Then there is that 5600, but hey, do you really need that much RAM for your 3D modeling chores?

The rack machine spec is very similar to the workstation spec, minus the Quadro, 1394 and DVD burner.

If you have more questions, please feel free to e-mail any questions my way.

 

Mark Kauffman
Technical Lead / PA
Project Visualization TEC
Parsons Brinckerhoff, Inc.
Kauffman@pbworld.com

...but in my little imaginary world (i.e just me with no employees), I'd have to ask myself if I would drop $7K on a dual X5355 server machine just to add to a renderfarm, or jump over to the enthusiast hardware and build an army of e4300's. (It would be more fun if nothing else, more blinking lights is always better )

And how long has dual X5355's been spec? the last 4 machines we got were dual X5130's (the last couple about 5-6 weeks ago). Descent machines in their own right, but probably only about 30-40% the performance of the big guns.

SteveJ

I think we ended up with the 5130's because they are about the same price point as the 5060's.

They didn't even want to order the 51XX machines. I'm not sure how 53XX series machines would have even been in the discussion. I didn't realize there was a default DV spec or I would have just pointed them to that  

SJ

Give me a call on Monday to discuss. This is not the way it should work.

Mark Kauffman
Technical Lead / PA
Project Visualization TEC
Parsons Brinckerhoff, Inc.
Kauffman@pbworld.com