June 2010 Workstations

After last month's advances in the hardware market, this month would seem merely incremental were it not for AMD and their new Opterons. These show up in two configurations I haven't done before, a cool sounding but impractical 24-core workstation, and a boring sounding but very practical 24-core render node.

But first, I want to update the readers on a couple of things:


CPUs

AMD's got a new round of Opterons out, and Intel's got nothing exciting going to, so to shake things up a bit I've added a configuration using two twelve-core Opterons. That's 24 cores.

Impressive, yes? Unfortunately in terms of performance it falls below the fastest Intel dual-six-core options, so I've put it in a configuration between the High End and the Maxer. In this configuration it actually represents excellent value in a high end box. Here are some Cinebench multithreaded render numbers, based on an approximate average of data from the web:

High End: 10.2 Cinebench, $3100
24-Core: 14.8 Cinebench, $4500
The Maxer: 17 Cinebench, $7500

So what exactly is a 24-core system useful for? A system with that many cores sacrifices single-threaded (or few-threaded) speed for many-core speed. If what you want is fast rendering in an efficiently multithreaded system such as Vray, mental ray, Cinema4D 11.5, etc., many cores is fantastic. But if your main need is speed in Adobe apps, which don't gain anything by going past 4 to 6 threads even in the new versions, go with the single-CPU High End system. Fewer, but faster, cores will be more useful.


Video Cards

In my earlier article on hardware I gave some numbers for video card power consumption and why the Radeon 5670 and 5850 impress me, and those two cards are included in the recommendations. However, this GPU computing thing is coming to a bit of a head and there's a split in the market between OpenCL and CUDA. I have no doubt that OpenCL will become the dominant option, being an open spec that runs on ATI and nVidia hardware alike, but there are a few apps that are currently stuck in proprietary nVidia-only CUDA land, and these unfortunately include Adobe Premiere CS5, Octane Render and Random Control's Arion.

If you need CUDA, here are some options:

GeForce GT 240 $90
GeForce GTX 465 $280
GeForce GTX 470 $360
Quadro FX 4800 $1700

That Quadro isn't really recommended, unless you have another reason for it like an OpenGL app that needs a workstation class card. The GTX 480 is still not recommended, because it's not that much faster than the 470 while being completely insane. It costs $500 and draws 74 more watts that the GTX 470 and 133 more watts than the 465 under load. For reference, the TDP - the total amount of power consumption possible before meltdown - of a Core i7 980X CPU is 130 watts. The GTX 480 burns 156 watts more than the Radeon 5850.

That's nuts. The difference in performance between a 480 and a 5850 is barely enough to register, but the 480 costs $150 more and burns as much power as all of my light bulbs put together. I have compact fluorescents, but that's still a lot. And that's not all:

The Radeon 5870 is faster than the GTX 480, but the GTX 480 burns 121 more watts than the 5870.

The Radeon 5850 is faster than the GTX 470, but the GTX 470 burns 82 more watts than the 5850.

If you use software that needs CUDA, send the company a note saying you want OpenCL. If enough of us get together on this, we can prevent global warming.


Now, on to...


The Workstations

For an explanation of the methodology behind these configurations, please refer to the Workstations Introduction page. For an overview of a workstation’s parts, please refer to the Workstation Parts page.

For the readers' convenience, I am providing links to the parts lists I made on Newegg in the course of planning this article. If the Newegg lists differ from the tables shown here, it's because I noticed that a part was out of stock or discontinued, and made a change. You'd be amazed at how quickly computer parts turn over.

The Intern
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The Intern system continues its reign of inexpensive value-engineered inexpensiveness, coming in at under $600. The video card has been upgraded - yes, it's possible to get cheaper, but I'm taking pity on the interns here - and the hard drive is a touch faster than the old one. The CPU remains an AMD dual-core, the motherboard is good but a money saver and the case with included power supply provides good value. This is the entry level AutoCAD, Microsoft Office and light Photoshop system.




The Budget
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

I was very pleased with how last months' Budget system came out, and I'm not messing with what works. Well, not messing a lot. The video card and hard drive are upgraded. The hard drive has a better sustained read/write speed, and the Radeon 5670 is noticeably faster than the 5570 and provides more GPU computing capability. At only $870, this system represents the best value in entry level machines for rendering, with the six-core AMD CPU a significantly better performer than Intel's chips in the same price class.

If your Budget system is for CAD, Revit or Photoshop but not rendering, you are in the "fewer but faster cores" market. Substitute this CPU.



The Midrange
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

The Midrange features AMD's higher end 3.2GHz six-core CPU and one of the fastest video cards available, the Radeon 5850. (If you need CUDA, that GeForce GTX 465 is a reasonable alternative.) Use the Caviar Black hard drive as your C drive and the Green drive for archiving and extra storage, and make sure you're letting that Lian-Li case cool the drives by leaving air space above and below them - the Caviar Black runs warmer than any of the other drives listed on this page.

Whether you're modeling, rendering, assembling a skyscraper in Revit, Photoshopping a print-res image or updating your Facebook status, this machine brings the power you need.



Alternative configuration: For Photoshop, Revit and other few-but-faster-cores applications - the fastest option in this class is the Intel Core i7-860, which has higher one- and two-thread Turbo Boosts than the i7-9xx series. Pair that with the ASRock P55 Pro motherboard and use the rest of the current Midrange parts list.


The High-End
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Again, not much change. There has been movement in this class. There are still only three six-core desktop class CPUs, and this Intel still commands a $1,000+ price because it is 50% faster than the AMD 1090T, which is still the second fastest desktop class chip. The Radeon 5870 is, depending on what you're doing with it, the fastest or second fastest video card that doesn't cost more than the rest of the computer put together. The SSD is fast, and the 1TB hard drive is an upgrade over last month's, with better sustained read/write and a longer expected lifespan.



The 24 Core
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

Here's the 24-core AMD box, as promised. A bit less than 50% more cost for a bit less than 50% more rendering power - at the high end of the price curve, that's actually a very good value. AMD's code name for its new line of many-core Opteron chips is "Magny-Cours", which is French for "a lot of cores". Just kidding. But that's what it sounds like, isn't it? Appropriately, Magny-Cours, in central France, is the location of a famous F1 race circuit.



Choose this system if you want to render at ludicrous speed but can't afford the Maxer. This system is unfortunately not very fast in applications that do not multithread well, so it isn't really that practical as a workstation and most users would actually be better off with the Core i7 High End system. But as a render node, look at what it can do:

The 24 Core Render Node
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

This box has the same rendering power as the 24-core workstation above, but without some of the bells and whistles of a workstation. At $3800 for 14.8 Cinebench points it represents the best value in render power per budget I've ever seen.

This render node should not be confused with a render farm. A farm is a collection of machines meant for rendering with, it's a must for complex animations and it should be done as a unit, based on racks, blades or other compact solutions and made for you by a company like Boxx.




The Maxer
click here to view/purchase the parts list on Newegg

When I brought down the cost of the high end system by making it single CPU, some CGArchitect readers were actually disappointed. It seems I'd been underestimating the market for $8,000 workstations. So this is the configuration for that class of high-end, one might say "Texas-size," user. This is why there's more than one reason it's called The Maxer.

No, it's not the most expensive thing you can buy - I'm not trying to get you to throw your money away on needlessly expensive parts like SLI'ed Quadro cards. At the high end of the price/performance curve you double the price to add 1% to the performance; this system falls that 1% short of the top.

Coming in just shy of the $8,000 target, this beast features dual 3.33GHz six-core CPUs, allowing it to render twice as quickly as the High End system. The chassis and motherboard are designed to go together, and for use with X5600 series CPUs. The Quadro FX 4800 will power through... well, anything, really... and the 24GB of RAM in twelve slots will ensure that you're not held back by lack of memory. For an added bonus, put the SSD's in a RAID. If you want maximum CUDA performance and don't need the Quadro features, you're best off with one or more GeForce GTX 4xx series video cards.

If this box can't handle your scene, you're doing something wrong. Estimated Cinebench rendering score: 17.

Hard drives and monitors

A comment on an earlier article about hard drives, and my own need for a new boot drive, got me thinking about hard drive speed lately, so I did a bit of research and found three particularly good lines:

-WD Caviar Black: These 7200 RPM drives offer the fastest access time (time to skip between files) but run the hottest and cost a bit more than others. They need to be mounted in the computer with space above and below for air flow, and preferably in a case with a fan that blows air past the hard drives. (That's actually a good idea for any drive, as overheating is one of the main causes of hard drive failure, but with these it's more important.)

-WD Caviar Green: This is a slower hard drive that runs cooler and uses less power. Best for archival use and any time you don't absolutely need the speed, as the less aggressive hardware is likely to last longer.

-Hitachi drives that are 7200 RPM with 32MB cache: Hitachi doesn't have as convenient a naming scheme as WD, but these drives have the fastest sustained read/write speeds, which is desirable for use with large files such as high res images and video. For a premium price, the "E" series claims a very long life span.

SSD drives are, of course, faster than these magnetic technology drives, but they can't match them on price and capacity.

I bought a Hitachi drive and already had a Caviar Black, so I ran a few tests and can confirm that the Caviar Black has the faster access time and the Hitachi has the faster sustained read and write.

There are a lot of questions about monitors, and the advice is usually to go with an IPS or (now less common) PVA type display as they have superior color reproduction to the less expensive TN panels. But it can be difficult to find, from the manufacturer's literature, exactly which monitors use which technology.

This page is a good list of IPS monitors on the market. Whatever you choose, I recommend calibrating the display for best matching of monitor to print. The i1 Display 2 is a good choice if you want to calibrate the monitor and then print using profiles supplied by the printer or paper manufacturer. The Color Munki is a more complete solution that can also be used on printers and projectors.

The 3DATS Advanced to Expert book has a very good chapter on color management by CGArchitect's Jeff Mottle.

Thoughts on Hardware

Instead of trying to get everything into the workstations post this month, I thought I'd go for a change of pace and post two articles: one ruminating on things I find interesting about hardware, followed by another on workstation configurations.

Last week, I found myself in an unusual predicament: I didn't have enough hardware. See, I'm going back to school in the fall and I'd been looking for an opportunity to offload my four-year-old 17" Macbook Pro for a newer, smaller model with a better battery, and I found a buyer at $750. (Yes, that's a fair price - Macs do retain value, even over four years.) Normally my laptop and desktop back each other up so that if one breaks down and I have to, say, do a bunch of Photoshop work, it's not a problem. Of course, as soon as I'd traded the laptop for the wad of cash, I got home and heard a "clunk-whirrrrrrr" as the boot drive on the desktop failed.

Between doing post on print res images in Photoshop Elements on my netbook (seriously, not recommended) and surgery on my desktop, two things occurred to me:

1. RAID-0 is a terrible idea. Sure, it made my boot drive faster, but at what cost? Now I bet somebody's going to correct me on my math, but if I remember correctly, a two drive array (where if either one fails, you're toast) the expected average lifetime of the array is (1-1/(SQRT 2) = 30% less than the expected average lifetime of a single drive. Had I been using one drive instead of two, the chance of it failing on that particular day would have been halved.

2. It's pretty cool that my antique FireGL V5200 is powered off the PCIE bus and does not require an additional power connection. Video cards can use a lot of power. Can this be quantified, so that we can factor GPU power consumption into operating costs? I alluded to this last month, and now that I look it seems like the folks at Tom's Hardware are thinking along the same lines. They've started adding watts under load to their video card benchmark charts.

I did some looking around and found that the Radeon 5570, last month's Budget system video card, also does not require a supplemental power connection. Neither does the Radeon 5670, which is the same card but with the GPU clocked somewhat faster and a faster type of memory.

From browsing Tom's Hardware (shameless, I know - I just don't have the ability to run tests on a few dozen video cards and measure power consumption) and making a few inferences, we should be able to figure out how much any given video card costs, per year, in electricity.

Let's assume a few things: you're using the video card for 40 hours a week, 50 weeks year. Half that time the GPU is under load (you're doing some activity in 3D) and the other half it's not. Those numbers aren't accurate for everybody, but they mean 1,000 hours per year loaded and 1,000 idle. It's like when you assume a cow is spherical in physics class. Also, assume you're paying the US average for electricity, which is $0.12 per kilowatt-hour, but your power supply is average and is 80% efficient, which means your computer actually consumes 25% more power than its components use. That would be an extra step and I'm only concerned with cost, so I'll just correct for it by making the cost of electricity $0.15 per kWH.

If you turn your computer off when you leave the office:


If you leave your computer on, 24/7:


These numbers are based on one test each under certain circumstances with certain versions of those cards. Your mileage may vary. If you pay a lot more than $0.12 per kWH (e.g., you live in Hawaii) or less (you live in Nebraska), these numbers would be different. But the moral of the story is, if you have a 4870 or a high end GeForce, turn the computer off when you leave the office, and if you want to leave the computer on, get something low on that list. The Radeon 5670 is particularly appealing, using so little electricity while being more powerful than the very popular GeForce 9800GT. So is the Radeon 5850, for being the fastest card in that list while using below average power.

The GeForce GT 240 has good power numbers, but its performance numbers trail the 5670 and it doesn't save you enough money to be worthwhile.

Notably absent are the new GeForce GTX 470 and GeForce GTX 480. I found another page that compares them to a few other cards. The 480 uses slightly less power than the 295, and the 470 uses slightly less than the 285.

In other news:

-Finally, a reason to buy a GPU for CUDA. For those who haven't been following, CUDA is a proprietary nVidia technology for running software functions on the GPU. OpenCL does the same thing, but it's better because it's an open spec and can be used with the superior ATI hardware as well as nVidia GPUs.

Adobe Premiere CS5 makes heavy use of a new technology they're calling Mercury for GPU-accelerated playback, and so far it's CUDA-only. They claim the SDK for doing the same on ATI hardware wasn't good enough for them, but Chaos Group has VRay RT running on OpenCL so I'm suspicious of that statement. But apparently nVidia's got some fanboys, and apparently they're just giddy over this one.

-Speaking of fanboys: Was Steve Jobs right? His open letter on Flash set off a lot of arguments, but one thing in particular hit me: his comment that Flash on mobile devices would hurt battery life. I had noticed earlier that my web browser CPU usage, which usually spikes when loading a web page then goes to near zero, stays high when the page has a Flash ad.

I found an article by consulting firm SecTheory where they had done a battery of browser tests and noticed the same problem, so they ran power usage tests with Flash ads turned on, and again with software that blocks ads and Ajax, and found that not only were the ads annoying, they increased the computer's power consumption by 11 watts!

Now that I've run the GPU power numbers, I know that at 40 hours a week that translates to $3.30 per year. I can't say, precisely, how much Flash would decrease battery life on my iPhone, but I'm glad it's not a problem. Thank you, Steve. (I'm so going to get flamed in the comments, aren't I? Oh well, we've got comment moderation turned on.)

-nVidia has announced a GeForce 480 mobile for laptops. Wonder what that's going to do to battery life. Don't run Flash on it.

-AMD continues to bring 6-core CPUs to the budget market with the 1035T CPU. This is apparently only available in certain OEM PCs so far, but presumably it's coming to retail soon and at a price point below the 1055T's $200. It's a 2.6GHz CPU. They've also quietly updated the 1055T to a new part number spec'ed at 30 watts fewer than the original.

-Nothing interesting from Intel in the last month. Their next desktop class 6-core is the i7-970, 3.2GHz, scheduled for Q3 2010 at $562. Until then, there's nothing between the AMD 1090T and the i7-980X, but before the 970 release they have an i7-880 scheduled to replace the 870 at the same price point. Don't get too excited - it's only 133MHz faster, and its turbo numbers for 3 and 4 threads are lower, so it won't render any faster. But it will be... let's see here... 3% faster in Photoshop! Yeah, there's no way to spin that as interesting.

-Edit: One more thing I meant to say:

Another app I've recently learned is GPU accelerated is Apple Aperture. In version 3, they added OpenCL support through Apple's "Grand Central" system, but didn't advertise this! It was discovered by users who got tipped off by the last version Macbook Pro's user-switchable video card. After noticing that the program seemed inexplicably slower when the nVidia 9400 card was turned out, they did some tests and found that common tasks like importing raw files and generating previews were 3x faster with the 9600 card turned on. This made me pretty happy, as I found this out after ordering the new model with the GT 330 card, and indeed it flies. The technology is also compatible with newer ATI cards.

A Review of the 2600 GoBOXX from BOXX® Technologies - Part I

click to enlarge

Background

From March 16-19, 2010, and in cooperation with CGarchitect, I had the pleasure of teaching two 3D courses in London using a mobile workstation from BOXX Technologies. The first 2-day course was Advanced 3ds Max and the second 2-day course was Beginner to Intermediate V-Ray. I was one of five instructors, but the only one lucky enough to be teaching from such a powerful computer.

During the workshop, students were required to bring their own laptops, and the average laptop we usually see in our workshops is a Core2 Duo with 4GB of RAM. Since the trip to London required plane travel, I planned to bring a laptop of my own, like the rest of the instructors. My travel laptop, prior to this event, was also a Core2 Duo machine with 4GB RAM, like most of the students.

Two weeks prior to the workshop, I received a call from Gerrie Schwartz, a Performance Specialist in the Sales Department of BOXX. She asked me the usual questions about whether or not I was happy with our current computers and if I was considering upgrading anytime soon. It was generally the typical sales pitch, but I must admit that she was unusually professional and knowledgeable.

I mentioned our upcoming workshop in London and how nice it would be to try out a BOXX laptop during a live presentation such as this. To my surprise, she indicated that BOXX might be open to a trade of sorts, whereby BOXX would provide their top mobile workstation (free of charge) in exchange for some free advertising with 3DATS. After a few days of negotiating, an agreement was reached which included the requirement that I write this review about my experience with the GoBOXX in London. I made it clear that my review of the machine would not be affected in any way by any agreement in place between us and that I would have no reservations about providing poor rating if the machine were to perform poorly. (I was actually sent an unsolicited 3D related product last year and asked to write a review. After reviewing the product, I informed the manufacturer that the company wouldn’t want my review).

Unfortunately, the London workshop occurred just one month before the introduction of the first six-core mobile workstation, so the machine that I taught with in London was a quad-core machine. I have since returned the quad-core machine and am currently awaiting the arrival of the six-core. Part II of this review will be a review of this six-core machine as it performs during a 1-hour live webinar entitled Advanced VRay, which will be broadcast live from the Chaos Group in Bulgaria on June 8th, 2010 (http://www.thecgschool.com/register/). Part I is strictly a review of the quad-core machine as it performed in London. Because this is a two part review with a faster system reserved for Part II, I will save all benchmark test renders for the faster system to be reviewed later and speak in general terms regarding the speed of the quad-core.

The Specs

The machine I used in London was the 2600 GoBOXX, utilizing a quad core Intel® Core™ i7 series processor running at 3.06 GHz. The machine included 6GB RAM, six USB ports, and boasted a 17” screen with a 1920x1080 high-definition display. The graphics card was an NVIDIA® Quadro® FX2800M with 1GB memory and the hard drive was a 300GB SATA 2.5, 7200 RPM. The machine was full of countless other hardware goodies, but none that played a major role in the overall performance during the live workshop. In terms of software, the machine ran on Windows® 7 64-bit and I used Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2010 and V-Ray® 1.5 with SP4.

First Impressions

The GoBOXX arrived in perfect condition, secured intelligently in a very protective box. My first impression was that it was quite heavy and a bit large; about twice the weight and twice the thickness of the average laptop. Specifications from the BOXX Tech website put the machine at 15.48” w x 11.75” d x 2” h, 11.5 lbs with battery. When I saw four fans on the bottom, my first concern was that the machine would be excessively loud and hot, like a few other cutting-edge laptops I had purchased in the past.

My concerns quickly subsided as I turned the machine on and realized I could barely hear a sound coming from it. After a few hours of installing software, it was clear that the machine made great use of the four fans, as I barely detected any heat, especially where my hands rested on the keyboard while typing. Where my hands rested on the keyboard was a glass or plastic material (can’t tell which), which gave me the impression that I wouldn’t see the same weathered and worn use after years of work like I’ve always seen on other laptops where my hands wear down the material they rest on.

I only noticed two things that I didn’t like about the machine during my first impression. One was the awkwardness of resting my hands on a 2-inch thick keyboard; it required a little adjusting in the way I rested my elbows on my desk. Over the next few hours, this was an unnoticeable difference that I quickly adjusted to. The second was that the power adapter was extremely large (about three times the weight of my typical laptop adapter), and the cord that ran from the machine to the adapter was only about two feet long. This meant that I had to place the adapter on the desk next to the machine, rather than on the floor as I would have greatly preferred.

Performance During the Workshop

Each of the two courses consisted of 18 hours of instruction over 2 days. Most surprisingly, throughout the entire 36 hours of instruction, the GoBOXX didn’t crash a single time and 3ds Max 2010 only crashed once; which was only because I accidentally right-clicked the sliders next to the Max Size value of the Subdivide modifier, something akin to asking 3ds Max to calculate pi to infinity.

One of the first things students tend to ask at the start of a training session is what kind of machine the instructor is using. This class was no exception and the sleek, shiny, and large GoBOXX drew quick attention and a few remarks of envy. Furthermore, during this workshop I experienced an issue I had never dealt with before with any other workshop or training session. When 3DATS performs training in our own facility, all students and instructors use the same type of computer and even when training is conducted on the road, I have always used a laptop similar to those brought by the students. This new machine from BOXX, however, was so much faster than any other student machine, I had to catch myself at times and ensure that I wasn’t getting too far ahead of the students when rendering a scene. I also felt it necessary at times to not make light of the complexity of particularly large scenes that opened so quickly on my machine, knowing that long after I was in and moving about a scene, the students were still waiting for the scene to open on their machines.

When conducting training, time is always short and it’s critical that an instructor not waste time on unnecessary delays. Rendering large and complex scenes is certainly desirable during training, but it’s usually not practical and we’re often forced to either conduct render regions or use simplistic scenes that render quickly. While the hands-on scenes that the students used were still the typically simplistic scenes or render regions of more complex scenes, having the GoBOXX enabled me to demonstrate on some rather nice scenes that I don’t normally have the opportunity to use. When rendering with V-Ray, the students often seemed in awe at 8 buckets rendering at blazing speed.

The only negative comment that I could mention about the machine’s performance during the training was that on two occasions I accidentally put the machine in sleep mode. For reasons that I can’t fathom, the designers decided to put the sleep button between the Mute and Volume down button. When trying to mute the machine, I saw the Volume Down button and naturally pushed the button next to it.

Summary

Overall, I couldn’t have been more impressed with the performance of the GoBOXX during the workshop. The speed of the machine appeared to be about 6 times faster than the typical Dell Core 2 Duo that populates our training facility. The high-definition display was brilliant with deep, rich colors, and the graphics card working behind the scenes made viewport refreshes ridiculously fast (adaptive degradation, therefore, was all but non-existent during the workshop). The machine was as quiet and cool as any laptop I have ever worked with. The machine was large and heavy (especially the power adapter), which made travelling a little less comfortable; however, this was a very minor inconvenience to having a lot of power and screen real estate to work with. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would have to rate the GoBOXX a 9.5, because, as noted previously, I could not have been more impressed with its performance. As for the very few negative issues—they were nothing more than a momentary inconvenience.

Coming Soon

Part II of this review will be available in mid-June. That review will detail the performance of BOXX Technologies’ top-of-the-line GoBOXX during the June 8th live webinar on V-Ray for 3ds Max, broadcast from the Chaos Group in Bulgaria.

If you would like to learn more about the machine reviewed here, please visit http://www.boxxtech.com/products/goBOXX/goboxx_overview.asp.