14 replies to this topic

[FR3D]

I am buying a new computer build specially for houdini.
so here are the specs with questions related
I want to be able to do heavy scene as well as heavy simulation as fast as possible.

Specs:
Case super micro 743.
865 watts power supply.
64 GB ram.
SSD 120 for operating system and software.
4 TB HD Black edition.
motherboard Super micro X8DA6.
2 * CPU 6 cores XEON 5645.
GPU UNSURE.

Q.1) should i get another SSD for caching simulation and playing them

Q.2)is there anything better for the CPU specs

Q.3)which GPU ? as i am really unsure (consider i might buy a second one later)

quadroFX 4000 2GB
GTX 690 4GB
HD radeon 7970 3GB
Tesla

Q.4)does the GTX works with tesla?

Q.5)Why get 2 cards for houdini, is it worth it?


Thanks a lot for your answers.

FR3D

Edited by FR3D, 04 May 2012 - 07:34 AM.

[static]

The only reason you would want 2 cards is one for display, one for sims.  You can't use both of them for simming, as it's not supported by OpenCL.

[lukeiamyourfather]

static, on 04 May 2012 - 10:49 AM, said:

The only reason you would want 2 cards is one for display, one for sims.  You can't use both of them for simming, as it's not supported by OpenCL.

OpenCL supports it, Houdini does not (but could potentially later). However you can still run one simulation on one device and another simulation on another device. Houdini uses an environment variable to define what OpenCL device to use for that instance.

Don't know if you're planning on it or not but Super Micro sells partially assembled bare bone systems. So if you want a Super Micro case and Super Micro motherboard you might be able to get them already assembled with a high quality power supply. As for the other components there are faster processors available but that depends on your budget. The SSD seems like a moot point to me. Houdini will always be filling it up with DOP cache. A large hard disk for both the boot and the data would be a better option in my opinion.

The Radeon cards have some issues in the viewport but are very fast for OpenCL. The GTX cards have major OpenGL (viewport) issues as the drives have been intentionally crippled since the 4XX series. The workstation cards are obviously the safest choice but the Quadro or FirePro both run a lot higher price. If you can swing for a workstation card that's a safer choice (but the lower end ones like the Quadro 4000 will not have that good of OpenCL performance).

Edited by lukeiamyourfather, 04 May 2012 - 11:45 AM.

[Sifis]

FR3D, on 04 May 2012 - 07:33 AM, said:

Q.2)is there anything better for the CPU specs

Actually there is, the new Xeon 8 core Sandy bridge E5 2600 series. Specifically E5 2687W which is specially designed for workstations, hence the W at the end. The motherboards that can host 2 of these processors in a dual configuration are:
http://www.asus.com/...2011/Z9PED8_WS/
http://www.evga.com/...therboards&sw=5
http://www.supermicr.../Xeon1333/#2011

I'm on the same place, thinking of building a Houdini workstation, so this thread is quite interesting. Keep the information coming...

[dynamoanders]

For me, it feels like the SSD doesn´t perform as well as an ordinary HD drive.
I don´t know how other people has experienced it.

[ykcosmo]

64 GB ram would be very expensive.. @_@

[moondeer]

be mindful of hardware that suits the operating system you choose.

for example, currently the openCL acceleration in houdini is best realized with linux.

opencl is disabled for mac h12 users.

opencl crashes routinely for win h12 users.

i have been told that the most stable and highest performance can be gotten only with linux at the moment.

while linux driver availability has greatly improved of late, i would still certainly have a look for the specific hardware component support in your favorite distribution of linux before purchasing your system.

personally, i am going to install ubuntu 12.04 this month just to see what i've been missing.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

[malexander]

One thing I've discovered about the Nvidia drivers for OpenGL/CL is that OpenCL buffers do not seem to evict OpenGL objects from VRAM. So, if you've filled up your VRAM with OpenGL data by using lots of heavy geometry, lots of large textures, and/or lots of framebuffer (high AA levels, dual monitors, more than one Houdini or 3D app session running), then OpenCL allocations will fail. This is where a second graphics card would come in handy, as you could run your sim on the secondary card and not have its VRAM cluttered up with graphics data. Or you could just have 1 card with oodles of RAM (3-6GB).

Note that this doesn't seem to be an issue on AMD cards.

[ykcosmo]

malexander, on 07 May 2012 - 12:12 PM, said:

One thing I've discovered about the Nvidia drivers for OpenGL/CL is that OpenCL buffers do not seem to evict OpenGL objects from VRAM. So, if you've filled up your VRAM with OpenGL data by using lots of heavy geometry, lots of large textures, and/or lots of framebuffer (high AA levels, dual monitors, more than one Houdini or 3D app session running), then OpenCL allocations will fail. This is where a second graphics card would come in handy, as you could run your sim on the secondary card and not have its VRAM cluttered up with graphics data. Or you could just have 1 card with oodles of RAM (3-6GB).

Note that this doesn't seem to be an issue on AMD cards.

pro !!!

[magneto]

What kind of RAM configuration will you have? 8x8gb? I was looking for mainboards that support a lot of RAM, but best I could find and was recommended was asus sabertooth p67 which has only 16. Feels lame now that I see this one supports up to 192. I would love to have 64gb, hopefully the next build in 2-3 years

EDIT: Or is this mobo only for xeons? I was looking for non-xeon i7s since I can't justify xeon price. Then I guess this amount of RAM doesn't trickle down to mainstream mobos?

Edited by magneto, 02 June 2012 - 05:09 PM.

[malexander]

magneto, on 02 June 2012 - 05:06 PM, said:

What kind of RAM configuration will you have? 8x8gb? I was looking for mainboards that support a lot of RAM, but best I could find and was recommended was asus sabertooth p67 which has only 16. Feels lame now that I see this one supports up to 192. I would love to have 64gb, hopefully the next build in 2-3 years

The Sandy Bridge-E motherboards (X79) for the Core i7 39xx series generally support up to 64GB, though they aren't cheap ($260US is the lowest I can find). I bet most consumer motherboards top out at 16GB because that's the maximum that Windows 7 Home supports. Enthusiasts will use the X79 or high-end pro ($200+) motherboards, while enterprise users with likely use the Xeons or the high-end pro motherboards, which support more memory.

[magneto]

Thanks malexander. $260-300 is reasonable. I don't remember seeing these boards a year ago though. Otherwise they look just like what I wanted at the time, 64 is pretty amazing. I use win7 pro, and it seems it allows up to 192GB