New System Build - Reality Check

[kelpdiver]

teseg wrote:

If we are talking photography, agreed a fast card is not needed, but may want to consider an AMD FirePro so that some day when the upgrade to a 10-bit color monitor happens the OP has a GPU that can render it.

Or he could consider those when it actually solves a problem. Why buy 10 bit capability in advance of having a 10 bit monitor? Or 10bit support? The OP's current video card very likely beats the < $200 Firepros and Quadros, and by a lot)

(speaking as someone with a V5900 and 2 10bit monitors)

 

[kelpdiver]

Ron AKA wrote:

I was disputing the statement made that GPU's are for gamers only. Photo editing uses it too, and I think that is the trend -- to use it more and more.

In the case of Adobe, only if you're willing to spend $50/month for life.

(or until they come to their senses)

 

[kelpdiver]

malch wrote:
There is practically no performance advantage to placing two SSD's in RAID 0. With HDD's you benefit from overlapped seeks and rotational latency. These things are almost non-existent with SSD's.

Even 1Gbyte/s is still slow compared to memory bandwidth. For interactive work, this rarely would ever matter, but for batch work, anything that increases the pipe has value.

With Samsung's new Evo line, the software supports taking system memory for use for caching. Huge potential gains on writes (but better be using a UPS). And they have stated that this capability will soon be made available to the 840 Pro users.

...

In other words... it's just silly!
But we seem to have an epidemic of RAIDitus...

Less silly than striping Raptor drives, now. But not totally ridiculous. And trim support does exist for the recent intel chipset lines.

 

[malch]

kelpdiver wrote:

malch wrote:

There is practically no performance advantage to placing two SSD's in RAID 0. With HDD's you benefit from overlapped seeks and rotational latency. These things are almost non-existent with SSD's.

Even 1Gbyte/s is still slow compared to memory bandwidth. For interactive work, this rarely would ever matter, but for batch work, anything that increases the pipe has value.

For what kind of batch work?

In most practical scenarios, the CPU will be saturated long before a single SSD.

Yeah, I know one could construct a hypothetical case to disprove that generalization. But for the vast majority of (even serious) photographers it's not going to offer much if anything.

In the most common cases like Lightroom imports with 1:1 previews, the CPU will be saturated even if the data are on a USB3 drive. Of course, I'm assuming adequate RAM -- all bets are off if the system is thrashing virtual memory.

 

[kelpdiver]

malch wrote:

Yeah, I know one could construct a hypothetical case to disprove that generalization. But for the vast majority of (even serious) photographers it's not going to offer much if anything.

for photographers, perhaps not. But you made a wider generalization than that.

We have several generations now of cpu/mb designs that stripe memory across 2,3,4 dimms for performance. Is it for nothing?

Now does it make sense, given the negatives? For most, unlikely.

 

[malch]

kelpdiver wrote:
We have several generations now of cpu/mb designs that stripe memory across 2,3,4 dimms for performance. Is it for nothing?

Of course not. Memory bandwidth is rate limiting in many common workload scenarios (including many photographic applications).

Folks really need to look at their specific workloads and where the bottlenecks lie. A lot of folks are spending big bucks on stuff that isn't going to help. Lots of people with overpowered GPU's that are sitting idle (me included). Lots of folks with i7's who could have got the same performance from an i5.

In my experience, system drive i/o is frequently rate limiting and hence I love SSD's for that reason.

For normal photo work, data drive i/o is typically a non-issue. As I've shown with a Lightroom import with preview, it doesn't matter much whether my images are on SSD or USB2. Yeah, boring task, but that's the kind of workload most photographers have.

For other workloads, such as a large SQL database, the i/o performance matters a lot. I place mine on SSD (since my data volumes are modest). With databases running into terabytes one would employ other techniques that would likely include RAID.

RAID is a very useful technology when appropriately applied and managed. Most of the time that's in professionally managed data centers (although it can apply to some very specialized workstations). But time and time again, I see folks advocating RAID for situations where it is quite unnecessary and inappropriate.

 

[SushiEater]

But we seem to have an epidemic of RAIDitus...

Or we have a case of dissident-ism. :-(

Or maybe heresy. Pick your poison.

 

[Doublehelix]

Well, I finished the build and testing, and now have installed all my programs, updates, plugins, etc.

The final system looks like this:

• Intel i7 3930K
• Asus X79 Pro LGA2011 Mobo
• 32 GB DDR3 1866 RAM (Quad Channel)
• Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB (OS and Programs)
• Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB (swap and temp, LR catalog and previews)
• TWO WD Black 4TB HDD RAID-1 Array (Data)
• Asus 24X DVD Read/Write
• Nvidia GTX560Ti Video Card
• Asus 750 Watt PSU
• Windows 7 Professional

All I have to say is... WOW!!! This sucker really flies!!! :-D I click on Photoshop and it just appears! Boom!!!

The last few times I have booted the system however, it seems to take forever to boot through the Windows splash screen. I see the Windows logo, and the words that "Windows is Starting". It takes almost 4 minutes to load into Windows from that screen. Any ideas why that could be? It didn't do that initially...

Thanks to everyone for their help with this build. I am very happy with the system, and am anxious to do some actual work on it and see how the workflow feels.

 

[Jim Cockfield]

Doublehelix wrote:

Well, I finished the build and testing, and now have installed all my programs, updates, plugins, etc.

The final system looks like this:

• Intel i7 3930K
• Asus X79 Pro LGA2011 Mobo
• 32 GB DDR3 1866 RAM (Quad Channel)
• Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB (OS and Programs)
• Samsung 840 Pro 256 GB (swap and temp, LR catalog and previews)
• TWO WD Black 4TB HDD RAID-1 Array (Data)
• Asus 24X DVD Read/Write
• Nvidia GTX560Ti Video Card
• Asus 750 Watt PSU
• Windows 7 Professional

Sounds nice. But, why the older Nvidia GTX 560Ti versus a newer Kepler based card like an Nvidia GTX 660 (or even newer architecture card like an Nvidia GTX 760)?

Not that's there is any issue using an older generation card like the GTX 560Ti.

But, for "future proofing", given the very minor cost difference, it seems like a better bet would have been to go with a newer generation video chipset (versus going with a chipset that's now two generations old, given the newer 7xx models being introduced now.

IOW, a newer generation card like the new GTX 760 would be faster than a GTX 560Ti (look at benchmarks, and you'll see that a GTX 760 outperforms a GTX 560Ti by a good margin), support newer 4K displays (the GTX 560Ti is limited to 2560x1600), newer OpenGL releases (4.1 with the GTX 560Ti, 4.3 with the GTX 760), newer PCI 3.0 bus speeds, and more.

So, given the other components in your system, the use of a two generations old video card is surprising to me, when you could probably buy something like the latest GTX 760 for close to the same price (and have a card that's faster than the GTX 560Ti that supports newer standard and higher resolution displays in case you needed support for those features over the life of your new system).

--
JimC
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[Jim Cockfield]

P.S.

If you're not into gaming, no big deal; and if you have no plans to buy a newer 4K resolution display during the life of your new system, no big deal

I'm just a bit surprised that you went with an older generation GTX 5xx series video card, given the other components in your system, when for very little cost difference, you could buy a newer generation card that's faster and has support for higher resolution displays, newer OpenGL versions, newer PCIe 3.0 bus speeds, etc.

For use with apps like CS6, the GTX 560Ti is more than fast enough. But, if I were spending that much on a new system, I think I'd probably go with a newer generation video card for a bit of "future proofing"

--
JimC
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