Input on New System

[choucove]

Hey there everyone, I'm wanting to ask for all of your personal opinions on a new very high-powered computer workstation we will be putting in at one of our shops. The main purpose of the computer will be to run a Mimaki JV3 digital printer, but plans are in the future to get either another Mimaki to run from it or even better, a flat bed printer. Since we will be having two pretty tough printers eventually running from this system, we're wanting it to be beefy.

Here is some background:
In the past we have had several local computer tech guys tell us they could make some great powerful computers to handle anything and everything we threw at them. Two years ago, one of these techs built four new stations promising plenty of power for years to come. The problem was they weren't near what he said they were - Low power Intel Celeron processors, 512 MB RAM, integrated video on a poor quality MSI motherboard. For a simple office computer, this would have been fine, but everyone was having tons of problems trying to run Flexi and other software for designing, and of course would be way underpowered for running a digital printer.

The whole situation of having purchased four brand new and yet completely useless computers for the task rubbed everyone the wrong way. I came in and upgraded all the workstations to 2 GB of memory (maxed out the computers) at least, and it is just enough adequate to do what they need. That is fine for them they said and want to put off upgrading all these computers for another year or so if possible. But we need a new workstation desperately for the printing computer.

Over Christmas break this year, I installed two new workstations at our Colby, KS, shop. One was a single dual-core AMD Opteron based system with 2 GB of RAM and an nVidia Quadro FX570 video card. This computer runs their vinyl cutter, and has a medial load of designing done on it. The other workstation I went all out on as was requested and had built a double dual-core AMD Opteron based system on a sever/workstation class Supermicro motherboard currently with 2 GB of RAM and an nVidia Quadro FX1700 video card. This is for the main designing workstation, as our main designer had always complained of his computer not having enough power to do his tasks. This computer by far is more than he really can use now. But, it leaves for flexibility if we ever want to hook up and run digital printers from it as well.

So, we are now in need of putting in another high powered workstation, this time in our Hays, KS, office to run possibly two digital printers. My intentions have been to purchase a computer identical to the double dual-core AMD Opteron system we built for the designer in the Colby office, but I wanted to get all of your opinions. There are lots of other options out there, such as building a system using an Intel Core2Quad Q6700 with plenty of memory and an nVidia Quadro FX1700 as well. Perhaps even going with a dual Intel Core2Quad Q6600 in a server/workstation type board. There are lots of options out there, and I just was wondering what all your thoughts may be!

 

[RaptorRay]

Just remember that alot of software is not compiled to use two processors much less four! Check your rip to see if it does.

Get the best video card you can. A high end graphics graphics card will give amazing results.

Ray

 

[choucove]

The only real software that will be running on the workstation will be Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Illustrator, which I've been told are both designed to multi-thread up to 8 cores or more (?) and Flexi 8.0 which is designed to multi-thread up to 2 cores at least currently. The reason for at least four cores is for future overhead expandability. That was the biggest problem in the first place. Four "new" workstations were purchased not even two years ago and were maxed out on their capabilities within a few months.

The nVidia Quadro line of cards is just about as good as you can get when it comes to high-performance design work. We put a couple FX560 cards in some workstations and have loved them. The FX1700 card is about the best we can get for the money for the benefit (at just under $500.00 per card). It's also a DirectX 10 card which means it will be ready for anything in the future really.

One thing I need to try and find is how to reconfigure Windows XP Professional 32-bit to be able to recognize and utilize more than 2.8 GB of memory. We could just install Windows XP Professional 64-bit edition, but it is a little buggy and just not quite as stable itself and with other software we are using.

 

[Ken]

Dare I mention the word "Vista"??
I believe it will handle a larger RAM load. It always seems to be the RAM..either the motherboard or video card. So Max that out .
I also understand that 10K rpm hard drives are available. 800 mz FSB.
I think you need a CRAY computer..and get it over with...lol
Cheers!
Ken

 

[choucove]

We actually put in 10,000rpm Western Digital 150 GB Raptor hard drives in the three design workstations at our Colby office, including the new double dual-core AMD Opteron system I described earlier. Not a huge speed benefit, but enough to notice it.

There are quite a few reasons why we have not gone to upgrading to Vista yet. First off, limited support for lots of things. I've got Vista on my laptop and honestly I can't stand the "Allow/Deny" and "Confirm or Cancel" on every single mouse click you make. Our version of Flexi is also not intended for Vista (we upgraded to Flexi v8.0 not quite a year ago at a huge cost) and it would be very unreasonable to upgrade again so soon to 8.5 AND upgrade every computer to Vista all in such a short time.

But yes, Vista of course will be inevitable here in a year, perhaps we can hold off for more. XP is just much more stable for us, and we all like it much more. But we do realize that all the original workstations at the Hays office will have to be upgraded as well when we do decide to upgrade to Vista.

 

[Techman]

But yes, Vista of course will be inevitable here in a year, perhaps we can hold off for more.

You will be able to run XP for a few more years with plenty of support.

Vista is turning out ot be a flop. Most hated most reviled, and most abandoned ever.

I have a new lappy with vista on it and i will test the SP for vista. If it does not make a significant improvement on performance in this slow poke ,, Vista will be gone.
I already made up a slipstreamed XP installer with all the drivers (had to hunt them all down) for this nice lappy.

 

[choucove]

I am in the exact same boat as you Techman. I have an HP that came with Vista, and was waiting to try out the SP1 for Vista. I've noticed Vista started running INCREDIBLY slow since it's install (without any real system or software changes even) so if the SP1 can't really fix this, I'm ripping Vista off the system and installing XP.

There are only two factors for upgrading to Vista for us. The first is the need for more RAM. Windows XP Professional 32-bit only supports up to 2.8 GB RAM natively, but Windows XP Professional 64-bit supports up to 128 GB RAM. However, XP 64-bit is almost as buggy as Vista. We've had a couple more issues with our software on 64-bit XP than on 32-bit XP. The other factor is that all of our designers do most of their work in Flexi and thus are highly dependent upon upgrades (as needed and afforded) and will mean an inevitable jump into the Vista waters in the next couple years.

If it were me, I'd switch the systems over to Linux, but of course, few know how to work with it and feel comfortable (the general user interface of most distributions is just like working in Windows I believe.) That and I doubt Adobe or Flexi would be designed well with Linux.

So, the biggest thing to keep us working longer in Windows XP is being able to find a way to reconfigure it to work with more than 2.8 GB of memory. I've heard there is some editing that can be done to the Boot.ini or the System.conf file?

 

[John M]

I still wouldn't recommend Vista for design work. Once they get the bugs worked out of Service Pack 1 it might be worth a second look.

Right now, Intel processors blow away AMD. As a huge AMD fan, I hate to say it but it's just the way it is. Nothing AMD makes can approach a tweaked Q6600.

If you're doing wraps you'll want a lot of firepower. That doesn't just mean CPU; you'll need drive speed as well, and the kind that can come only from a RAID environment. Where a single Raptor can sustain maybe a 70 meg/second rate, a 4-drive array on our machine provides 200 meg/sec sustained and over 300 meg/sec peak. That means 2TB of storage too, not the 300 meg a pair of the largest Raptors would provide.

If you'd like to try an easy benchmark, go grab the "SuperPi" program (quick google will find it). It calculates pi to x digits which is a good way to quickly compare raw speed between systems. Calculate 1 million places and note the results; our machine takes right at 17 seconds. For comparison, a new Celeron 1.6 gHz takes 47 seconds -- and so does a P4 3gHz. An Athlon 5000 is in the 37 second range. Try it on your current machine to see where it fits in. This tests only a single core but it's a good way to judge relative performance.

The amount of memory seen by 32-bit Windows is dependent on the motherboard. Our systems ship with 4GB physical memory with ~ 3.3 GB usable. Programs can use only 2GB. The "3GB switch" for XP you may have heard of, which lets programs access 3GB at once, can cause other problems so it's not always a good idea.

You do not need a fancy video card for 2D design work. Your CPU is doing all the work; even onboard video would be adequate for most situations. We use a ~ $100 video card with dual DVI outputs and have no problems with screen refreshes even with a pair of 1680 x 1050 monitors. Unless you do true CAD, save your money.

 

[choucove]

John it's great to hear all your helpful input! I've actually been looking at your systems and have been very impressed with them for a long time. The only thing that would be "overkill" on the Monster for our computer would be hard drive space. All of our data is stored on a file server, for security and sharing, and we'd only need a little hard drive space on the actual graphics workstation.

It's good to hear about the 3GB Switch and hearing that it may not be the most dependable. I hadn't heard anywhere if this approach worked or not, only that it was supposedly possible.

I also agree with you on the expensive video cards. I suggested putting the nVidia Quadro FX570 card into the design station and even that would be more than enough power for doing their work, but the designer running the system complained he needed something of a more powerful video card and so I went with the nVidia Quadro FX1700 card (which they really will never throw enough at it to cause it to hiccup.)

 

[synergy_jim]

...

buy a mac....

 

[flyinhawaiian968]

Interesting program, John! System here is at 19 seconds with a few programs running.

Choucove, for most graphics programs like Corel and Photoshop, stick with Intel processors, as they usually give more gain in the number-crunching areas. Most of what Corel and PS do is number crunching when you manipulate graphics, AMD processors usually fall short in this area.

NVidia cards are great, I use them exclusively. And as far as m/b's, I've only used Asus for the past 10+ years now. Max out the memory to 4GB, add a hard drive with excellent transfer rates and call it a day!

Also, even though one runs a gigabit ethernet, you'll never be able to transfer that quickly since no consumer-type of hard drive can sustain transfer rates even remotely close to that. Only way would be to run a RAID 0 setup to boost the transfer rates up.

Also, tweaking XP will give you excellent gains in speed. I usually turn off a ton of stuff in services, and basically strip the o/s of everything unnecessary.

Chris

 

[choucove]

It sounds like the usual consensus is that even a single quad-core desktop line Core2Quad Q6600 can outperform and out-power two dual-core AMD Opteron processors. In the long run, this is good to hear as it means few physical processors to buy so lower cost, cheaper motherboard, and cheaper memory.

What all Windows services would you suggest disabling in standard to help with performance speeds?

Another question I've been meaning to ask deals with file storage. Just this last week we put in a Supermicro server to help update a lot of things. Beforehand, all the artwork files were stored on a single hard drive in the main designing computer and shared to the other users in the office. The accounting files were just stored on a single computer up front locally. And data was backed up on external hard drives "every now and then." Obviously not the best setup. So we put in the server so we could set up four 500 GB hard drives in RAID 10 for data redundancy, and installed Fedora linux on two 320 GB hard drives in RAID 1. Now all the data is in a redundant array, shared for a single location, and can be password protected down to folders and individual users. We still back up files to external hard drive, but now it's all done from one place on one drive.

My question is, do others out there use such systems for data sharing and backup? What RAID configurations do you normally go with? The people in the Hays office have asked if it were possible to make the server and the new printer workstation all one computer and of course, the short answer is yes. But with the work load used for both major needs, isn't it more ideal to have two separate computer systems?

 

[John M]

The real reason we use those drives in the RAID is for the speed, not just the capacity. The smallest 32 meg cache drives from Seagate are 250 GB, meaning you'd still have a TB of space. We build to suit!

I don't know if I'd want to design on the same machine used for backup. It doesn't take much CPU to do file sharing but it's just a better practice to have the backup system separate from workstation duties.

Any form of redundant RAID (as opposed to the simple stripes used in the Monster) is a good idea. Be sure to back it up to external media on a regular basis and store it offsite. You never know what may happen, and your data is the most valuable asset you have.

I use RAID 5 in the store because of its mix of redundancy and storage space. Unless I lose two drives at once I have a very small chance of losing information in the case of hardware failure.

 

[choucove]

I was actually looking up some comparisons today and was quite surprised. For the extra money saved on a PNY Quadro FX570 compared to a Quadro FX1700, we could even go with two striped Serial Attached SCSI 15,000rpm hard drives for the sheer raw power and speed of it all. Would that be necessary? I don't think so really, but, that's the way to get some speed out of it perhaps!

The more and more I've been speaking with people and more and more we look at the system in place already at the Colby office, the more I am hesitant to put an identical machine in at Hays. Not that it won't do the job, it's more than powerful and capable to do what it will be needing to do and much more. But there are other areas that could help boost up the speed and efficiency for the job it is needed for. The one at the Colby office was built to be somewhat identical to the file server also set up around the same time, that way they are somewhat interchangeable if need be. I don't think that's as necessary at the Hays office.

 

[SignBurst PCs]

We have been testing Vista Ultimate 64 SP1 on our design systems for several weeks. I am really impressed so far. It has improved all of the data transfer issues that we were experiencing in the past. That being said, I still tend ot lean toward XP 64 unless you are 100% sure that your software (including print drivers) is compatible. Photoshop and Illustrator CS2 and CS3 work very well under XP 64 and Vista 64 (if installed correctly). We also use 64 Bit versions of both XP and Vista to get the additional RAM advantage. RAM is a HUGE factor in Photoshop performane. RAID is a big factor as well, especially on the "scratch drive". Photoshop and Illustrator have several tweaks that can be made to increase your performance considerably if you build your system to compliment them. Just do your homework on the software before you build.

 

[cgsigns_jamie]

buy a mac....

Ditto...

 

[choucove]

Casey, I noticed in the Supernova system from singburst.com that you run an array of SAS hard drives. I've been wondering about these drives for some time now but never was sure if the higher disk speed (and with multiple drives in a striped array) would have enough increase in speed efficiency to warrant the high cost of the drives (and a controller card.) Also, for a digital rip station would a Core2Quad run about the same power as a quad core Xeon of about the same cost?

 

[SignBurst PCs]

For a rip only station, I would stick with the Core2Quad. Aside from the price of the processor, you will have higher priced hardware all around.

Our Inferno is actually a beefy RIP station that can offer a significant increase in design speed if you are on a budget. You can see the specs and get the overall idea. It is a Core2Quad system.

The SAS drives are reaching the point to where they have a reasonable performance/price value. They are still at the upper end of our design systems, but they are indeed faster than the SATA2 or even Raptors. 15k RPM and huge caches are a big boost. Another advantage the Xeon systems also offer the ability to boost your system over 8GB (upto 32). Many people will argue that you don't need even 8Gb of RAM, but if you think about it, Windows uses it's chuck (usuually half), then Photoshop can use 3GB, the plug-ins use their chunk, Illustrator, security software, email, office productivity software all take up more. That isn't even considering all the other stuff we cram onto our systems (i.e music players, instant messangers, Internet browsers). Even at 8GB, I start to feel the need for more and more. Several of our customers have upgraded to upwards of 16GB just to make life easier. With hints of Adobe Photoshop coming in a 64 Bit flavor soon, we will all want to be upgrading to over 8GB or RAM. I don't want to build a whole new system to overcome that hurdle. I would rather lay the framework now, take advantage of the increased speed now, and make an inexpensive upgrade when Adobe opens the gates!

I guess that in the end, it all depends on what you are going to do on a system and what your priorities are.

I know that in my daily grind, I can have several Photoshop files open, an Illustrator window going, answering emails in Outlook, browsing the web, and more and more and more (all at the same time).

We are all being forced to multi-task. That is where the more expensive hardware comes in. My time is worth $$$ and a faster system saves me time. Not only the time/$$$ issue, but I am part of a generation that wants things done NOW! I have soooo many things to do at any given time, the less I wait on my computer, the more time I have to do other things, most importantly, get home, hug the kids, and crack open a cold one.

 

[jiarby]

Vista is turning out ot be a flop. Most hated most reviled, and most abandoned ever.

Don't forget ME & MS BOB!

 

[SignBurst PCs]

Don't forget ME & MS BOB!

No, no, no.... I want to forget Windows ME!