I have €10k to spend on a workstation...

RuggieBear

Boss has given me a budget of €10,000 for a new workstation.

I'll be doing mostly GIS (ArcGIS 9.1) and Autocad and dealing with very very large files:D.

Basically, i'm unsure which components to spend the money on, eg, RAM, Open gl Gfx card, Fast harddrives, large monitors. Which would be most beneficial?

I might even go for a laptop for portablility as i'll be spending a good bit of time in the field.

If anyone could be bothered... any advice and/or opinions would be very much welcome.

Endurance Man

Lordy :eek: , my tiny brain wouldnt know where to start, but im throw a punch and say 2x7950's, cant go wrong .

irlrobins

Ram and first harddrives would be my guess. I know next to nothing about ARcGis and Autocad, but I imagine their video card demands would be much lower than a gamers.

weeder

get a macpro upto 16GB ram

RuggieBear

some of the dell workstations can take up to 64 GB RAM but it adds a good bit to the price

dell website wrote:

64GB DDR2 667 Quad Channel FBD Memory (16X4GB) with riser (+EUR 47,820.00)

I'm thinking that 4GB is a minimum and at least one ultra quick harddrive and then at least one slower "storage" one. We have decent server storage but i really prefer to have my data close at hand.

I'm wondering how a top of the range Open GL card compares with a top of the range games card... The open gl stuff costs a lot but wondering if the brute force of the top games cards would compare/be better in open gl applications like GIS/CAD

Cuddlesworth

Tbh, a single kentsfield with 4 gigs of ram, 2 fast harddrives in raid 1 for boot, and 2 harddrives in raid 1 for storage(in case of failure). Quadro cards are supposed to be better for Cad, cant say for sure about Gis. But on a price over performance its a hard choice. But your not paying. Thing to note is that Nvidia spends a lot of time on its workstation drivers.

RuggieBear

krazy_8s wrote:

Tbh, a single kentsfield with 4 gigs of ram, 2 fast harddrives in raid 1 for boot, and 2 harddrives in raid 1 for storage(in case of failure). Quadro cards are supposed to be better for Cad, cant say for sure about Gis. But on a price over performance its a hard choice. But your not paying. Thing to note is that Nvidia spends a lot of time on its workstation drivers.

when are the kentfield chips available?

Cuddlesworth

Now considering Flacus sold 2 last week.

RuggieBear

Groovy. Didn't notice it for sale on the larger system builder's websites.

DonkeyRhubarb

Id go with a quatro card myself.

Give yourself a lot of screen space. Perhaps a 24" widescreen (or 2).

ram is a workstations best friend (a graphical one anyway)

Id say youll get along nicely with 4GB, but 8GB might future proof it a bit. 8 will significantly add to the cost though!

Look into dual socket mobos. Perhaps you could get 2x Dualcore processors.

Seeing as you have a good bit of money to play with, look at 10,000 or 15,000k server HD drives. You could work from these and save on a 750GB HD (or 2)

If sound is a big deal, reply that it is. Thats where I come into my own:D

Whatever you get, its gonna be nice. Enjoy...

BossArky

nes 8 bit is the way to go!

RuggieBear

don't need decent sound at all.:)

RazielDoomgate

this reminds me of a system on adverts recently.. might give you some ideas to what you might need want...

http://www.adverts.ie/showproduct.php?perpage=15&product=4407&cpage=1&perpage=15&cat=8#poststart

RuggieBear

BossArky wrote:

nes 8 bit is the way to go!

tbh i was going to bring in my atari ST:D

RuggieBear

RazielDoomgate wrote:

this reminds me of a system on adverts recently.. might give you some ideas to what you might need want...

http://www.adverts.ie/showproduct.php?perpage=15&product=4407&cpage=1&perpage=15&cat=8#poststart

yep...that's basically what i want except for work

tba

yeah get two massive flat screens for your viewing pleasure and maybe consider getting a tablet

DonkeyRhubarb

I just saw the most appropriate thing!

http://www.gwn.com/news/story.php/id/10042/

Thats your graphics card buddy!!!

Creamy Goodness

pity it's over budget by about 3 grand for the total pc

RuggieBear

I'm thinking something along these lines

Dell Precision™ Workstation 690 Minitower - 1KW Chassis
Processor: Two Intel® Xeon® 5160 (3.00GHz,1333MHz,4MB Cache) (+ EUR EUR 2,650.00)
Graphics Card: 512MB nVidia Quadro FX4500 SLI DUAL Graphics Card (+ EUR EUR 1,200.00)
Memory: 4GB DDR2 533 Quad Channel FBD Memory (2x2GB) (+ EUR EUR 420.00)
HDD Configurations: All SATA drives, RAID 0, 2 drive total configuration
1st (Boot) Hard Drive: 146GB (15,000rpm) SAS Hard Drive (+ EUR EUR 420.00)
2nd Hard Drive: 146GB (15,000rpm) SAS Hard Drive (+ EUR EUR 420.00)
3rd Hard Drive: 500GB (7,200 rpm) SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive (+ EUR EUR 480.00)
Primary Optical Device: 16x max DVD+/-RW Drive(2) Drive with double layer write capability(1) - Dell Recommended Feature
1st Monitor: Dell 24" UltraSharp Wide Aspect Black (TCO99) Flat Panel Monitor (2407WFP) (+ EUR EUR 650.00)
Additional Monitor: Dell 24" UltraSharp Wide Aspect Black (TCO99) Flat Panel Monitor (2407WFP) (+ EUR EUR 970.00)

EUR 10,434.00 without vat

EUR 12,625.14 with vat

Pretty sure i can get a big discount and i'm not sure if we pay VAT

DonkeyRhubarb

<Gurglins noises>

That might about just do it.

If dell did Opteron in Ireland, Id go for that. But alas, to my dismay, I think they don't.

If you get that setup, Ill be your agent. People can pay to see it. All I want is 10% commission.:D

PogMoThoin

RuggieBear wrote:

Pretty sure i can get a big discount and i'm not sure if we pay VAT

:rolleyes: The co. can get a vat refund at the end of the tax yr if they have a vat no, which i'm sure they have.

Cuddlesworth

RuggieBear wrote:

I'm thinking something along these lines

Dell Precision™ Workstation 690 Minitower - 1KW Chassis
Processor: Two Intel® Xeon® 5160 (3.00GHz,1333MHz,4MB Cache) (+ EUR EUR 2,650.00)
Graphics Card: 512MB nVidia Quadro FX4500 SLI DUAL Graphics Card (+ EUR EUR 1,200.00)
Memory: 4GB DDR2 533 Quad Channel FBD Memory (2x2GB) (+ EUR EUR 420.00)
HDD Configurations: All SATA drives, RAID 0, 2 drive total configuration
1st (Boot) Hard Drive: 146GB (15,000rpm) SAS Hard Drive (+ EUR EUR 420.00)
2nd Hard Drive: 146GB (15,000rpm) SAS Hard Drive (+ EUR EUR 420.00)
3rd Hard Drive: 500GB (7,200 rpm) SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive (+ EUR EUR 480.00)
Primary Optical Device: 16x max DVD+/-RW Drive(2) Drive with double layer write capability(1) - Dell Recommended Feature
1st Monitor: Dell 24" UltraSharp Wide Aspect Black (TCO99) Flat Panel Monitor (2407WFP) (+ EUR EUR 650.00)
Additional Monitor: Dell 24" UltraSharp Wide Aspect Black (TCO99) Flat Panel Monitor (2407WFP) (+ EUR EUR 970.00)

EUR 10,434.00 without vat

EUR 12,625.14 with vat

Pretty sure i can get a big discount and i'm not sure if we pay VAT

You dont, but you can take that within 10,000 by lowering the 15k harddrives to 36gig with raid1, and using a raid 1 320gig solution as backup. Gives you 8gigs of ram as well. Dont forget that those Xeons are really Conroes with more grunt and they are dual core. Thats 4 of the most powerfull cpus on the market. Do the programs you use utilise multi-core technoligy?

RuggieBear

krazy_8s wrote:

You dont, but you can take that within 10,000 by lowering the 15k harddrives to 36gig with raid1, and using a raid 1 320gig solution as backup. Gives you 8gigs of ram as well. Dont forget that those Xeons are really Conroes with more grunt and they are dual core. Thats 4 of the most powerfull cpus on the market. Do the programs you use utilise multi-core technoligy?

The 10 k was really a ball park figure. I can go to my boss with the specs and argue for it.

I have a budget of roughly 30 grand for computers, software and other equipment.

WRT the harddrives, i was just going by what flaccus said on his for sale thread and he intimated that the sas 15k drives kick arse.

Not really sure what to do about back up. I plan to back everything up to lacie 1 terabyte external drive and also the server.

sadly it's going to be stuck in an office with no games going anywhere near it.

tba

not even solitare?

Creamy Goodness

as long as it has a internet browser with access to boards i don't think he'll mind if sollaitaire is there or not

RuggieBear

poxy firewall makes boards browsing difficult:(

WizZard

Don't buy the RAM from Dell - buy from Crucial or elsewhere. Dell rob you on memory. It's only a small saving but it's sometimes worth it

jesus_thats_gre

DonkeyRhubarb wrote:

<Gurglins noises>

That might about just do it.

If dell did Opteron in Ireland, Id go for that. But alas, to my dismay, I think they don't.

If you get that setup, Ill be your agent. People can pay to see it. All I want is 10% commission.:D

Why would you want the Opterons? Sure the new Xeon's are based on the conroe and have a higher fsb..

Cuddlesworth

The new Xeons are Kentsfield, which is not a netburst chip like the old ones. The are the dogs bollocks and blow opterons out of the water.

godtabh

RuggieBear wrote:

1st Monitor: Dell 24" UltraSharp Wide Aspect Black (TCO99) Flat Panel Monitor (2407WFP) (+ EUR EUR 650.00)
Additional Monitor: Dell 24" UltraSharp Wide Aspect Black (TCO99) Flat Panel Monitor (2407WFP) (+ EUR EUR 970.00)

Note sure if any one else has mentioned this but Dell seem to be charging you 2 diferent prices for the same screen. Surely these should be the same price?

irlrobins

First price is for upgrading from the standard monitor that comes with the package. Second price is for adding an additional monitor. AFAIK anyway

RuggieBear

what irlrobins said

I just did a rough copy and paste from the dell website

egan007

You could buy a base Sun Workstation for 6.5K

http://ie.sun.com/catalog/?n-state=http://catalog.sun.com/partpricing.xml?site%3dHORIZONIE%26catalogue%3dFC%26segment%3dFC_R%26item%3dFC_SC_CAT%26group%3d2005%26fid%3d5090%26id%3d13357~~~G!072E519CF878!WBPkexcnEpBE33lB~standard~ws-nocache~~@http://syndicator.sun-catalogue.com/horizon/context-of-default-1

Sun Ultra 40 Workstation,
2 AMD Opteron Model 280 (Dual-core) processor,
8 GB (4 * 2 GB) DDR-400 ECC memory,
1 * 250 GB 7200 RPM SATA Disk Drive,
NVIDIA Quadro FX3500 PCI-Express graphics card,
1 * DVD Dual,
2 * 10/100/1000 Ethernet ports,
2 * x16 PCI-Express slots,
2 * x4 PCI-Express slots,
2 * legacy PCI slots,
Solaris 10 pre-installed,
RoHS-6 Compliant

How bout twice Xeon performance?
http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/x4200/

Suns their new x64 bit machines blow everything else away.
And they all support windows if that's what you want to run

RuggieBear

windows 2000 is the OS in here

Never really thought about sun tbh

Praetorian

I think you definitely want something like Flaccus's machine, with a strong GPU (or 2). I can't see a point of going above 8 gigs of ram. Would love to spend that much on hardware

Cuddlesworth

The Sun one seems a bit weak Tbh, no displays, less rendering power for the Gis/Cad and less cpu power. The new Xeons are better than Opterons. They are just expensive due to high demand and short supply.

niallb

Try these guys - Boxx Technologies.

Does your 10k include software licenses for the machine?
Better check, because that could be over half your budget.

NiallB

Yook

RuggieBear wrote:

I'm thinking something along these lines

Dell Precision™ Workstation 690 Minitower - 1KW Chassis
Processor: Two Intel® Xeon® 5160 (3.00GHz,1333MHz,4MB Cache) (+ EUR EUR 2,650.00)
Graphics Card: 512MB nVidia Quadro FX4500 SLI DUAL Graphics Card (+ EUR EUR 1,200.00)
Memory: 4GB DDR2 533 Quad Channel FBD Memory (2x2GB) (+ EUR EUR 420.00)
HDD Configurations: All SATA drives, RAID 0, 2 drive total configuration
1st (Boot) Hard Drive: 146GB (15,000rpm) SAS Hard Drive (+ EUR EUR 420.00)
2nd Hard Drive: 146GB (15,000rpm) SAS Hard Drive (+ EUR EUR 420.00)
3rd Hard Drive: 500GB (7,200 rpm) SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive (+ EUR EUR 480.00)
Primary Optical Device: 16x max DVD+/-RW Drive(2) Drive with double layer write capability(1) - Dell Recommended Feature
1st Monitor: Dell 24" UltraSharp Wide Aspect Black (TCO99) Flat Panel Monitor (2407WFP) (+ EUR EUR 650.00)
Additional Monitor: Dell 24" UltraSharp Wide Aspect Black (TCO99) Flat Panel Monitor (2407WFP) (+ EUR EUR 970.00)

EUR 10,434.00 without vat

EUR 12,625.14 with vat

Pretty sure i can get a big discount and i'm not sure if we pay VAT

Nerdgasm....

RuggieBear

niallb wrote:

Try these guys - Boxx Technologies.

Does your 10k include software licenses for the machine?
Better check, because that could be over half your budget.

NiallB

I've another 20k for software and other equipment:)

EWheelChair

I work for a survey supply company, alot of the lads here work in GIS or have worked in GIS. I know from one of them who used to own a surveying company a few years ago, that he used to buy second hand dell servers from the states, this was 4 years ago and he was spending 15,000 thousand or so on them.

You're talking about massive tif files, so ram is seriously important. 4 Gigs is the minimum as you know. You mentioned something about top end gaming cards, don't. You need a Quadro.

You seem to have a fairly good idea of what you need anyway, that dell machine you mentioned seems good. If you have any other questions, i can ask one of the two lads here. If you want to buy some Surveying gear, send me a message

po0k

krazy_8s wrote:

The new Xeons are Kentsfield, which is not a netburst chip like the old ones. The are the dogs bollocks and blow opterons out of the water.

They also have VT-x (x86 Ringuops - © po0k Interpies 2006) for the Xen 3.0.2 goodness

RuggieBear

EWheelChair wrote:

I work for a survey supply company, alot of the lads here work in GIS or have worked in GIS. I know from one of them who used to own a surveying company a few years ago, that he used to buy second hand dell servers from the states, this was 4 years ago and he was spending 15,000 thousand or so on them.

You're talking about massive tif files, so ram is seriously important. 4 Gigs is the minimum as you know. You mentioned something about top end gaming cards, don't. You need a Quadro.

You seem to have a fairly good idea of what you need anyway, that dell machine you mentioned seems good. If you have any other questions, i can ask one of the two lads here. If you want to buy some Surveying gear, send me a message

lol. One of the other sections just got some new Trible and Thales stuff. I'm hopefully going to be trained up on it soon and then it's out into the filed for me.

I just spent an hour loading up tiff files onto my screen and my present workstation aint that bad, it's just not good enough

WizZard

RuggieBear wrote:

I'm hopefully going to be trained up on it soon and then it's out into the filed for me.

Mental image of Ruggie getting shoved into a filing drawer :eek:

RuggieBear

WizZard wrote:

Mental image of Ruggie getting shoved into a filing drawer :eek:

someone needs to train me how to type:o

EWheelChair

We're the Irish Thales dealers, so chances are he got it from us. Don't mind that trimble stuff though, its terrible

RuggieBear

EWheelChair wrote:

We're the Irish Thales dealers, so chances are he got it from us. Don't mind that trimble stuff though, its terrible

of course it is:D

egan007

krazy_8s wrote:

The Sun one seems a bit weak Tbh, no displays, less rendering power for the Gis/Cad and less cpu power. The new Xeons are better than Opterons. They are just expensive due to high demand and short supply.

Hence the 'Base Station'
There are plenty of beef up options
and check benchmark tests the new Xeons are definately not better than the 64 opterons for the performance he's looking for.

Cuddlesworth

egan007 wrote:

Hence the 'Base Station'
There are plenty of beef up options
and check benchmark tests the new Xeons are definately not better than the 64 opterons for the performance he's looking for.

Will do.

egan007

RuggieBear wrote:

windows 2000 is the OS in here

Never really thought about sun tbh

Well might be worth a call, I've seen them running windows 2k better than intels can.
Plus as in Irish sun customer you are going to get very well looked after - Dell won't look after you
Sun sales are handled by horizon in Ireland - might be worth a call anyway
http://www.hos.horizon.ie/

Cuddlesworth

egan007 wrote:

Well might be worth a call, I've seen them running windows 2k better than intels can.
Plus as in Irish sun customer you are going to get very well looked after - Dell won't look after you
Sun sales are handled by horizon in Ireland - might be worth a call anyway
http://www.hos.horizon.ie/

Really? we get great support. But my company goes through about 400 machines a year.

jesus_thats_gre

egan007 wrote:

Well might be worth a call, I've seen them running windows 2k better than intels can.
Plus as in Irish sun customer you are going to get very well looked after - Dell won't look after you
Sun sales are handled by horizon in Ireland - might be worth a call anyway
http://www.hos.horizon.ie/

This I agree with.. We give SUN a shout and they are out in the Data Centre within 30 mins..