Xeon Gold 6142 Machine being spec'd

[mattjgerard]

So, I found the one guy in our IT dept that is excited to pimp us out a new network render box. This is the one he got his boss to spec out, the basics are this-

HP Z8 G4
2x Intel Xeon 6142 2.6 2666MHz 16C CPU
32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 2666 DIMM ECC Registered 2CPU Memory
HP Z8 G4 1125W  PSU

That would get us to 64 threads in a single box for about $9,000

Now, i understand that they probably have a relationship with an HP dealer, all the computers the company uses are HP, and they have a decent support system and warranty and such.

But the price just seems way to high to me for what we are getting, especially when I look at the ability to buy a prebuilt Ryzen 1950x box from Dell with 32 threads for about $2300, for a around the same we could get 3-4 of the AMD boxes and be at 96-128 cores.

I'm not used to trying to reason with corporate IT people, and I'm figuring out that their requirements and ideas of high end machines are a bit different than a 3d artists. They still consider a 4 core i3 laptop a "poweruser" laptop. And my HP640 workstation is on windows 7 and will be until it dies. Frustrating.

My connection in IT is the server implementation guy, so he has setup the render box we are using now, and gave me full admin rights so its on my plate to keep the system updated and keep all the render queues and nodes up to date. Which I like. if there is a problem, I'd rather fix it myself than submitting a fix ticket and waiting till next week for them to look at it.

Anyaway, from what my IT guy says, dropping 9k on a workstation isn't a huge deal for a specialized purpose, they just don't want every other schmuck in the office to find out and whine about getting their own when really all they need is a mid range lappy and a couple screens. They just dropped $200k for a new storage solution, so this is a drop in the bucket for them.

Nine grand though.

[theAVator]

I was looking up some specs on a machine just to have a talking point with my IT guys about acquiring a render box I could use for Keyshot stuff along with other production/video production stuff as needed. 

Just as a high end spec I was looking at the Dell Precision 7920 Tower which base price is around $6649 which includes:
Intel Xeon Gold 6130 2.1GHz, 3.7GHz Turbo, 16C, 10.4GT/s 3UPI, 22M Cache, HT (125W) DDR4-2666

Moving up to the dual processors - the top end set adds about $2733 extra
Dual Intel Xeon Gold 6136 3.0GHz, 3.7GHz Turbo, 12C, 10.4GT/s 3UPI,24.75M Cache, HT (150W) DDR4-2666

Base RAM is 64GB (8x8GB) 2666MHz DDR4 RDIMM ECC included in those prices.

I am by no means an expert, or novice for that matter, in this area, but it seems like a high price for the specs compared to Dell, and not taking into account any corporate discounts. I mean, the higher end processor, and double the RAM for basically the same price point - although I think for that processor you'd be required to make another jump in RAM so there might be additional cost not included yet, but that begs the question if the RAM your guy spec'd out is actually sufficient for the system he's looking at.

The part I found most crazy was the fact that you could add upwards of 1.5TB of RAM!!! Along with the fact that that added another $24,000 to the price! lol

Here's the link to the system i was looking through:
http://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/desktop-and-all-in-one-pcs/precision-7920-tower/spd/precision-7920-workstation/xctopt7920us_4

[mattjgerard]

So, here is my results from my unofficial testing of our current setups. I think there is some difference between running the test on a local machine vs the network renderer, I noticed that my machine was pegged at 92% CPU useage the whole time, while the server machines would bounce around, and drop to 0 for a couple seconds before ramping up again, and even then they didn't sit at 100% for very long, then they would drop, then go up again. Very random, but might have to do with how the network renderer handles images. I think he has the servers running virtually, through VMware, and that might account for some of the longer times.

File – Wireless Catalog Cover
3500x4340 pixels @300dpi
250 max samples

Workstation at desk-
Intel Xeon E5-2620 v3 @ 2.4 Ghz 24 virtual cores 2 processors
Time to render – 15 min

Hq-render-01 10.010.20.86
Intel Xeon E5-2650 v4 @2Ghz 32 virtual cores 2 processors
Time to render – 28 min


Hq-keyshot-01 (new one just set up) 10.10.90.137
Intel Xeon E5-2660 v4 @2Ghz 32 virtual cores 4 processors
Time to render - 17 min

[Gordon]

I still think it comes down to roughly (Threads X Clock Speed) / System Cost.  That makes the Threadripper pretty attractive even though you can only do 1 CPU.  It also makes the E5-2650 machine very attractive if you can get it cheaply enough.  You just have to throw more machines at your render queue.