PC Shopping

First, let me thank everyone for having such a civil and informative discussion. From what I've seen, this is not always the case on this HR forum.

So, I work in the area of high end massively parallel compute systems (i.e., supercomputing). When people benchmark systems in this area, they rely on various benchmarks (google Jack Dongarra for more information) that focus on how many floating point operations one can perform per second. That's fine for bragging rights but not always a good predictor of performance for different systems acquired to perform certain tasks. That is, DoD systems focus on different algorithms than NSF systems than do NIH systems than do transaction based systems etc.

In fact, another point of confusion is efficient utilization of resources vs an efficient algorithm (to a point earlier). So, when teaching a 3rd year graduate course in massively parallel algorithms my first project often concludes with the majority of the class keeping all available processors very busy, compared to the small minority who recognize that by utilizing far fewer processors that the algorithm will run faster, which is the ultimate goal. That is, keeping the processors 95% utilized is not necessarily a predictor of the efficiency of the software, which is what matters.

Just food for thought.

If I understand it's a bit like using file transfer stats to compare hard drives when, in real world use, there's a hell of a lot more to it than that.

Going back a little bit, the single/multicore thing is well illustrated here.
Ok, this is still a generic benchmark thing, but it shows that the 'fastest' computer may have considerably less grunt per core than an other machine.
 
Lots of good info guys,. thanks! I guess I left out some important info,. I'm a real deal whore,.and would ideally like to keep the inital system cost in the +-$500 range. The last time I paid a grand for a pc it was a packard bell in 93,. and I'll not be doing that again unless i'm actually making enough money in the studio to justify it. I already have a copy of win7pro and a nice monitor.

I think I somehow came to the conclusion that A: the xeon systems were giving good "bang for buck" when compared to the I5/7's and B: CPU cache was also a major performance factor for DAWs and video work (Please correct me on either of these). Most of the DAW optimization guides suggest setting your CPU performance to favor background services, which seems like server optimization to me. So why would you not want your DAW to be an actual server? I have no interest in gaming and assumed that hyperthreading(I7) was not important for a DAW, maybe different for video work though.

A quick peek at Tiger and I saw this guy,. Dell Precision T7400 Workstation PC - Intel Xeon E5410 2.33GHz, 4GB DDR2 Memory, 750GB HDD, DVD, NVIDIA Quadro NVS 285, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (Off-Lease) - RB-DELLDT00310142 at TigerDirect.com ,which looks even better in that sense at a total of 8 cores and bigger 12mb cache,. But the box I posted earlier was also LGA1150 and I was thinking that gives me a decent upgrade path,. unlike the dell.
 
I run a small but actually productive and profitable studio in my home, and I just got an amazing rig made by Studio Cats. I was very close to building my own and realized that theirs was only$200-$250 more than I would spend, plus they are experts and cool guys. I have 3 friends (2 of which run larger commercial studios in the Minneapolis/St Paul area where i live) that have systems from them, and had nothing but RAVE REVIEWS. I took the plunge and am SO glad. Check them out.
No, I do not wok for them and do not receive and referral perks. I am merely THAT glad that I that I had mine built by pros.
 
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