SR-2 and gaming?

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Weenis

I said WEENIS, not...
Joined
Apr 10, 2006
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So.. I'm going to be the one to go out there and just ask it.. I know I'll catch heat because it wouldn't be a 24/7 dedicated folding box..

But say if I built an SR-2.. I am curious how well the Xeons do for gaming. I have little experience with them (just getting 5650s at work on some boxes I have control over) and wanted to know if I built an SR-2 box with server CPUs if it would game well?

I'd feel really guilty building a machine with such power and not utilizing it for gaming when I feel the urge :)
 
well, a i7 920 does a pretty damn good job already, and is equivalent to a W3520(I believe)

You'd be bottlenecked at the GPUs(3xGTX480s should take care of that :) )
 
It's efectively the same thing as an i7 at whatever speed you OC too, just however many more cores you have lol

You won't see the gains until you go multi GPU tho cuz that's the bottle neck of games these days. Most games don't even tap the potenial of a quad i7, let alone a hex. You get 8-12 cores and you're only gonna have spare CPU cycles while gaming. The special part of the SR2 is the ability to quad SLI cards, but honestly I'd just settle with dual 470's and call it a day unless your pushing like 3 30' monitors. Then don't forget the huge case

SR2 was designed for 2 reasons. Primary was as a test bench only system built to set "Super Records" (hence SR)
secondary was the extreme high end enthusiast/cheap ass workstation user who needed multiple CPU cores and could save money by ovrrclocking xeons

xeons get real pricey when you get to just 2.9 ghz and above, but get yourself a pair of the cheapest ones on the block and OC to 3.8ghz or higher and you've got a workstation fasterthan any other dual nehalem or westy (it is westy right?) system available from anyone else for thousands less, and cheaper ram too
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If it is for folding and gameing go for it.

You won't have to upgrade anything but the GPUs for a long long time.
 
I mean if you wanna pour thousands into it you can make a gaming monster, but if your just wondering if the extra "i7" onboard will make a difference, not in games

I'd still say get it if you want, it's incredible, and like K said, you'll only need to worry about GPU's for a long time lol
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You better be playing something really good with that system. I cringe every time my wife plays spider solitaire with my 980x. :D
 
tjmagneto said:
You better be playing something really good with that system. I cringe every time my wife plays spider solitaire with my 980x. :D
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Blasphemy! I can't believe you let your wife touch the 980x! :D
 
Well I play Arma2 every now and then.. but anything else doesn't even touch the system I already have.. I thought it might be more efficient to use an sr2 w/ xeons than run two quad i7s and a C2D machine with a 260 core 216.. energy wise...
 
Weenis said:
Well I play Arma2 every now and then.. but anything else doesn't even touch the system I already have.. I thought it might be more efficient to use an sr2 w/ xeons than run two quad i7s and a C2D machine with a 260 core 216.. energy wise...
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Get a SR-2 if you're extremely serious about folding. I think that's where you'll see the biggest advantage. That and any other processor-intensive apps.
 
APOLLO said:
Get a SR-2 if you're extremely serious about folding. I think that's where you'll see the biggest advantage. That and any other processor-intensive apps.
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Yeah I've wanted to get back into doing photoshop.. but I think folding is the only really applicable area for the use for me..

I'm serious about it.. I just don't want to get raped on power bills lol
 
Weenis said:
Yeah I've wanted to get back into doing photoshop.. but I think folding is the only really applicable area for the use for me..

I'm serious about it.. I just don't want to get raped on power bills lol
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If it's your main rig, and you don't drop 3+ GTX 480/470 cards in, you will be fine.
 
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