http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/11/18/introd...ble-power/

Horrible attempt at humor.

It is top of the line CONSUMER ... not flat out top of the line.

Quad Titans is badass. And also $4,000 worth of GPU compute power alone. But there IS even more powerful ... you CAN go for quad top of the line Teslas ... those are double precision enterprise engineering grade GPUs meant for industrial and architectural and theatrical use. They are more powerful though. And also FOUR TIMES MORE EXPENSIVE. You'd be looking at nearly $20,000 in GPU alone. However, you don't have the ability to sling data to those GPUs fast enough to max their performance. Quite simply ... you're requesting more PCI Express lanes (16 x 4) than the CPU QPI even supports (40). I offer an alternative to maximize this below.

They could also go with a dual Xeon server class motherboard. Then you're talking about picking up TWO 8-core 16-thread Xeon processors. Each one of those Xeons will be $2,000. EVGA, Asus, and maybe Supermicro make server class dual socket boards with quad SLI. The server crossover specialty motherboard itself will also set you back a solid $1,000.

Since it runs a server grade chipset, you can unleash 256 GB of ECC high density FB-DIMM RAM ... not some puny 64 GB. But that also doesn't come cheap. 256 GB would ding you for another solid $1,000-$2,000.

And then ... PCI-Express server grade SSD cards. Even one SSD can fully saturate a 6 Gbit SATA port. Not so on PCI-Express. So instead of Quad SLI Titans ... go for dual Tesla K40s. They have a staggering 2,880 GPU cores each and 12 GB of framebuffer each (FOUR TIMES that of a Titan). And they would only use 32 lanes of PCI express, thus leaving you with 8 leftover PCI express lanes on the CPU. Dedicate these to a PCI Express SSD that would shred anything you could ever even plug in to a SATA port. The Teslas however are about $5,500 each ... or nearly the cost of the entire "top of the line" system they built.

So ... if you're willing to dip into the enterprise market where prices are MUCH higher and margins for hardware manufacturers are MUCH higher but performance is also MUCH higher ... you can indeed build a top top top of the line machine. It will however cost about $16,000-$20,000. Alternatively you could use that kind of money to buy a really nice used car.

This was no attempt at humor. I thought you would enjoy the article. All the best GTS.

(11-18-2013 11:15 PM)Machiavelli Wrote:  This was no attempt at humor. I thought you would enjoy the article. All the best GTS.

The video. The beginning of the video with MST3K style acting.

But I did enjoy the tech content.