Which duel socket mobo and processors?

[ni-cad]

My local PC workshop gave me quote for a much needed upgrade for my PC, they quoted £1700 to install an Asus Z8NA-D6 mobo with two i7 quad core processors and 32 gig of ddr3 ram, it sounded like a really good deal but slightly out of my price range, so I started looking at upgrading to just a single i7 with a cheaper board and slightly less ram and the price worked out at roughly the same

So again the duel i7 upgrade deal looked promising but to my horror after a little more research I discovered that the i7's can't be run in tandem on any board as they aren't interconnected and secondly my OS (XP pro x64) can only see a maximum of 16 gig I'm now stuck and need some recommendations from you guy's based around upgrading my current PC.

I would like to upgrade to two (fast) 3ghz plus quad core processors, 16 gig of (fast) Ram to make up for my OS ram limitation (so ddr3 ram if poss) I'll need a new mobo to do all this but I can't figure out which one, or which processors or the best ram I know I'll need a Xeon to run two quads in tandem but which Xeon? The other board I was looking at was the Sculltrail, looks like a really good board but it doesn't support ddr3 ram . . . from here on in I'm lost, I need to make the most of what I've got working within the constraints that I have ie my OS and my Radeon 4870's (run out of X-fire mode) to power 3 screens.

Can anyone help my figure something out?

 

[dario03]

What is this computer going to be used for?

 

[UA_Iron]

Windows XP x64 is limited to 128 GB of physical memory and 8 terabytes of virtual memory per process.

What are you doing that requires that much processing power and memory?

 

[ni-cad]

I could have sworn there was a limit on the amount of Ram this OS can see, I must have read some misinformation floating around on the net, it is indeed capable of seeing 128 gig of ram

The machine is used as a lot for Video graphics, the main app being After Effects. At present the machine has 8 gig, this only allows approximately one and a half min's of HD video to be held in the apps allocated Ram and ram previews, rendering takes horrendously long, a ten min HD composition takes around 6 hours to render out, the machine simply doesn't have enough processing or ram to be able to work comfortably with HD video, I constantly get "Windows memory low" warnings and the system frequently chokes due to the lack of processing power.

Really, I would like to find a way to take advantage of ddr3 ram and a two processor set up, perhaps the asus duel socket board is a good option after all if it were fitted with two fast Xeons, i don't know. I'm quite concerned that I make the right decision now though rather than find out later something isn't compatible etc. So any advice would be well appreciated.

 

[Fastvan67]

Do you plan to use multiple video cards? Keep in mind if you are, the Intel 5500 chipset will max out with 24 PCI-e lanes. The Intel 5520 chipset can go to 36 lanes.
If you find something with 5500 chipset, you can run only 1 PCI-e X16 video card or up to 3 PCI-e X8 video.
If you find something with 5520 chipset, you can run 2 PCI-e X16 video cards or up to 4 PCI-e X8 video.

If you don't need multiple video cards, but just pure raw power, consider a rack server with 4 LGA1366 processors with 5520 chipset. Look at this MS-92C2

 

[kmote]

The Z8NA-D6 does not support dual graphics cards and looking through ASUS's site, only the Z8PE-D18 does.

EDIT: lol I started writing that over an hour ago... stupid startrek

 

[ni-cad]

yeah, I've got two ATI radeon 4870's which I'll want to use on the new board, I don't know if they're Pci-e X15 or X8, I'll check the specs.

Thanks kmote, I'll have a look.

 

[UA_Iron]

I would buy an openGL optimized card - after effects is an opengl based program afterall. If you go with an nvidia with cuda support your video card will help with the rendering.

 

[ni-cad]

It's cool, the Power color ATI Radeon HD 4870's I have support openGL 2.0 AE previews fine with openGL enabled etc, and all the openGL info appears correctly under AE's preferences etc.

EDD: So the Z8PE-D18 it is then, what kind of processors should I go for? I was hoping to get a couple of 3.2 ghz Xeon quads but I'm not sure I can afford them, infact I can't even tell what their prices are likely to be they seem to vary so much from site to site, one site asks over a grand the next site asks 250 . . .

Can anyone recommend some good processors?

 

[UA_Iron]

Whats your price range? Under 2800 bucks US?