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Well... having had to lump my son's last Birthday and missed Christmas gift belatedly into one package so to speak due to some constraints on my wallet, I've been troubled over the last few months with trying to help him achieve and acquire the Gaming hardware which his ardour for seems unending. Naturally... everything was pointing towards a sky-high cost for a Gaming Box based on the Intel i7 platform, with Intel Quad Core procs, Big Ram, Fast SATA HDs, Dual SLI High End Graphics Cards, etc... and the more I added things up...the more impossible it seemed to achieve.
But... having poked around what all fuss about the i7 CPU was and keeping my ear on the railroad track listening for an approaching "Iron Horse" of a good deal, I discovered some very intersting things. For example, there are very few differences in the performance levels of the i7 processor family when compared to the Xeon Business Grade Work Stations, which when compared to the average PC is like comparing a toothpick to a Lousiville Slugger.
Now mind you...all of this information was held in abstract in my thinking... until this week when I started looking for the pricing on Xeon Processors just to get a feel for their value and performance levels and I stumbled first upon a few in combo with old Intel Used Server Boards out of some blade systems and then realized that none of those supported even one PCIE graphics, let alone a pair in either SLI or CrossFire. And that lead me to look at some actual Dell Work Stations... and Voila!...I stumbled upon THIS only a few minutes before the bidding war that was ongoing was to end:
I looked at the slow incremental climb that the bidders were engaged in and when I saw all of the features and components listed in the offering, I thought I'd better sit up straight in my seat and get serious about trying to steal this thing right from under everyone else's nose(s) when there were only a few minutes left and the price was around $225.00... So....when the timer hit 1:20secs... I slammed a $450 bid on the pile and watched the rest of the peeps fully engage against each other in an act of total futility trying to catch up to me... and when the bidding clock ran out... I had won the box for around $325.00... And while I just know that a few of these guys were calling me names late into the night...soooo....wellllll...F*ckem... next time... don't start bidding up the prices on what you want three weeks B4 the damned sale is over!
And so, since I've already obtained two matched PCIE 16x nVidia 560 TI 1Gig Graphics Cards at $175.00 per card on eBay... my thinking now is that with the installation of the Dell SLI Riser for them, I might be able to turn this Quad Core Xeon Box (actually...it will expand to Eight Cores!) into a fairly strong...actually...one untiring machine. I would like to know if anyone else has approached the gaming box build in this manner as welll and perhaps provide me with some hints or tips on the set up.
But... having poked around what all fuss about the i7 CPU was and keeping my ear on the railroad track listening for an approaching "Iron Horse" of a good deal, I discovered some very intersting things. For example, there are very few differences in the performance levels of the i7 processor family when compared to the Xeon Business Grade Work Stations, which when compared to the average PC is like comparing a toothpick to a Lousiville Slugger.
Now mind you...all of this information was held in abstract in my thinking... until this week when I started looking for the pricing on Xeon Processors just to get a feel for their value and performance levels and I stumbled first upon a few in combo with old Intel Used Server Boards out of some blade systems and then realized that none of those supported even one PCIE graphics, let alone a pair in either SLI or CrossFire. And that lead me to look at some actual Dell Work Stations... and Voila!...I stumbled upon THIS only a few minutes before the bidding war that was ongoing was to end:
I looked at the slow incremental climb that the bidders were engaged in and when I saw all of the features and components listed in the offering, I thought I'd better sit up straight in my seat and get serious about trying to steal this thing right from under everyone else's nose(s) when there were only a few minutes left and the price was around $225.00... So....when the timer hit 1:20secs... I slammed a $450 bid on the pile and watched the rest of the peeps fully engage against each other in an act of total futility trying to catch up to me... and when the bidding clock ran out... I had won the box for around $325.00... And while I just know that a few of these guys were calling me names late into the night...soooo....wellllll...F*ckem... next time... don't start bidding up the prices on what you want three weeks B4 the damned sale is over!
And so, since I've already obtained two matched PCIE 16x nVidia 560 TI 1Gig Graphics Cards at $175.00 per card on eBay... my thinking now is that with the installation of the Dell SLI Riser for them, I might be able to turn this Quad Core Xeon Box (actually...it will expand to Eight Cores!) into a fairly strong...actually...one untiring machine. I would like to know if anyone else has approached the gaming box build in this manner as welll and perhaps provide me with some hints or tips on the set up.
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