Hi All,
I've always had a habit of using High end workstations as my personal pc/gaming pc, because sometimes even an old unit can work really well with a new GPU and other upgrades.
I previously had a Dell Dual Xeon Workstation from 2003, it played
World Of Warcraft at 35-40fps with a Nvidia 7600GT AGP (At the Time)
My Current unit is a similar affair, it once belonged to A Movie
studio and is manufactured by an American company called Boxx. This
Tyan Dual Opteron (Socket F Era) still works perfectly well with
current games as the original Nvidia Quadro FX was replaced by a
GeForce 760.
I'm currently happily playing Alien:Isolation, Skyrim, Borderlands the
Pre-Sequel and loads of other new games with Medium-High Settings
with great FPS at very high resolutions and 3D. It's also great to use to run multiple VM's and other power-intensive tasks.
This machine is from 2006 and is still happily kicking bottom.
I use a 60GB OCZ SSD for Windows for maximum performance, a deliberately chosen slow (5400rpm) 2TB Western Digital Green Energy for data storage and old 160GB drive that backs up the SSD. I also have a blu-ray drive.
My concern is iv'e taken this machine to the limit now, the Tyan
Board has 2x Opteron 2220 Special editions upgraded which are the
best it can take and 8GB RAM with plenty room for more if needed, but would be unnecessary.
I'm wondering if the DDR2 Memory and the system chipset e.t.c is going
to become a bottleneck over the next few years, I believe PCI-E now has higher speeds (?). My main gripe currently is it cannot do good settings on X-Plane 10 with a good frame rate and simulation speed increase, which I would like to achieve as flight simulation is my main task (Training to be a pilot)
What generation Xeon/Opteron workstations are getting really cheap and outdated but will pack a big punch with the right mods ?
I'm a big Tyan fan and Iv'e heard the "Dont Use Workstations" for gaming line a million times but ive been doing it since the Athlon MP days and find myself with a 8-10 year old piece of hardware that has no problems keeping up with brand new off the shelf systems.
However I fear that the next few years will see my current unit become a real dinosaur and i'm torn between investing in a newer platform or splashing out on a much better GPU? Thats Basically my Question, what would YOU do ? New GPU (Possibly even SLI?) or save money and plan to move to a newer generation of mainboard and CPU's?
I've always had a habit of using High end workstations as my personal pc/gaming pc, because sometimes even an old unit can work really well with a new GPU and other upgrades.
I previously had a Dell Dual Xeon Workstation from 2003, it played
World Of Warcraft at 35-40fps with a Nvidia 7600GT AGP (At the Time)
My Current unit is a similar affair, it once belonged to A Movie
studio and is manufactured by an American company called Boxx. This
Tyan Dual Opteron (Socket F Era) still works perfectly well with
current games as the original Nvidia Quadro FX was replaced by a
GeForce 760.
I'm currently happily playing Alien:Isolation, Skyrim, Borderlands the
Pre-Sequel and loads of other new games with Medium-High Settings
with great FPS at very high resolutions and 3D. It's also great to use to run multiple VM's and other power-intensive tasks.
This machine is from 2006 and is still happily kicking bottom.
I use a 60GB OCZ SSD for Windows for maximum performance, a deliberately chosen slow (5400rpm) 2TB Western Digital Green Energy for data storage and old 160GB drive that backs up the SSD. I also have a blu-ray drive.
My concern is iv'e taken this machine to the limit now, the Tyan
Board has 2x Opteron 2220 Special editions upgraded which are the
best it can take and 8GB RAM with plenty room for more if needed, but would be unnecessary.
I'm wondering if the DDR2 Memory and the system chipset e.t.c is going
to become a bottleneck over the next few years, I believe PCI-E now has higher speeds (?). My main gripe currently is it cannot do good settings on X-Plane 10 with a good frame rate and simulation speed increase, which I would like to achieve as flight simulation is my main task (Training to be a pilot)
What generation Xeon/Opteron workstations are getting really cheap and outdated but will pack a big punch with the right mods ?
I'm a big Tyan fan and Iv'e heard the "Dont Use Workstations" for gaming line a million times but ive been doing it since the Athlon MP days and find myself with a 8-10 year old piece of hardware that has no problems keeping up with brand new off the shelf systems.
However I fear that the next few years will see my current unit become a real dinosaur and i'm torn between investing in a newer platform or splashing out on a much better GPU? Thats Basically my Question, what would YOU do ? New GPU (Possibly even SLI?) or save money and plan to move to a newer generation of mainboard and CPU's?
