Built new machine for work. We have a bit more $,what do you think we should upgrade?

[Psycho-Designs]

We just had a machine built for development at a local store. We're building a second one with a bit more funds. What do you think is the bottleneck of the system and how can we improve it?

Specs:
INTEL CORE I7 3930K 3.2GHZ
SAPPHIRE RADEON HD7970 3GB
2.5 SATA3 240.0 INTEL SSD 335 BTE A4K5
2x SATA3 1.0TB W.D 7200 RPM
S2011 GIGABYTE GA-X79-UD3 X79 [Motherboard]
BD-R BLU-RAY LG BH14NS40 SATA LS 14X
850W ATX CORSAIR TX MODULAR OEM [Power Supply]
CORSAIR VENGEANCE 1600MHZ DDR3 32GB QUAD 4X8GB CL10 [RAM]


Thank you for your help!

[great_big_abyss]

How much more money? What is the actual use of the workstation?

Go multi-monitor, and if the money is there, IPS panels.

[stoanee]

Get a good cpu cooler and overclock to at least 4ghz.

[Capt Proton]

Get a second SSD and put them in RAID 0. Great rig as it is though.

[Caldezar]

GBA asked the right question... what is it being used for? 'Development' is very vague. In most software development situations, I would be dropping the GPU down to something like a 7850, and taking the extra money, combined with the savings on the GPU, and buy 2 or 3 large monitors. I know that if I was working in development, I'd be way happier with more screen real estate rather than a gaming GPU I was never going to use.

Also, yes, a decent cooler that allows a reasonable OC isn't a bad idea.

*EDIT* - I'd tend to disagree with RAID 0 SSD's on a workstation as reliability is way to important in a work environment.

[Psycho-Designs]

Originally Posted by Caldezar

GBA asked the right question... what is it being used for? 'Development' is very vague. In most software development situations, I would be dropping the GPU down to something like a 7850, and taking the extra money, combined with the savings on the GPU, and buy 2 or 3 large monitors. I know that if I was working in development, I'd be way happier with more screen real estate rather than a gaming GPU I was never going to use.

Also, yes, a decent cooler that allows a reasonable OC isn't a bad idea.

*EDIT* - I'd tend to disagree with RAID 0 SSD's on a workstation as reliability is way to important in a work environment.

It's for game development. There already are 2 large monitor without the desk space for a 3rd one. We have about $300-$400 to upgrade the new machine. The idea is to have it as future proof as possible and iron out any performance bottlenecks.

[Caldezar]

Originally Posted by Psycho-Designs

It's for game development. There already are 2 large monitor without the desk space for a 3rd one. We have about $300-$400 to upgrade the new machine. The idea is to have it as future proof as possible and iron out any performance bottlenecks.

Ah... game development is a different story. Definitely wanting to keep the GPU you have. I'd still avoid RAID though.

Definitely get a solid cooler and OC the chip.

You might want to consider increasing to one of the new 960GB SSD's from Crucial. At $600, that's a solid price point. Or maybe even spend the money on upgrading those HDD's to enterprise level 2TB drives. Space is quickly going to become a premium if you're working on large scale 3D models.

[great_big_abyss]

In that case, drop the SATA SSD, and plop in a decent sized (480GB?!?) OCZ RevoDrive.

[Generic User #2]

I would get an nvidia card just to be able to test performance on both vendors