New Build for CAD and Video

[emergent]

Hello All,

I'm new to all this Hackintosh stuff, but as a design professional not wishing to purchase a 3 yo macpro, I've decided to specify a hackintosh highend build and am wondering what direction to go, in terms of getting high performance benchmarks with ivy bridge compatibility, and thunderbolt. it'd be brilliant be able to install the latest supported QuadroFX card on Lion also, whichever that is, and would like to get this running next week if possible.

My question is, should I go with Ivy Bridge or E5 Sandy bridge next week, and which do you think will be fully supported sooner as a hacked build by this or other forums? I would also consider temporarily using an i7 2700 or higher processor, then upgrading as soon as the others came out, just to get me off the ground as my current macpro is a real turtle. Is there a way to do this with the Z77 mobo being supported?

Any suggestions would help. I've gone through all the relevant articles on tonymacx86, and wow, was totally blown away by what you all have achieved here so thank you for all the fantastic info and sharing of it.

Cheers,
Chris

 

[wfj]

Hello All,

I'm new to all this Hackintosh stuff, but as a design professional not wishing to purchase a 3 yo macpro, I've decided to specify a hackintosh highend build and am wondering what direction to go, in terms of getting high performance benchmarks with ivy bridge compatibility, and thunderbolt. it'd be brilliant be able to install the latest supported QuadroFX card on Lion also, whichever that is, and would like to get this running next week if possible.

My question is, should I go with Ivy Bridge or E5 Sandy bridge next week, and which do you think will be fully supported sooner as a hacked build by this or other forums? I would also consider temporarily using an i7 2700 or higher processor, then upgrading as soon as the others came out, just to get me off the ground as my current macpro is a real turtle. Is there a way to do this with the Z77 mobo being supported?

Any suggestions would help. I've gone through all the relevant articles on tonymacx86, and wow, was totally blown away by what you all have achieved here so thank you for all the fantastic info and sharing of it.

Cheers,
Chris

Welcome Chris! If you're looking for concrete support then a SB + Z68 option is your best bet right this moment. I don't have any doubts that Ivy + Z77 will be supported but there really hasn't been enough testing yet with the newly released motherboards for definitive answers. Really kind of a crap-shoot but things will be clearer soon. If you did go with an i7 SB, I don't think going to Ivy would be worthwhile as the performance increase only looks to be about 10% or so. Thunderbolt is a question mark right now too as far as hackintosh is concerned.

The best quadro option available right now for mac is the 4000 as it has higher memory bandwidth and more cuda cores than the FX 4800.

I've got an MSI Z77A-GD55 that will arrive monday so I'll be testing it out and reporting results here.

Not the greatest answer, but basically stay tuned.

PS - The last few quadro systems I've built were windows based. You might want to contact the following guy on this board for quadro advice with a hackintosh:

memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=35686

 

[emergent]

Welcome Chris! If you're looking for concrete support then a SB + Z68 option is your best bet right this moment. I don't have any doubts that Ivy + Z77 will be supported but there really hasn't been enough testing yet with the newly released motherboards for definitive answers. Really kind of a crap-shoot but things will be clearer soon. If you did go with an i7 SB, I don't think going to Ivy would be worthwhile as the performance increase only looks to be about 10% or so. Thunderbolt is a question mark right now too as far as hackintosh is concerned.

The best quadro option available right now for mac is the 4000 as it has higher memory bandwidth and more cuda cores than the FX 4800.

I've got an MSI Z77A-GD55 that will arrive monday so I'll be testing it out and reporting results here.

Not the greatest answer, but basically stay tuned.

PS - The last few quadro systems I've built were windows based. You might want to contact the following guy on this board for quadro advice with a hackintosh:

memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=35686

Thank you for the informative advice, it's much appreciated. Great to know about the Quadro stuff too. Was looking at the 2600 build and it looks pretty good but I was really hoping the e5 2690 build was worth doing, though with smaller e5. Maybe I should wait a week to hear how your ivy bridge build went. Keep me posted.

Thank you,
Chris.

 

[zothem]

Good to see fellow CADers going the Hackintosh rout. From the way I see it, stick with LGA1155 for the next 12months, let ivy and the new standards find their groove. I'm running a 2700k with 16gig ddr3 and I'm having no problems. Your best bet is to maxine overall bandwidth end to end. Sink your money I to some nice SSD drives, will make a world of difference with the video (as I'm guessing your not using an Xsan). The other place for your cash would be the screens. Bigger is better, especially at 2560x1440.

Moral to this tale, end to end bandwidth and put the cash in the right places.

 

[emergent]

Good to see fellow CADers going the Hackintosh rout. From the way I see it, stick with LGA1155 for the next 12months, let ivy and the new standards find their groove. I'm running a 2700k with 16gig ddr3 and I'm having no problems. Your best bet is to maxine overall bandwidth end to end. Sink your money I to some nice SSD drives, will make a world of difference with the video (as I'm guessing your not using an Xsan). The other place for your cash would be the screens. Bigger is better, especially at 2560x1440.

Moral to this tale, end to end bandwidth and put the cash in the right places.

Thank you for that advice, Zothem,
Is there a way I can get 6gb sata with the drives? I have ssd and what other end to end can I get? I'd like to get a fast machine going. Over 17000 geek bench, any ideas? How about the new e5 procs?

Thanks,
Chris

 

[emergent]

Just an update,

I managed to get 20739 geekbench with a P9x79 PRO and i7 3930K 6 core OCd to 4.2ghz, with quad channel memory. Will write a guide on it soon for P9x79 Pro potential builders. Very happy with this system though.

Chris