almost 2 years ago I built a monster video machine using dual w5590 xeons, I was using 5 machines at once at the time and wanted to cut that number down without affecting my daily production, I figured 1 machine could replace at least 3.
when I posted the specs here more than a few gfyers told me I was out of my mind
well...yes and no
the machine has performed flawlessly, I can run 3 wmv encoding threads
while having 3 instances of Squeeze running flvs
while resizing 5k images
while editing videos.
it's a serious multi-tasker
but it cost a bundle.
I recently spec-ed out a sandy bridge system just to see how cheap I could build a fairly fast machine.
the i7 sandy bridge is around $300, while the w5590 xeon is over $1600
for what I paid for the one xeon system I could now build almost 5 sandy bridge systems
looks like I'm right back where I started
