I tok a shot with gtx580 figured i could always go with quadra 4000 later if it dident worked, so far very good, somtimes after long running without restart(days) the small yellow help popup text in houdini wash out , running latest release 295.40 of driver which is not always the best thing to do.

quadro 4000 with Tesla C2075 i think is a good solution.

would like to see some test AMD Opteron 6282 SE against
the Xeon E5-2687W is avalible now

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xeon-e5-2687w-benchmark-review,3149-8.html [tomshardware.com]

hodrop
I tok a shot with gtx580 figured i could always go with quadra 4000 later if it dident worked, so far very good, somtimes after long running without restart(days) the small yellow help popup text in houdini wash out , running latest release 295.40 of driver which is not always the best thing to do.

quadro 4000 with Tesla C2075 i think is a good solution.

would like to see some test AMD Opteron 6282 SE against
the Xeon E5-2687W is avalible now

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/xeon-e5-2687w-benchmark-review,3149-8.html [tomshardware.com]

I was thinking of going with the quadro 4000, tesla c2075 setup. Almost ready to push the button. I have to figure out what processors to go with now. I may go with the 2660 for now.

Yes. wise choise, definitely E5-26xx the road to go now, one can start with 1 cpu and dubbel the performance later. If you building yourself i would recommend watercoling x 2, have one Corsair H100. went with chassi made for that modell . built my in november, and I usaly complement with quadras from amazon, since they strangely are always twice the price here. almost got a used Q6000 then but they dident export.

please report performance. both tesla and 26xx.

I have dual 2650s in the cart now and as you mentioned, can be upgraded at a later date. I should have everything in by next week and the computer up and running. Hopefully it's a vast improvement over my Mac Pro, which hasn't been playing nice with Houdini for some time now. Thanks for the suggestions. I will be running either Fedora or Mint.

Sorry for the lack of responses. I had family issues, which sidetracked my computer build. I'm back at it again though. I still plan on doing the quadro/tesla setup as described earlier. I was wondering if I should go with 8 core slower clock speed or 6 core faster clock speed. I was always under the impression the more cores/threads/buckets the better.