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I know this has probably been discussed before but I need some feedback for a presentation with my bosses about trying to speed up render times and the cost implications. We are a small architectural practice that are doing more and more render and fly throughs for clients, but cost is obviously and issue.From my understanding increasing RAM should reduce render times? is it that simple? Also I eed to find a new graphics card that can run dual monitors so that i can still work on other bits whilst i wait for the renders to tick over, again budget is an issue so no £800 cards please...as much as I can hope lol

 

oh and lastly my monitor is on its last legs so Im thinking the Iiyama ProLite X486S or the iiyama ProLite X481S again its a budget thing but any other suggestions would be welcome

 

 

here is the spec of the machine I am using currently to render on so any sensible suggestions?

 

Windows XP SP2

Intel Pentium 4 3.2ghz

1GB RAM

Radeon X600 Series 256mb

 

thanks for the help

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...well for starters you might want to double your RAM to 2 gig as that just will smooth the way for you. RAM won't speed up your rendering time, your processor will and if i were you i would stay away from Intel. If you want value get a amd dual core 4400 or 4800 for about the same price and watch your money work for you. The difference is staggering and as far as i am concerned it is the only way. We actually did a test the other day and the same scene on AMD 4400 and on pentium 3.4 HT with 2gig of RAM. It was a joke cause AMD killed at twice the speed and it cost fractionally less than Intel. Go figure... Anyway my two cents worth....

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RAM will only increase render times when your system runs out of RAM and spends too much time moving data from your hard disk rather than crunching numbers. The way to tell is checking Task Manager and seeing if you're processor is running at 100% and if PF Usage exceeds the available RAM you have. If you're processor is topping out at anything less than 100% usage during a scene, you're wasting time. With the cost of RAM as cheap as it is, it doesn't make sense to have less than 2GB when you're working on decent size scenes.

 

But hardware is only a part of the picture. There are numerous ways to increase your render times without even using faster hardware. As an example, if you use Ray Traced shadows, you'll notice a setting called Max Quad Tree Depth. By default it's value is 7, but if you change it to 8, you can often double your render times. Increase it to 8, double it again, and again, all the way up to 10. A scene that would render in 10 minutes, can render in 30 seconds sometimes. It depends a lot on the particular scene, but before going out and buying new hardware, I would learn the many great ways to increase render times through use of the right settings and procedures. There's tons of em!

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Why don't you buy a new machine specifically for rendering, so no need for an expensive graphics card, sound card and a few other things. All you need is lots of ram and good possessor. Once you've got that network it to your machine and using Backburner farm the images and ani's to your slave machine, freeing up your machine allowing you to work.

 

Hope that helps.

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I second Woody's remarks -- definitely get a dedicated machine if at all possible. As far as best price/performance, nothing beats the dual core (Italy) Opterons. You can install two of 'em on one board, have four processor cores, and they're very power efficient and cheaper than the equivalent from Intel.

 

We recently bought four dual Opteron 270 render nodes and I would not consider any other processor on the market after seeing them in action.

 

Shaun

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Also I eed to find a new graphics card that can run dual monitors so that i can still work on other bits

 

just a side note, a dual card won't do you any good if you don't have the processing power to perform other operations simulataneously. We use high-end Boxx workstations in our office, and when I multitask 3dsMax takes up the entire system and maxes out all four processors @ 100% You can go into your task manager and turn off an affinity on max to free up a processor to do other work, at the sacrifice of a slower render but the benefit of multitasking. Otherwise you'll just be working on a super bogged down system. All the dual card is going to do is give you more desktop space.

 

don't get me wrong, dual cards rock and I hate working without one, but I just don't want you to confuse the ability to multitask based on your graphics card and not the whole system as a whole.

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if budget is such a concern, build a couple of X2 AMD based rendernodes for under $650 each. the good part about having dedicated nodes out of a single dualcore is that you don't have to deal with the issue of diminishing returns that is present on dual and quad socket systems... i.e. ~ logistics (heat, electricity,...etc) aside, 2 dual x2 4400 nodes would be a better choice than a single, dual opteron system. You also conveniently sidestep the issue of having to purchase expensive ECC/REG memory and a stout dual12v PSU.

 

but if you want an all-inclusive, multi-core workstation that's a whole 'nother ballgame with Intel's woodcrest and AMD's socket F on the horizon :D

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if budget is such a concern, build a couple of X2 AMD based rendernodes for under $650 each. the good part about having dedicated nodes out of a single dualcore is that you don't have to deal with the issue of diminishing returns that is present on dual and quad socket systems... i.e. ~ logistics (heat, electricity,...etc) aside, 2 dual x2 4400 nodes would be a better choice than a single, dual opteron system. You also conveniently sidestep the issue of having to purchase expensive ECC/REG memory and a stout dual12v PSU.

but if you want an all-inclusive, multi-core workstation that's a whole 'nother ballgame with Intel's woodcrest and AMD's socket F on the horizon :D

 

ok so whats a good total spec for that kind of machine and wheres a good place to get one from? I've obviously seen the boxxtech stuff and other render nodes but they all seem to cost quite a bit

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I second Woody's remarks -- definitely get a dedicated machine if at all possible. As far as best price/performance, nothing beats the dual core (Italy) Opterons. You can install two of 'em on one board, have four processor cores, and they're very power efficient and cheaper than the equivalent from Intel.

 

We recently bought four dual Opteron 270 render nodes and I would not consider any other processor on the market after seeing them in action.

 

Shaun

 

so how much would one of those cost roughly and whats a good complete spec for a CHEAP lol render node

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so how much would one of those cost roughly and whats a good complete spec for a CHEAP lol render node

 

I spec'd this system a couple of months ago and since then the price of the 265's has gone up... they're still the cheapest opterons but for less than $100 more per processor you can have 270's:D

 

cd burner:

LITE-ON Black IDE CD Burner Model SOHR-5239V BK RT - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16827106997

 

case:

CHENMING CMUI-P-601AEB-0 Black 1.0mm SECC Server Computer Case

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16811125480

 

Hard Drive:

Western Digital Caviar WD800BB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16822144102

 

Vid Card:

SAPPHIRE 100945L-BK Radeon 7000 64MB DDR PCI Video Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16814102447

 

Motherboard:

ASUS K8N-DL Dual Socket 940 NVIDIA nForce4 Professional

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16813131059

 

Power supply:

AMS PP-5503EPS EPS12V 550W Power Supply - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16817101108

 

HSF: (not needed if you by "retail" CPU's)

Scythe FCS-50 Heatlane CPU Cooler:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16835185107

 

Memory (x4):

CORSAIR 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) ECC Registered

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16820145309

 

Alright ~ I got Lazy and Newegg'd everything... shop around (and e-baying) and you may be able to get for closer to $700:

----- $790 subtotal

 

system on an Asus K8N-DL with 265 processors @ 357 each = 790 + 661 = $1504

 

fwiw: MSI also make a dual 940 motherboard that's slightly cheaper then the K8N-DL but doesn't have as good a reputation.

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I spec'd this system a couple of months ago and since then the price of the 265's has gone up... they're still the cheapest opterons but for less than $100 more per processor you can have 270's:D

 

ok so just so i can explain this to my bosses who hold the money whats the comparison of the AMD opteron 270 to an Intel chip as we have always used them.

 

and how much would a system like this speed up our rendering compared to my original spec above, just a rough estimate as a percentage would do

 

they obviously need to know how much bang they get for they're buck

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this is easy : ) that's what my laptop runs and by upgrading to just dual single core opteron 248's (my boxx) my rendering benchmark scores doubled. caveman math would say to expect about a 4x improvement in rendering times with 270's but considering each core only opterates at about .8-.9 efficienty (dim. returns) your overall improvement (reduction in rend. times) would be less than 4x ... probably closer to 3.5.

 

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=dual+core+opteron+rendering&btnG=Search

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well that sounds impressive all ive got to do now is squeeze the money out of them but if it saves a few days of me twiddling my thumbs over the course of a year it make good sense, at the moment i have to leave my machine running over the weekend and hope it comes out ok which is never a good thing when it doesn't lol

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no hardware in existence today can make renderings an "instant" operation... all you can do is make aims to assure it doesn't take days or weeks. Get them to buy ~ no "invest" in 2 dedicated dual dualcore machines and you'd be able to see that rendering in the same day:cool:

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er yeah so thats about what $2500 or about the same in pounds over here as we get ripped off on prices for practically everything

i'll be lucky if i get one lol

id be happy for doubling my initial ram to 2gb whilst im thinking about it

 

definitely go with 2gb... if the node runs out of ram then it has to start thrashing the hd, which slows the rendering way down and offsets the point of having all those cores!

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er yeah so thats about what $2500 or about the same in pounds over here as we get ripped off on prices for practically everything

i'll be lucky if i get one lol

id be happy for doubling my initial ram to 2gb whilst im thinking about it

 

I'm not sure if you know these guys but take a look and see if they have anything that may help.

 

http://www.overclockers.co.uk

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::subscribed::

and yes the curent Duos are 32bit... =(

 

when are they coming out as we really need to get the system asap as we're taking on a larger render job, the main reason for sorting out a render node and how much more is that going to cost me?

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ok just found out that my system can support upto 4GB of RAM

 

184-pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC3200)

 

from reading on here XP only recognises 2GB? or 3GB? if you change the registry?? so why have the option for upto 4GB?

 

how much of a benefit would an upgrade of memeory to 2GB give me

 

of upto 3GB

 

or even 4GB whilst were talking about it all

 

Original Spec:

 

Windows XP SP2

Intel Pentium 4 3.2ghz

1GB RAM

Radeon X600 Series 256mb

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