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art vps pure worth it?


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  • 2 weeks later...

At some point they were nice enough to give you a trial piece of hardware... you may want to ask and try it out. Unfortunatly, because we did try it, we did not buy it, it was around the time that finalRender, Brazil, and Vray were coming out... software solutions made a LOT more sense, seemed much faster, and were much cheaper... especially on large infrastructure.

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These things come and go... since the AMiga days, never saw one that succeeded long term. GPU based will be the way, in my opinion. Again, is way cheaper to build your own AMD rendering farm, and more productive with other software such as afx.

 

David

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Its actually depressing to not see firewire adapters on the quadro fx and firegl x1.

 

Supposedly both these cards have the ability to do minimal levels of raytracing...much like originally showcased with playstation2 consoles and 3dsmax. The only problem is that the agp bandwidth isn't sufficent to both render out frames, and save them at the same time...which means some external form of capture would be necessary...or an alternative interior transfer.

 

Of course this is mostly theoretical based on the capabilities of both the r300 and fx chipsets.

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Im not sure about the pure card but I have a renderdrive 5000 and the speed that it does raytracing is fantastic :winkgrin:

 

The other good thing about the renderdrive is that you it frees up your machine to work on other tasks while it is rendering away. As always tho its never a one button solution :rolleyes:

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Just out of curiousty did you weigh the cost of your renderdrive (which was $20,000 at the time) against buying a couple of computers with mentalray on them? It seemed to us that, at the time, it would cost less to have mental-ray (vray or brazil did not exist back then). Plus a single copy of mental ray on a dual 800mhz seemed faster then the renderdrive 5000... imagine it on a dual 3ghz. Today, brazil or vray would be faster and you can buy 4 to 6 computers with licenses at that cost... that way it would still free up your computer while you rendered. With distributed rendering being offered in Vray... well you get my point.

 

My point is, did you try software solutions before you got the renderdrive 5000?

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Yeah I did try some tests before I bought it. I have a renderfarm of four dual athlon 2000+ machines with brazil and the renderdrive will still way outperform them with raytracing :D

 

To be honest tho I dont think a pure card is worth it, I think it would just be to slow. My renderdrive has 42 raytracing procesors in it where as I think the pure card only has 6 or 8

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  • 1 month later...

I am currently testing a pure card with viz 4. I am not that good with viz & am pretty busy at the moment so i'm not getting too much time on it, so please bear that in mind when reading this.

 

We have had the card for 2 weeks & i have converted a couple of viz scenes (change lights & materials) & saw the render time go thru the roof (7min pure & 1 min viz) with out any gain in quality. I sent the files off to art & they work wonders on them, but i just cant seem to pull it off even after they explain what they have done. I accept that this is user error redface2.gif:confused: But i just cant get a handle on this puppy. It may well come into its own when doing lots of raytracing. I tend to use raytrace lights & mats sparing, only where the effect is greatest.

 

It is due to go back this week & I wont be reccomending that we buy it, b/c "I" cant get the functionality out of it.

 

I have downloaded a trial of Vray & will have a look at this software solution. :)

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i have been using renderdrive for over 3 years

yes i looked at mental and pc farms but went for 'drives for the size and horsepower........

to get the best out of them you need to be able to light in old skool 3d techniques as a start then apply the area lights

as for the renderdrive materials i feel nothing is coming even close straight out of the box and these puppies can be tweeked as if they are real materials

still what works for me may not for you it took me around a month to begin to find what the machine could do so spemd some time with it and bump up the area light sizes

another tip with glass if you are doing externals is to bump the i.o.r. up to about 2.5 inorder to avoid a matt black windows

if you are stuck for some quick fixes give me a email

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  • 3 months later...

Hi,

 

I just put an article on my site describing my experience, tips, and some background information on the PURE card. The site is www.4dartists.com , and there is a link a little ways down to the article.

 

Basically, I think the PURE card is worth the money. The speed, compared to a dual 2.4ghz Xeon, is simply amazing. And the images are incredible, especially when you use their RP Glass, Mirror and Shiny materials.

 

You would need a lot of AMD/Intel machines to match the raytracing speed.

 

Have fun!

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I have used both a pure card and RD5000, and quite simply I dont think that anything exists within the price range that can render faster without compromising on image quality.

With some of the raytracing materials (glass, mirrors etc) I dont think that your basic viz or even some of the more expensive software renders can achieve the same quality within same the time restrictions and to the same quality.

If you take the cost implications, here in the u.k top spec machines are not cheap to buy and 3/4 of the machines can equal the price of the RD5000.

I suppose it depends on budget, but if you can afford it I would recommend either card or RD5000

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hey craig

as you can see i'm in disguise.............here in manchester

my pattern of work has changed this year to include much more animation work alongside my still images to which i now employ a small fleet pcees as a renderfarm

i have (or am about too) pick(ed) up a second rd2k which with the distribted rendering software allows pure/2k/3.5/5k all working on the same image

much as i'd like too i'm spent up for this year on my hardware budget

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hmm

try 4 sgi 540 sgi octane 6 sgi 320 plus a couple of beige boxes plus the rd's in a space about 18 x6x9foot and not only do you get noise but you fry

in this sort of weather

a understanding family heps as do the bose headphones..............

speed wise a 2k clocks in slightly slower than a purecard so i belive but to quantify it in real terms

a 5k a3 render may take 40 mins

a 2k a3 render would be more akin to 2 hours 40 mins so conversly 2 x 5ks would geta render into the sub 30 mins...........hey all of a sudden hidef tv res makes sense !!!

 

[ July 15, 2003, 07:51 AM: Message edited by: 3d-doctor ]

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  • 7 months later...

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