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What happened to Greg Hess?


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Hey guys,

 

Sorry for my lack of responses, posts, yadda yadda =/. The furniture stuff has taken hold and takes up a good chunk of my time now, as well as my interest in the mechanical world of automobiles. My pulse on the hardware world has since slipped, and I'm more or less just kinda of wading along side the stream of data now, instead of trying to swim upriver.

 

That and I got pretty burned out on the whole IT'ing the world online bit. After years and years of having to constantly prove your point almost continuously, it gets to you...especially when your day job is IT, and then you go online and do IT, and then people argue with you, etc etc.

 

I'll try to start making a habit of at least posting everyonce in awhile so people don't think I dropped off the face of the earth. :)

 

I'm currently building an opteron system based on the Tyan K8SE board, and I'll try to share some of that information.

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Hi Greg,

Good to see you're still about!

 

I'll be interested to hear how you get on with the build. I'm thinking of getting a dual 265 system built, but wasn't sure if its extra performance over, say a +4400, is worth the extra cost. At a very rough estimate, I'd expect the dual opteron system to render at least twice as fast as the X2 4400. Do you have a more informed p.o.v. on this estimate?

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Hi Greg,

Good to see you're still about!

 

I'll be interested to hear how you get on with the build. I'm thinking of getting a dual 265 system built, but wasn't sure if its extra performance over, say a +4400, is worth the extra cost. At a very rough estimate, I'd expect the dual opteron system to render at least twice as fast as the X2 4400. Do you have a more informed p.o.v. on this estimate?

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Hey guys,

 

Ya dave caught me on irc and slapped me a few times with some fishlike products.

 

re:Form. I actually just replied to your thread on cgtalk. I'll just repaste it here for everyone's benefit.

 

iminishing returns is less of a factor when dealing with DC processors.

 

Part of the whole "Quad not significantly faster then a dual" scaling problems came due to the Intel architecture. The bandwidth per processor was basically halved with each additional pair of chips. So not only were you losing a bit of processor power to communication between the cpu's, but you were killing their bandwidth as well.

 

Because of the architectural differences between AMD and Intel, the scaling is significantly better.

 

If you have the software to make use of it, a DC Dual Opteron scales similarly to a standard dual cpu system...only with 4 cpu's.

 

Quick example with the Percy Vray Benchmark.

http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=12220&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

 

In 3dsmax + Vray,

a Single DC 2.2 ghz X2 renders the scene in about 6 minutes.

 

A Dual DC 2.2 ghz Opteron renders the scene in

3 min 8.1 seconds.

 

The scaling is almost perfect.

 

So whether you jump to a DC Opteron or a Single X2 the scaling is quite similar, as long as your using a program/renderer that can utilize their capabilities. I'd assume that Final Render, Mental Ray, and Brazil would scale in similar ways. I don't know about default renderers, cause I haven't used one in years.

 

What I'm planning on doing is purchasing a single 280 DC Opteron, and leaving cpu #2's socket free. Then in 6-12 months, when a second processor is actually affordable, I'll pick one up and basically double my render times again. (I'm currently running a boxx dual 2.8 xeon, which is going on 3-4 yrs old...a single 280 opteron is almost twice as fast as my whole system!)

 

Of course right now I'm waiting for the next stepping of opterons to come out so the freaking 280 isn't 1300 USD!!!!! :eek:

 

My build is also lagging due to a VERY delayed freelance payment...I'm about to get the knee buster out.

 

Hey strat,

 

Do you want to see renders, mag scans, or photos of products/prototypes? We might be in metropolis magazines december issue this year :). I think one of my renders is in this months Interior Design magazine (but not 3E studios), just some work I did for David Scott awhile back.

 

Its all your standard primitive boxes slapped together with some lights on a white background stuff.

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It should be noted...

 

That scaling of processor speed (2 vs 4 cpu's) is also widely dependent on the type of scene and renderer your using.

 

As many have found out during the years, not every single action of a rendering system is entirely multi-threaded. This is especially true of stock or base rendering platforms that usually ship with the programs.

 

In a perfect world, you'd be able to actually test performance of a system prior to buying it, with the type of scene, and renderer you use daily in your workflow.

 

The best advice I can give is...

 

If your looking to drop a large chunk of change on a particular system...try to find someone with that system or something very close to it, and see about getting them to run a sample render from one of your files and record the time.

 

As long as its not "rediculous" I'm sure most people would be more then happy to assist.

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