New Computer SetUp

[Thox]

Hi Guys,

 

I'm currently working on a HP Dual Xeon 3.2gig HT machine, 3GB of memory (2x1GB stick and 2x512MB sticks), with an Nvidia Quadro FX 3450 graphics card. We use this machine for both modelling and rendering, however, we are increasingly getting more and more downtime, whilst waiting for the machine to complete a render in order to meet the deadline.

 

Therefore, we are looking at changing this, by adding another computer to the system. I would appreciate any comments on what you guys would recommend here. What computer spec do you recommend we add to the network and which one to use for modelling and which one for rendering, although the modelling one, must be capable of doing some test renders.

 

We want to do this right, so we will end up with one workstation and one render machine, which will form the start of the render farm.

 

Regards

 

Thox

[AJLynn]

If the Xeons you have are dual core, this is already faster than any but the most insanely overclocked Core 2 Duo system. If they're single core, any desktop Core 2 Duo machine will be faster and anything with 4 or 8 cores of "Core" architecture CPUs will beat the crap out of it. Look into Core 2 Quad and dual Xeon 51xx or 53xx CPUs. If your software is 64-bit (e.g., Max 9, Maya 8, Cinema 9.6/10) you should get Windows XP 64-bit. (Vista looks like it's got some good stuff, but I don't see why anybody would rush in on this.) The more cores you have, the more RAM you'll want. Move the Quadro card to the new box and use it as your primary machine.

[Thox]

The xeons aren't dual core, but they have hyper-threading so I get four buckets with Vray. The software being used on the workstation is Max 8 (Max 9 not really worth the upgrade) with Vray1.5, Photoshop, Autocad, etc, general Architecture stuff.

 

Regards

 

Thox

[AJLynn]

HT only gets you about a 10-15% performance bonus. A PC with a Core2 Duo E6400 will easily beat this system in render speed, and that's close to the low end of Intel's new stuff.