Render machine

[PGD]

Your so right there Andrew!

 

He has come round to the fact that a super graphics card isnt required now, so maybe a little more arm twisting and we'll be getting somewhere.

 

A test between the two would be good to see. I'll have a look round for one, but if you find it first stick a link up

[AJLynn]

Look at this one, for example:

 

http://www.beppegullotta.it/STpdf/SpeedTestMRit_V1_1_28.jpg

[AFK_Matrix]

I can't quite get my head aroun how your IT guy thinks a DUAL core AMD is gonna be better than a QUAD core Intel. The thing with rendering is that the more CPU's you have working on the render the faster it will be, thus you save electricity etc. Also if you have made a mistake in the render etc then you can just quickly go back and knock another out very quickly thus saving time with changes etc.

 

It has been proven that the NEW core2 duos are faster than t he amd alternative. If your talking about old P4 intels then yeah I can see an AMD beating it.

 

Also just so u know you won't get a Quad Core with 2GB of memory for less that £800 from Dell thats for sure. Also with dell you have no clue about what motherboard your getting or make of PSU etc. Plus with Dell you won't be able to easily upgrade the pc and good old dell have there own type of case, PSU & motherboard which are Non standard. Not sure about HP but they maybe worth going to.

 

So thats part of the reason I build my own pc, I know what im getting exactly and I can upgrade it.

 

BUT I would still advise going with HP or someone as then your covered.

[PGD]

I remembered an idea which was aired some time ago which may firmly throw a spanner in the works of this thread...

 

The office here is full of macs, including Intel ones, several 4 core, the next batch to be ordered will be 8 core !

 

So, what about a different option and buying windows for the macs, sticking Max on them and using a few of them to render over night? As 98% of the machines are switched off every night, which seems like a waste anyway, could this power be utilised?

 

Or is this likely to bring up compatability issues?

[AJLynn]

Is everybody in your office on Macs, and the PCs were going to be for 3D work only? What about a Mac-based system such as Maya 8.5, and dispense with Windows altogether?

 

Alternatively, an 8-core Mac is twice as powerful as a 4-core Dell and Bootcamp turns it into a PC (with certain limitations, such as needing the 32-bit version of Windows, which should be cleared up in a later release). If you can requisition an 8-core Mac with 4GB and a copy of Windows XP Pro SP2 that would be ideal. The other Macs can be render boxes either by Bootcamping them or using VMWare Fusion (it supports multi cores, and Parallels doesn't) - you can use OSX to script starting VMWare at night and stopping it in the morning.

[PGD]

Everyone in the office is on macs yeah, with only 2 PC's in the building. One is mine and the other is an acthitects/visualiser downstairs.

 

I havent considered switching software purely because I have no idea about how to use it, and that would be some learning curve to get up to speed with maya. Not that I would mind that, but isnt maya more expensive anyway?

 

So its got to be 32-bit Windows on the macs?

Bootcamp costs?

 

So is Bootcamp and VMWare Fusion an either or option? Both doing basically the same but different thing?

 

If this is as easy as it sounds its a very viable option. Would I be ok working on my PC for the near future and rendering on the mac via backburner?

 

I cant thank you enough for all this dedicated info here, I cant imagine how much reading I would have to do to get to the bottom of this, what with my limited understanding and all

[AJLynn]

Where to start.

 

Bootcamp is a free utility provided by Apple, which is beta but will be in release included in OSX 10.5. When you run it, it lets you choose a drive or partition (non-destructively) one of your hard drives, and install Windows on it. Then when you boot, you hold down the Option key and choose Mac or Windows. It's a full dual-boot system, and you get native Windows support for most if not all of your hardware including full video acceleration.

 

VMWare, like Parallels, uses virtualization to run something like VirtualPC but better. You run Windows inside a program on OSX. You have to split your system memory, and Windows runs at more than half but less than 100% of the CPU's full speed. You don't get hardware accelerated video.

 

VMWare has some advantages over Parallels: it uses multiple cores where Parallels only allows one, and it can run off Windows that you installed for Bootcamp, allowing you to switch back and forth. It has a bit better hardware support too.

[PGD]

This sounds very good to me :cool: The IT man is adamant max wont run on the mac, so you can see how much help that is

 

So, download? and install bootcamp.

Buy and install our Windows XP Pro SP2 at £234.99 ish

VMWare, buy? download? £**?

 

And were up and running?

 

Now (I've almost finished with all the questions honest ) to render.. The Mac needs rebooting or switching to windows, the backburner server starting and thats all? As easy as that?

 

No issues with the pc and the mac rendering the same anim?`

[AFK_Matrix]

Only thing with bootcamp is that your Mac has to have an Intel processor. It won't work on older Macs. As for actually using Max that shouldn't be a problem becuase as far as I can see windows runs as normal under bootcamp. And Macs and PCs should be able to be networked with out any hassle.

[AJLynn]

Max works for me on a Macbook Pro. Kelly's right, I'd assumed when you said 4 core Macs you meant the Mac Pro with the Xeon chips, but there are G5 Quads and Bootcamp doesn't run on any PowerPC (e.g., G-series) macs.

 

The only issue I've had with this setup is that if you license an Autodesk program in Bootcamp or VMWare, then run it in the other one, it thinks your computer has changed (because the IDs on the hardware are different) and invalidates the license, and needs to be reactivated. I'd imagine Autodesk will think you're a software pirate if you reactivate Max every day, so I'd recommend running Autodesk software in either Bootcamp or VMWare, but not both. Running VMWare doesn't seem seem to break the licenses if you don't run the Autodesk product in both systems.

 

I've got a friend at Autodesk who's trying to talk some people into fixing this problem.

[PGD]

We have the Intel chipped Macs yes, 50% of the office I'm told.

 

A few Macs even have windows installed, so were already a good way there to getting some over night render power sorted.

 

My only query now is with Bootcamp and VMWare, do we need both? If so which, in your experienced opinion is the better option? I obviously want to avoid the licensing issues Andrew mentioned when running the software in either application.

[AJLynn]

You don't need both, and Bootcamp is better for 3D work - you get more memory available and more CPU, better 3D display and better hardware utilization.

[Malcolm Fowler]

I have been asked by one of my customers to supply a few workstations to act has a render farm.

 

I have previously supplied them machines ( HP xw6xxx/xw8xxxx) for CAD and 3d Studio.

 

For 3D studio I have supplied mid-high spec graphics cards.

 

If I were to supply say 3 hp XW8400 workstations, what level of graphics cards would I need for the Render farm workstations. I am thinking that the best cards are only required in the main 3DS workstation/server.

 

What spec of CPU and RAM would you suggest?

 

Many Thanks

 

Malcolm

[PGD]

As far as I know, the more RAM and CPU speed the better, thats limited purely by the budget. Graphics card not required at all or just a very cheap one.

 

I'd go Quad core

[AJLynn]

For render farm only boxes, use the least expensive video card - 3D video display is not used. CPU should be optimized according to total GHz, cost and number of machines (which will influence the customer's IT staff time and space budgeting) and RAM should be 4GB per machine.

[Malcolm Fowler]

Thanks for the feed back

 

I will take on board the 4gb and quad options.

 

As you can see I am new to the render farm process.

 

I will look at also providing XP pro , does the hard disk have any bearing or is the render process done in ram. I was looking at providing scsi 72 or 146 GByte disks

 

I will also be greatful for any links to render farm setup documents.

 

Should I keep this setup off the main network?

 

Thanks

[Malcolm Fowler]

with regard to the quad core CPU , could this be 2 X dual core CPUs.

[visual3d]

I know this is a little bit late in the forum, and it might have been said before..

 

i think the quad core most of them refer to is the single processor with 4 cores. especially if the number or model is non Xeon model.

 

5100 and above are dual core and 5300 series are 4 cores.

 

if youre on a budget go for a 8 core anything...but try to get the fastest if you can....it is way faster than amy 2 computer with the same speed.

 

a dual Xeon 5160(3.0ghz) is about 10 seconds slower than a Dual 5310(1.6 ghz)...but check the prices between these 2.

 

the 5160 will be a 4 core because you need 2 of them on the motherboard

while the 5310 will be an 8 core because they have 4 cores on each processor.

 

i have both of them so take my word for it. ram you need at least 4gb, but you must use win xp 64 bit. because even if the win xp 32 can cope it is not as stable.

 

the cheapest grafic card is all you need. but get a single fast hard disk or you will have a bottle neck problem.

 

But i must warn you that any 8 core is good for a rendering farm, but might loose to a 4 core/2 core with higher speed on any other 2d software for normal work, because not all software utilize all 8 cores when calculating.

[AJLynn]

A few things-

 

-I should have said, XP Pro or XP64 - if you're running 64 on the workstations.

-Hard drive isn't very important. The SATA 7200RPM disks that are cheap everywhere should be fine.

-There is no reason to get dual/dual Xeons instead of a single Core2 Quad. It only drives up the price and power consumption, not the performance.

-Optimizing the cost/benefit of a farm includes the initial cost of buying the equipment, but also the lifecycle costs of your IT staff time, electricity, HVAC load in your office (proportional to the electricity used) and the space the equipment takes in your office, which you're paying rent on. When you consider all those factors, you might decide that some dual quad Xeons make sense. But as a render farm, they won't be much faster than the same total GHz worth of Core2 Quads.

[visual3d]

Render farm = to render quickly either animation or stills and to meet dateline.

Sometimes we need the speed here or there and its wort it.

See attach image

[Malcolm Fowler]

Thanks for all the input, it has been a great help.

 

the client is running 3D Studio on WIN XP pro, if I go for XP64 on the farm workstations is this okay.

 

Are there any documents which aid setting up the farm?

[Malcolm Fowler]

The bench mark chart looks very interesting.

 

Jeff in third place did very well with only 2GBytes RAM

[PGD]

Are there any documents which aid setting up the farm?

I recently went through the same thing in setting up a render node and couldnt find relevant documents. But it is easy, (and I'm no IT whizz) here is a link to the advice I followed:

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/24481-render-node-creation.html

[visual3d]

It was a small test file that they all rendered and used not more than 500mb of ram...the test was to see which processor is the fastest.

 

jeff was using a mac pro at 3ghz with 8 core and clock at 66 seconds.. a single comp under the table.

 

if you were using a qx6700 4 core single cpu non overclocked...it took 160 seconds..which is 2:40 minutes. almost 3 times longer.

 

so if you had 2 identical machine of the qx6700 you coulndt still beat the Xeon 5365 or x5355.

 

so if you have a 24 hour render job on the qx6700, the xeon will just take 8 hours or so...now thats a render machine..in fact...you only need 2 of these to create a farm....

 

you can mix the xp pro and xp 64...all that maters is thew max vray or what ever plugins is identical. the best is just to upgrade to win 64...a little bit more money but worth it...what is the use of 4gb if max or xp cant acess...