Need to justify new hardware

[Trevor Tizard]

Hi,

 

I need to write a report justifying the benefit to our business in replacing my current hardware. I currently have a three year old 2 processor PC running xp pro 32bit with 2 gig of ram.

 

I've also just got approval to move from Viz2008 to Max2009design.

 

I have issues at the moment with the lack of ram and can wait 30 minutes for an AO pass on a single house. I have discussed animating (not done at the moment) with the sales director (my main client), and more internal views to which he seems keen.

 

I want to go 64bit as there is also the chance of inheriting a number of blades to use as render nodes as our main network servers are upgraded this year.

 

I know this sounds straight forward, but putting it on paper for someone who is not computer literate is harder than I thought. If anyone has been thru a similar process recently I'd appreciate any pointers.

 

Thanks,

 

 

 

Trev

[SandmanNinja]

Figure out how many renders a day you do currently, and how long you wait for the current machine to render. Get the total time spent waiting times your hourly salary. Then do it for a month.

 

Not to mention how many MORE jobs that could be done, thus bringing in more revenue for your company - if only you had faster work stations.

 

I'd mention 64-bit benefits: more memory, larger scenes, less mucking around splitting a large scene up, very stable.

 

I'd also mention the savings of reclaiming existing resources from Department "A" and utilising them in your department.

 

Good luck.

[AJLynn]

That's the idea - the computer's time is your time which is money which can be saved. Your old PC is what, dual single-core Xeons from the P4 era? Going to a current Core 2 Quad or Xeon gives you more cores, all of which will be used efficiently by Max, and each GHz in a new CPU is worth roughly double a P4's GHz. A Core 2 Duo 3GHz is approximately twice as fast as a Pentium D 3GHz (which is approximately the same as a dual 3GHz Xeon from that time), so a 3GHz Quad is approximately 4x as fast, for things that multithread well, and a dual-quad 3GHz is about 8x as fast. If your computer would have been spending 80 minutes on a render, you can cut that to 10. Ka-Ching!

[BrianKitts]

Andrew's headed down the same path I would use.

 

Another way to exemplify the benefit is taking your self out of the equation to show the benefit. For instance my home system that I used to do freelance on is two dualcores...... When I send a project to render at night at production level, I can complete 2 maybe 3 full renderings nightly. Whereas my dual quad at work can normally clear 6-7 renders in an evening easy. Typically I manage 5-6 views on a project so a one night turnaround is huge.

 

So regardless of having a rendernodes for extra support, having the right hardware in place increases your ability to meet deadlines and shorter turn around times for rendering out revisions.

[Matt Sugden]

one of the biggest advantages I've seen recently, is being able to fire renders off to other machines and continue working, modeling or tweaking settings.

 

If you after an upgrade I can not recommend enough trying to set a system up like this. It really minimizes down time, and the tedium of waiting for renders becomes a background task. not to mention splitting larger images up over several machines which makes render turn arounds on still very fast indeed.

 

I would say, it's not just about getting a fast PC, but getting a fast working method with PCs.

[mesht]

that's what i've been doing lately since our office bought a 32-bit workstation purely for rendering. but the thing is, since it's a 32-bit hardware /software, the system really bring down the overall performance and a lot ot limitations cos of memory. i've been trying to explain to my IT guy the ' urgency' to move to 64-bit windows. even if i can work fast with my pc, if it's 32 bit, bogged down by limited 4Gb RAM, it still slows down my overall workflow.

 

we have 4 3d visualizers sharing just one 32-bit rendering workstation. can you imagine if each of use needs a few renders urgently? and the files are big

 

here's my issues; my own personal workstation is the old generation P4 Dual-Xeons, 32-bit xp, 4GB RAM and 128 video ram. more than often, i need to open 2 max windows, one to render one to continue working, when our main 'rendering station' is full. since max2008 is quite advanced, my pc can only support Direct3D, can't open if switch to OpenGL, and i've experienced more crashes than saves. with all options to optimize workflow already exhausted, i finally figure 64-bit is the main solution.

 

i tried talking to my IT about this issues, seems well, not really a 'sense of urgency' to them, even with tight deadlines. i just don't know what else to do now, any ides?

 

thanks guys