RE: rationale for 64 bit

[jayadams]

Hey everyone,

I have been tasked with starting up a design dept for a very large engineering firm. It looks as though we will be spearheading the visualization end of the spectrum at this office. I have submitted my 'shopping list' and everything was accepted with one caveat. The 64-bit, they say, will be an issue (due to hardware standards)and I will need to supply some verbage (even heresay explanations from others in the community) backing up the request. I have four (4) quad xeons specced with some quadro fx's. Every large visualization project i've used needs more than the 4gb memory footprint. I know its possible to hunker down the file sizes, but i would love to hear some help from you guys. Photoshop as our mainstay w/ occasional 3d work with the standard V-ray/3dsmax setup. Even really good links would be awesome. Google has given me some, but I thought I'd ask the guys who may have already been in my shoes.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

jay

[IceAged]

Every large visualization project i've used needs more than the 4gb memory footprint.

 

This is sufficient reason alone to justify a 64-bit system. If you require more than 4Gb to do your job properly, then your IT technicians need to supply you with the appropriate software and hardware - you should not have to adapt to their limitations.

 

I don't see why it should be a major issue, unless they are running older software and peripheral devices. However before upgrading to 64-bit you will need to check every device that your systems will connect to and make sure that the appropriate drivers are available.

[Brian Smith]

This is sufficient reason alone to justify a 64-bit system. If you require more than 4Gb to do your job properly, then your IT technicians need to supply you with the appropriate software and hardware - you should not have to adapt to their limitations.

 

I don't see why it should be a major issue, unless they are running older software and peripheral devices. However before upgrading to 64-bit you will need to check every device that your systems will connect to and make sure that the appropriate drivers are available.

 

totally agree. and since you said you were with an engineering firm, there's probably a good chance it's a civil eng firm...and if that's the case then the use of very large images (such as high-res satellite images) will be much easier with 64bit.

[AJLynn]

Amount of memory. Complexity of scenes (64-bit has much more efficient handling of high complexity geometry) and your hardware can handle it easily - it's what the quad Xeons are designed for.

[jayadams]

thanks guys. We will be responsible for all of the architectural design and visualization for the retail component of our office. I was hoping to go to them with more than just the 4gb footprint limit.

 

j.

[Dave Buchhofer]

just be aware that some legacy tools can have issues with 64bit.. not too many, but check on the compatabilities before you jump.

 

that said.. really wish i was completely 64bit here. mixed envieronment is a bit annoying to upkeep

[BrianKitts]

We just finished our final testing and approval for rolling out 64bit upgrades for all 80 or so of the machines in our offices that are compatible. As part of it we did some benchmarking on the test systems setup as 32bit with 4G of RAM and then an identical system running 64bit and 8G of RAM.

 

The attached PDF has the benchmarking results from Cinebench, as well as render times for two test scenes (images in pdf as well)

 

The main reason for the upgrades was that one of our projects, a large medical campus, has exceeded 11 million polygons and could no longer be rendered on a 32bit system due to the RAM limitation. But the big benefit I didn't expect was the render time decrease, the attached dusk shot rendered (4000 px wide) in 9 hours on a 32bit system and just over 3 hours on a 64bit system.

 

One odd thing that I didn't expect is that under a 64bit OS, the OpenGL performance rating with cinebench is actually lower than that on a 32 bit system. We have the most recent drivers for each OS respectively and keep getting the same results both on a Dell 690 and also testing on a Lenovo D10.

Edited August 12, 2008 by BrianKitts

[jayadams]

WOW Brian. I can really use that as an example. Thanks so much.

[AJLynn]

Interesting results.

 

Maybe there's something weird going on with the nVidia drivers. I can tell you that going from 32 to 64 with a FireGL card gives a slight increase (that might be margin of error) in Cinebench OpenGL.

 

BTW, my fake Quadros beat your real Quadros My Q6600 with 8800GTS-to-FX4600 is a bit over 6400 in Cinebench and my desk mate's 8600GT-to-FX1700 comes in around 6100.

[jayadams]

Wow,

Are you guys thinking that a modded 8800GTS would be a good solution in lieu of a 3700? What are your comp specs AJLynn?

 

j

[AJLynn]

I don't know if you can mod a Geforce in XP64. I'd recommend sticking with the original plan.

[RenderSpeed]

The attached PDF has the benchmarking results from Cinebench, as well as render times for two test scenes (images in pdf as well)

 

What was the ram usage on both machines? The only reason the 32bit would be that slow, would be if it was out of memory at chewing up swap (which would be a not enough memory problem, not a 32 bit / 64 bit problem). Obviously the end result is the same, and definitive for you.