SandmanNinja Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 Just picked the new computer up. Wow - no hesitation with ..er.. anything. Have installed 3ds, photoshop, Avast! and that's it. (must. resist. urge. to. install. Crysis...) Have downloaded updates for all and she rocks and rolls! First thing I did when I got the desktop up - CTL+ALT+DEL 8 Beautiful, lovely cpu usage histories... God bless Intel... I'm sure I'll run some render time comparisons between this one and the "old" quad core Q6600 just for giggles, but this computer is very satisfying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattclinch Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 CTL+ALT+DEL ? try CTRL+SHFT+ESC install crysis. go on. you know you want to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cadmunkey Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 Welcome to the i7 club... problem is Crysis installation is mandatory Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Logan.W Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 *roar* congrats! Which GPU is burning in that RiG? xD Install CoD:5 xP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
3dp Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 ah but like the row of sgi boxes gathering dust in my back room "new car smell" fades and next year there is bigger faster louder (but not cheaper) to consider again enjoy the moments and glad to see you are making a go of it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianKitts Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 CTRL+SHFT+ESC sweet..... I didn't know that one! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BOXXLABS Posted June 15, 2009 Share Posted June 15, 2009 for Vista people : cntrl-windows-tab Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SandmanNinja Posted June 16, 2009 Author Share Posted June 16, 2009 *roar* congrats! Which GPU is burning in that RiG? xD Install CoD:5 xP nVidia 9800GT with 1-gig of DDR3 video ram s-s-s-s-s-smokin'... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dean@pikcells Posted June 22, 2009 Share Posted June 22, 2009 Hey Joel, Any chance of you posting some spec's and details or maybe even some web links of your system? It's been so long since I looked at hardware. I noticed the other day my home pc is 5 years old, and only just hanging onto the latest software developments, so a new machine might be in order!! Cheers, Dean Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SandmanNinja Posted June 22, 2009 Author Share Posted June 22, 2009 Sure. Well, I knew what I wanted. I bought a Q6600 last year so I went to www.tomshardware.com and just sort of read the pages to see what was being talked about. I then went in to my friendly local computer shop (same place I got my Q6600) from and told him that I wanted nVidia and something newer than my 8800GT & I suggested the 9800 with a gig of fast video ram. He agreed. I also went to the gamer's websites and searched for a nice, fast throughput motherboard. I had a Gigabyte in my Q6600 and I started with that. I had in mind getting an i7 chip (from reading here) and found a new Gigabyte motherboard that gamers really loved. I wrote it down and then showed the computer guy. He said the sub-sub-model that I mentioned was $200 more than 1 model back and the only difference was extra ram sockets. I knew I only wanted 6 gigs, so I went with the model he suggested. I then said I wanted fast DDR3 ram and I liked Corsair brand, so he fixed me up with that. I had the option of 6-gigs or 12-gigs. I never really touched the 8-gigs that I have in my Q6600, so I went with 6-gigs. I then asked him to compare this system to a dual xenon. He said the MoBo was $800 more than everything that I had just selected. I then asked the price difference between a i7-920 and a i7-940. It was quite a jump and with the motherboard that I selected, it was very easy to overclock to 3.0GHz from the stock 2.66GHz without extra fans. He said he'd burn the system in for me (running it 48 hours doing CPU intensive stuff) and then overclock it for me. He got to 3 GHz in a single jump and it was very stable and he said I could easily push it to 3.2 or 3.4 GHz if I wanted to. I left it at the 3.0 for now. I also use a hardware monitoring program to monitor the CPU Core temperatures. It jumps up 10 degrees when I render but has never very hot. Just did a quick check and the Q6600 is running at 32C and the i7 is 36C (just using a web browser - not rendering). The hardware monitoring program also reports the temp of the graphics card as well, which is pretty cool. Overall I'm very happy with it. Same guy built it that built my Q6600 and I never had a bit of problem with it. The i7 has a year warranty from the shop and they've been there for years and years. Just some rough eye-balling tests and I'm guessing the i7 is 2-3 times faster than the Q6600. When I'm checking where my photons are hitting in my scene (which is repetitive and boring), I don't mind it now on the i7. 30-60 seconds for the scene to render with my photons and it would take 2-3 minutes on the Q6600 (obviously this varies depending upon the scene, etc). I find I do all my testing on the i7, submit the jobs from there, and when I have enough scenes to run, I make the jobs active and then hot-switch to the Q6600 and start setting up the next room/area to work on. When the renders are through, I repeat the process. I intended to do everything on the Q6600 and just use the i7 as the render machine, but it's sooooo much quicker to test lighting/textures/etc on the i7 and then submit, and do the grunt work (clean up autocad files, import lines, etc) on the Q6600. Hope that helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BOXXLABS Posted June 22, 2009 Share Posted June 22, 2009 Just some rough eye-balling tests and I'm guessing the i7 is 2-3 times faster than the Q6600. This is not our experience. In our extensive testing, an i7 processor is between 20% to 50% faster for multithreaded raytrace rendering (mental ray and VRAY) than a Core 2 Quad processor at identical clock speeds. This speed difference is larger for memory-bound processes such as After Effects rendering, where the i7 CPU can be up to 80% faster than a Core 2 Quad at the same clock speed. This extra performance is mostly due to the much faster memory performance of the i7. Adam BOXXLabs Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agatsuma Posted June 22, 2009 Share Posted June 22, 2009 My experience has been twice as fast on V-Ray renders Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mi75 Posted June 22, 2009 Share Posted June 22, 2009 When comparing my two machines. - i7 920 overclocked to 3.3Ghz - Q9550 overclocked to 3.2Ghz The i7 is only 40% faster in standard trim. - i7 @ 2.66Ghz - Q9550 @ 2.83Ghz The i7 is only 37% faster Ps. VRay & Max 2009, XP64, 6-8GB Ram Mart Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SandmanNinja Posted June 23, 2009 Author Share Posted June 23, 2009 Well, my Q6600 system isn't overclocked and is running at 2.4GHz The i7 is overclocked and is running at 3.0GHz I'm running Mental Ray, not V-Ray and I did say these were eye-balled figures, that no stop-watch was running to compare the two. I think you should consider the through-put of the motherboard as well as the system RAM. My Q6600 has DDR2 ram, while the i7 has DDR3 ram. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BOXXLABS Posted June 23, 2009 Share Posted June 23, 2009 I think you should consider the through-put of the motherboard as well as the system RAM. My Q6600 has DDR2 ram, while the i7 has DDR3 ram. For 3D rendering, the type/speed of RAM generally makes no measurable difference in overall rendering speed. This said, the triple-channel on-die memory controller on the i7 is much faster and can cause a significant increase in performance for memory-bound processes such as after effects rendering, fluid simulation, etc compared to any Core 2 Quad system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SandmanNinja Posted June 23, 2009 Author Share Posted June 23, 2009 I have a feeling I'll be tapping my fingers and cursing its slowness in about a month... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FreakiestFish Posted June 29, 2009 Share Posted June 29, 2009 Im tapping my fingers for last few weeks now ... is i7 + 64bits + 6gb ram = Ultimate rendering experience? My current machine is soooo slow !!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BOXXLABS Posted June 29, 2009 Share Posted June 29, 2009 "...is i7 + 64bits + 6gb ram = Ultimate rendering experience?..." not even close... Any studio that needs to do lot's of heavy raytrace rendering needs to look at a dedicated rendering capability (renderfarm) -or dual-socket workstations at the very least. A single-socket system such as one based on i7 isn't really recommended for heavy rendering workflows. Using dual-socket platforms are typically the fastest AND most cost-effective way to begin in-house building rendering capacity. If you have more time than jobs to complete -and want to begin experimenting with distributed/network rendering, you could always set up an ad-hock rendefarm of whatever PCs you have at your disposal. Adam BOXXlabs Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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