does mixing AMD, INTEL, 32, 64 bit affect Distributed Rendering

[Kevin3D]

I'm looking at setting up a production environment based on 3DS MAX/VRAY. I'm purchasing 1 new system and plan on using 3 existing systems as part of a distributed rendering (DR) farm. My exisiting systems are all INTEL based running XP-32bit. My intention is to purchase an AMD/Vista(W7) 64-bit unit (due to cost and my credit card limit).

 

My question is: will I have issues with DR because my farm includes different processors and OS's (32 vs 64)? I did a search and found that in the past this seemed to be an issues, or was atleast suspected to be the cause of some issues.

 

Thanks!

[Magnus_Alexander]

I recently read an article on tomshardware.com (if you google "toms hardware build your own render farm" you should find it) that mentions that it could have an effect on your work. There could be slight differences in frames that are calculated by different types of processors, which will result in some noise once you composite your animation. I don't personally have experience with this myself though; so I can't speak first hand...

[LukeC]

We DR across AMD and Intel machines and have no obvious differences in the buckets other then speed, though we are using 64bit xp on all machines.

 

I can't say factually, but I shouldn't think you'd have a problem?

[SandmanNinja]

Since the CPU just executes the instructions in the program, I don't think a difference in CPUs would make a difference.

 

It's a guess, but an educated one. I once was an x86 Assembler Programmer and was familiar with the various CPUs.

 

I think an incompatibility would more likely arise from different versions of the software or render engines.

[Kevin3D]

I think an incompatibility would more likely arise from different versions of the software or render engines.

 

SandmanNinja,

 

When you say different versions, are you refering to the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit? I'm a total newbie to Vray, so please excuse the ignorance of this question; my undestanding is that I'll have one license of 3ds max and Vray-for-max which will distribute itself over the renderfarm so that, in effect, I'll have the same software and renderer on each system, the difference in my scenerio being some systems 32-bit with one 64-bit. This would seem to make sense to me as I'd think there might be differences in the way 32-bit and 64-bit handle floating point calculations (again, my ignorance is probably showing).

 

 

Anyway, thanks so much to you all for your quick responses!!

[SandmanNinja]

That's what I'm thinking. 32-bit and 64-bit might begin to show rounding and/or calculating differences. It's hypothetical (to me), but it could result in some noise when rendered frames from one are mixed with rendered frames from the other.

 

I haven't done anything to test this as both of my machines are 64-bit, running the same Operation System (XP64).

 

The real world is far different from a lab. I can see mixed equipment being in the same environment, if newer machines were introduced to an established render farm that's been around for a while.

[Devin Johnston]

We use both AMD and Intel chips on or DR machines as well as the farm and I've never experienced any problems we could attribute to different processors.

[SandmanNinja]

There ya go - field experience.

[Kevin3D]

There ya go - field experience.

 

Field is experience is Good Thanks, folks.

[Kevin3D]

FYI, I received a message from Zdravko Keremidchiev at the chaos group confirming that there is no problem processing across AMD and Intel or 32-bit and 64-bit OS's.