render farm: 2 x core2quad 6600 + 2 x i7

[tiagovv]

Hi everyone.

 

Me and my partner have a small studio. At this time each one of us has as workstation a core2quad 6600 with 8gb RAM. We are planning to start a mini renderfarm, and for now we will buy 2 intel i7 with 12gb RAM.

 

My question is: What is the best setting for this four machines? the two i7s as our workstation and the two quad 6600 as render nodes (one of them as server). Our should it be quad 6600 as workstation and i7 for render node.

If i7 is the workstation, it should have a good video card right?

 

I´m not sure about this but I think LC and IM can´t be calculated with the renderfarm help, in this case it would be better to use i7 as workstation.

 

But, if I uncheck "multi-threading" for rendering in my workstation (so that I can still work on this machine), the best option is to have quad 6600 as workstation, and i7 working 100% as render node.

 

Well, I´m not sure about all this, I would appreciate if you could help.

[Matt Sugden]

My view is this, if you spend a lot of time modelling and you envisage rendering constantly in the back ground, then use your q66 as your workstation, if you spend a lot of time doing test renders and your building your render farm for the occasional animation then use your i7 for your workstation and put your q66 as your additional renderer. The only thing with the later configuration as I have found is that when you have slower machines on a render farm you very quickly get frustrated with their speed compared to what your used to with your workstation, q66's are pretty quick in my opinion, but then speed is relative.

 

Personally i always use the fastest machine as my workstation, as that is where I spend most of my time.

[REDVERTEX]

Here is one different opinion.

The fastest machines - render nodes.

Q6600 for WS, i7 for RN.

My advice - overclock your machines for 30% better performance.

[tiagovv]

My view is this, if you spend a lot of time modelling and you envisage rendering constantly in the back ground, then use your q66 as your workstation, if you spend a lot of time doing test renders and your building your render farm for the occasional animation then use your i7 for your workstation and put your q66 as your additional renderer. The only thing with the later configuration as I have found is that when you have slower machines on a render farm you very quickly get frustrated with their speed compared to what your used to with your workstation, q66's are pretty quick in my opinion, but then speed is relative.

 

Personally i always use the fastest machine as my workstation, as that is where I spend most of my time.

 

Yes, I agree with that.

In our case, we do a lot of test renders. I use LC to get a glimpse of the final render. We also need a good machine for building our scenes (q6600 is enough but i7 gives more possibilities) so in this case it is better to use i7 as workstation.

On the other hand, sometimes my partner is doing some post production in photoshop and I need to delivery a fast render, so to use the i7 for photoshop is kind of a waste (those 8 buckets could be rendering). And I think it is not possible to use only half of his processor, and let him keep the other half for his workstation.

 

THE SOLUTION (for now):

 

WS: i7

RF: q6600

 

post production: q6600 (it can be a workstation too).

 

Thanks a lot!

[tiagovv]

Here is one different opinion.

The fastest machines - render nodes.

Q6600 for WS, i7 for RN.

My advice - overclock your machines for 30% better performance.

 

Yes I will overclock.

 

Thanks!