Computer speed question

[Michael Earley]

I have 4 computers on a render farm and getting strange results.

 

I have the following

1. P3 533 with 319 mb ram

2. P3 800 with 510 mb ram

3. P3 800 with 510 mb ram

4. P4 2.4 with 1023 mb ram

 

I built the P4 and it has never really seemed much faster than the p3's. Now that I am rendering in a farm I can clearly see that the P4 is not much faster.

 

The render times on a scene are as follows.

1. 35.23

2. 33.36

3. 31.09

4. 28.43

 

The scene is a large scene.. 3 million plus faces

 

Shouldnt the p4 have more of a speed difference given the 2.4 proccessor and the gig of ram? Is there something I may have done in my setup? I just basicly bought all the components and plugged them in.. no tweeking.

 

One more question. In max I have collected all the materials and put them in a folder called textures, then copied that folder to all the machines so they would not have to go to the main machine to get the textures. I have 10/100 cards but only a 10 hub in the main computer. Would getting a faster hub make the render any faster?

thanks

Michael

[C.Vestal]

Michael,

I have noticed a similar thing in most of my render farm. I have several P3's and 2 P4's. I notice a small difference in rendering times, that is until I have any special effects or ray traced shadows.

 

However.... I noticed when I recently built a p4 with 800fsb it is rendering about 2x as my other dual p3's.