kris Posted May 3, 2004 Share Posted May 3, 2004 I am opening company for architectural visualization and usualy that means animation and hours and days of rendering for just one minute of anim. The only thing important to me is to have good price/cpupower index. I have searched internet and found that AMD MP cpu is little faster in terms of rendering power that Intel version of cpu in same class, and I mean by that P4 3.0 ghz is 1-5% slower than AMD 3000+ MP and things are litle diferent if it is Xeon that uses HT or MT ( hiper threating or multi.... I dont know name but you probably know what I am talking about ). In that case Intel has advantage 10-15%. My friend told me that it is posible to take AMD XP procesor and set it in dual motherboard. If that is posible could anibody explain me how to achive that becouse that would be best solution for me. If that is not the case than what is best solution for me. I plan to buy 5 dual machines in 5 cases or maybe I ask somebody to make me one case for 5 motherboards. Does anibody have experience in that field. You can check my web page at http://www.VisualizationStudio.com Hope you like it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
graphix Posted May 3, 2004 Share Posted May 3, 2004 In my experience, Max / Viz, You can build ALOT of cheap machines with AMD. Basically build the cheapest all in-one system you can find. Only real important bit is that it have ATLEAST 512mb of ram, however myself and everyone else here should agree that 1GB is much better. At current I run 10 machines for my personal use that I have collected over the years and upgraded, havn't spent much on them. If you need anything more specific feel free to PM me graphix Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kris Posted May 3, 2004 Author Share Posted May 3, 2004 AMD is my first choice becouse I have dual MP 1800+ and it serves me well. The problem now is that there is not just MP processor in the game but Opteron and somebody told me that I could use Athlon XP in dual sistem with special motherboard. What do you think is the best price/performance solution for me. I have 1.5 GB ram in my PC and I plan to upgrade it to 2 GB and so in my new computers. I will be making animation for my client in next few days and I have to buy something soon. 1 min of animation=1800 frames. Any precise sugestions. Thanks in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
graphix Posted May 4, 2004 Share Posted May 4, 2004 I wouldn't spend the money on dual CPU machines for a renderfarm, unless you have some serious coin to spend. Yes there are ways to take 2 XP CPUs and run them as dual. The following spec fairly closely matches my renderfarm with various differences since I picked up all my machines and parts over time. My recomendation: all from newegg.com Athenatech Charcoal ATX Mid-Tower Tool-less Case with 300W Power Supply, Model "A747CC" -RETAIL Item# N82E16811190009 $38.00 Seagate 40GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive, Model ST340014A, OEM Drive Only Item# N82E16822148013 $59.00 2x Kingston 184 Pin 512MB DDR PC-3200 - Retail Item# N82E16820141424 $92.00x2 = 184.00 BIOSTAR SiS740 Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket A CPU, Model "M7VKQ PRO" -RETAIL Item# N82E16813138229 $46.00 (I believe 3 of my machines run this board) AMD Athlon XP 2000+, 266 FSB, 256K Cache Processor - Retail Item# N82E16819103383 $57.00 (yes faster CPUs can be found but this one gives you the best bang for buck) AND to keep things LEGAL Microsoft Windows XP Professional with Service Pack SP1a - Full Version OEM Item# N82E16837102143 $133.00 Grand total with OS $517.00 Now if you happen to have your OWN OS already $384.00 Some of you may ask.... well why no CD or Floppy drive. Well you dont need them but once to load up the OS. So steal one from your current machine and load the OS. This system is SOLELY based on CHEAP with the idea of buying many of them. If you were to be only purchasing only ONE renderbox then these specs are NOT for you. This is simply a guide. Do with it at your will. graphix Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigcahunak Posted May 4, 2004 Share Posted May 4, 2004 XPs can be used as MPs if you close the L5 bridges on them with a conductive pen. I wouldnt count on it for professional purposes, though. If you have the extra time to spend for taking off heatsinks and checking those bridges everytime the machine boots in single mode... The AMD MPX is getting old and I wouldnt recomend buying it as a new system today. I myself have a TYAN motherboard with two MP CPUs lying in the drawer which I'm not even gonna spend the money for a case to put them back in. It worked great for its time, but thats it - they already payed for their freedom. If you have to go with duals than go with Xeons, but I also think that singles AMDs would be a very cheap and fairly good setup. Or, single P4s if you want HT tech. BTW: you images are very good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kris Posted May 4, 2004 Author Share Posted May 4, 2004 Thanks on your sugestions. I will check once more for solution with dual xp procesors becouse I think somebody told me that there is motherboard for them that has bridges conected and I dont have to do any modifications. If that doesnt sucsede I will buy dual xeons. I really dont know why would anybody take 10 single machines instead of 5 dual. You need double ram and double motherboards and ... all double except procesors. I think that's not cheaper even dual motherboard and processors are expensier. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VCRUPI Posted May 4, 2004 Share Posted May 4, 2004 Why don't you try using http://www.Respower.com. They are an oline RenderFarm. You upload your scene and let it go!...Plus they can render it up to 250X faster than a traditonal setup. I don't work for them, nor have I tried them out...yet! If anyone has used them please reply with any feedback. Anyways...I just think that you would save abunch of money this way versus actually setting up a renderfarm in ur office. No overhead, no hydro costs, no hassels. I'm just trying to help as I am/was in the same predicament as yourself. Good Luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigcahunak Posted May 5, 2004 Share Posted May 5, 2004 Thanks on your sugestions. I will check once more for solution with dual xp procesors becouse I think somebody told me that there is motherboard for them that has bridges conected and I dont have to do any modifications. If that doesnt sucsede I will buy dual xeons. I really dont know why would anybody take 10 single machines instead of 5 dual. You need double ram and double motherboards and ... all double except procesors. I think that's not cheaper even dual motherboard and processors are expensier. Yes, the first Tyan MP based mobo (the tiger 2460 if I'm not mistaken) without any bios updates and if using the first palomino based MPs would have worked without any manual modofications. But, doing that would be almost like willing to spend more in order to the the wrong thing. Not to mention that its practically impossible to find those first generation XP palomino based CPUs. Also, the newer Nforce single chipset is so much superior than that old MPX chipset, that I wouldnt be surprised if a single XP renders faster than those oldies duals. Some more things to think about: AMD MP and MPX chipsets are not as stable as Nforce is. Nforce supports a much faster memory, and FSB. The newer XPs work much much cooler. Nforce would be cheaper than dual board. The price of CPU plus HSF alone is almost like MEM and HDD for the additional single machine. I'd actually prefer 5 single XPs on nforce than 5 duals on MPX, which is exactly what I did with my workstation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
salf Posted May 5, 2004 Share Posted May 5, 2004 Grand total with OS $517.00 Now if you happen to have your OWN OS already $384.00 Some of you may ask.... well why no CD or Floppy drive. Well you dont need them but once to load up the OS. So steal one from your current machine and load the OS. This system is SOLELY based on CHEAP with the idea of buying many of them. If you were to be only purchasing only ONE renderbox then these specs are NOT for you. graphix Was looking last night at the Compaq site, you can get an AMD based pc, with monitor and 512 ram, and i think 2 cd-roms (1 cd-rom 1 cd/rw or dvd) with 600$ ....now thats cheap, get it without the 2 cd drives and the monitor and you can buy a render farm with just a few $ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kris Posted May 5, 2004 Author Share Posted May 5, 2004 I have checked the price for opterons and dual motherboard and thats too expencive for render slave. What is the general diference between Athlon64 and Opteron procesor, and how does it reflects on rendering speed. Does Athlon64 suports dual machine. If yes, that is good option to buy becouse Athlon64 3000+ is not so expencive proc.( except I dont know how fast is it in rendering tasks ). Dual motherboard for Opterons is 600-700$ and thats too much for just a motherboard even if it suports RAID and some more stuff I dont really need. I use 3dsMax and If I understood you allright the MP and XP are out of the question in dual mode becouse they are old. I need dual proc. moth. becouse I dont have so much space and patience to have 10 cases of PC in my house. Even 5 is too much. What is the best solution for 3dsMax as render slave. 1. dual Athlon64 ( if it can be dual ) 2. dual Opteron 3. dual Xeon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
graphix Posted May 5, 2004 Share Posted May 5, 2004 Salf. Toss in the extra 512mb of ram at $80-110 bucks. Also those systems probably come with XP HOME and most of the time to upgrade to XP PRO runs $70 bucks. In my experience if you were to call and attempt to have the CD drives removed from the system there would be 2 responces, 1 being no we can't do that to this system. or 2 it will cost you more. The cheap factor here is if you have your own OS. And better yet a windows license pack, SIGNIFIGANTLY cheaper then individual OSs. As for using an on-line render farm its a good idea if you are only going to need it once in a long long while. However if you are going to be doing renders on a weekly basis it makes more sense to spend the money on your own equipment. graphix Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K-Mike Posted May 6, 2004 Share Posted May 6, 2004 Hey here we just bought Some computers to spped up rendersings... and to use network rendering efficiencly.. we had a long way to choose, so we studied many configurations, and analysed the prices compared to the supposed productivity... finally we choosed 8 dell precision 450 bi xeon 3.06 2Go DDR quadro fx 1000 128 Mo We're pretty satisfied with that, and it appears tha we can get our money back in only 3-5 month if (as we suppose) we can win 5% of time compared to our last config... Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kris Posted May 7, 2004 Author Share Posted May 7, 2004 I was looking on internet for benchmark tests and I am confused even more becouse there are hundreds of them and they oscilate so much so I dont know what to belive anymore. I have posted new thread "Test your PC rendering speed" and I hope I will got some usefull resoults. That's going to help me a lot in my shoping next few days. Try it if you use 3dsMax. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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