Whats the best??? RD vs. PC

[stylez]

Hi everyone!

 

I wanted to start this thread to find out what was the best rendering drive out there, or if having a powerful enough computer would do? I also wanted to see what would be better for budget. so in other words; would it be better to just buy a decent render drive at like $15,000 or just buy a bunch of really powerfull PCs to do the job??? let me read your thoughts

and thanks in advance

 

- Stlyez

[Jim Mann]

Bit of a back to front question in some respects. What software will you be using and what renderer?

 

Its been a few years since I last used a renderdrive and though I really liked it, it was limited in that it couldn't make use of all the Max materials. You may get better results and more economy using a good renderer with a bank of PC's but you may also need air-conditioning to compensate. The Renderdrive was relatively cool and quiet in comparison.

[3dp]

to add my bit

till around this time last year renderdrives were all i used and had used since late 99 for render output

however as more and more of my work has become video/stylised/realtime-web based the need for a sledgehammer to crack the nut is now not needed as much as it may have been once. baically not everyone want or needs photoreal and i prefer a challenge

if you are doing a lot of external still images as i once did then i'd still say there is nothing close to a rd5000 compared to a rack of pc's in terms of fast work through

 

why not meet halfway get some pc's and purecards

i ended up getting 8dul cpu's to run as a paralel renderfarm on video work

 

the thing with a renderdrive is it'll make you work a little more but then you'll be able to say that your work does not look the same as everyone else in the brazil/vray/fr flame wars

 

to get a idea of where i'm at check out http://www.arcimage.co.uk

cheers

3dp

[stylez]

to answer the question before, i am using max 6 and vray.

 

now i have a question; if i use a render drive, does it affect how my image will look (would i have to use rendering software that comes with the drive or something?) or would it still render the image the same as if i rendered it on my normal computer? and if i were to use a bunch of computers (and network render) would that affect the image in any way? or just make it render a lot faster?

[3dp]

what it will not do

"make art now" in a way that the gi render engines will

what i can say having used vray on and off is working at print res a4 a3 and above my r5k on a average (if there is such a thing - ok say a 4 bed house with 2d 3d landscape a nice hi res 3d car) will turn out a image in 2-4 hours depending upon the reflections in a image

although i've never been in a situation to chain mutiple cpu/ vray i found the workflow to go beyond 800x600 video res to 3000x2000 pixel to be too slow and too hit and miss

renderdrive works for me

but so does vray and scanline

it really is just another tool in the box

[luckytohaveher]

>>>I JUST SOLD MY NINE RENDERDRIVE DEVICES

 

They are fast if you only want to do what they do. However, who wants to be limited. If you do go that way, buy 5 PCs and 5 PUREs. They are much much much better from an I.T/I.S. architectural standpoint. In essence, you can feed PUREs with the PCI bus and the maximum rate of your PC versus the 100baseT setup of a network. Dual bridged gigabit ports with full duplex gives you actual throughput of 500MB/sec. 100bastT is closer to 12MB/sec.

 

In addition, if you want RPC content, custom maps, GI, or anything else that is coming out software is the ONLY way to go.

 

If and when ART comes out with a new core sporting new feature that are required today in any production environment I will give them another look.

 

F.Y.I. The AR350 chip they are using today is basically the same from a binary standpoint as the original chip from '97.

 

Do you want the red pill or the blue pill?????

 

Good luck!