Hiring a Render Farm

[plasticbricks]

I'm confused as how to calculate pricing for a project I'm doing. There are many render farms that use this method.

 

I'm looking closely at RenderFlow. http://www.renderflow.com/home/ Their calculator is at the bottom of their web page.

 

 

In the Hours Mins and Secs part, when I inputed 1xCore 2.8ghz 1600frames 13 minutes (est of how long each frame will take for the interior scene) I then press calculate and under RenderFlow, it says 2.4hours and 72.80Euros.

 

 

However, when I keep everything the same and lower the giga hertz to 2.6 it = 2.3 hours and 67.60 Euros. Surely, at lower giga hertz it will render slower NOT faster. Surely then, no one would opt for higher giga hertz because it's slower and costs more money.

 

 

Can anyone help me to figure this out? I emailed them but their answer wasn't satisfactory.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Plas

[maciejwypych]

I'm confused as how to calculate pricing for a project I'm doing. There are many render farms that use this method.

 

I'm looking closely at RenderFlow. http://www.renderflow.com/home/ Their calculator is at the bottom of their web page.

 

 

In the Hours Mins and Secs part, when I inputed 1xCore 2.8ghz 1600frames 13 minutes (est of how long each frame will take for the interior scene) I then press calculate and under RenderFlow, it says 2.4hours and 72.80Euros.

 

 

However, when I keep everything the same and lower the giga hertz to 2.6 it = 2.3 hours and 67.60 Euros. Surely, at lower giga hertz it will render slower NOT faster. Surely then, no one would opt for higher giga hertz because it's slower and costs more money.

 

 

Can anyone help me to figure this out? I emailed them but their answer wasn't satisfactory.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Plas

 

 

It's actually a simple math. If a slower processor (2.6) can render a frame in 16 min (same as the 2.8) the render farm will render it even faster, hence the price difference.

[plasticbricks]

Hi Macie,

 

Thanks for replying to my question. I see what you are saying but then who would choose a higher giga hertz model if they can select a lower one and pay less yet have their rendering done faster?

 

I mean, you have all these choices and the higher you go the more you pay but the time takes longer. Where is their selling point for more powerful machines?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Plas

[maciejwypych]

Hi Macie,

 

Thanks for replying to my question. I see what you are saying but then who would choose a higher giga hertz model if they can select a lower one and pay less yet have their rendering done faster?

 

I mean, you have all these choices and the higher you go the more you pay but the time takes longer. Where is their selling point for more powerful machines?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Plas

 

The calculator on their website shows you just an estimate so you know approximately how much you will pay in the end.

It is not a final price! It just tells you how much credits you need to buy to render the job.

[maciejwypych]

 

I mean, you have all these choices and the higher you go the more you pay but the time takes longer. Where is their selling point for more powerful machines?

 

 

For example if you have a render that on let's say A - P4 1GHz takes 1 hour, then on the farm it will take 1 minute,

if a different render is done on a B - Xenon 3Ghz and takes also 1 hour it will render on the farm in 2 minutes, so you will have to pay more because you have to use more processing power of the farm and it would naturally take longer.

[mozg4d]

It will take 3.6 days and will cost 600$ on that renderfarm:

 

http://renderfarm3.com/

 

if it takes 2 month on your computer

 

They have 12 GB RAM also)

[mozg4d]

it's far from being anywhere like cheaper compared to:

 

http://mozg4d.com/renderfarm.htm

[RenderFlow]

Sorry for the late response Tri Mahon!

To explain our cost estimator.

It works based on comparison between YOUR local machine (the required data input) and OUR internal servers (whatever we employ at any moment - right now we offer, for public testing, nodes of 64 cores with 128GB RAM).

 

You set the data:

 

a) Your CPU data (# of core, # GHz)

b) How many frames

c) How long an average frame took to render in YOUR machine

 

Then, we compare, internally, these values with our recent hardware and estimate how long the render will take and how much it will approximately cost.

At choosing the slower processor you are telling us that the test frame took 13 min. on your local machine with 2.6 GHz - therefor we will be even faster in rendering your job as in the case that the test frame took 13 min. on a 2.8 GHz machine.

 

So, why don´t we offer the possibility to choose on which CPU you want to render in our farm? Because we always employ the fastest nodes that we have operative on your render job and as hardware changes so fast we avoid to change the configuration of our calculator any time we integrate new hardware.

We understand that the function is quite tedious but it is kind of a standard.

If you have troubles to figure out how the values are calculated we recommend you (at any renderfarm) to send an email with the following data: a) Your CPU specs b) Nº of frames to render and c) average render time/frame

and solicitate a cost estimation.

Our email: info@renderflow.com

 

P.S.: We are sorry if we did not respond your email. To avoid these problems we integrated a ticketing system.