NetRender vs. multi-machine

[Frosty]

Heres the link to the CB database:

http://www.3dfluff.com/mash/cbtop.php

 

When you render with Cinema ona dual CPU AMD, your scene splits in two as each CPU tackles a portion - the same thing happens on a P4 with HT. When using a Dual Xeon system, your scene will split into 4 as each thread renders a part.

 

Cinema Responds really well to Hyper Threading and even better to Dual or Quad CPUs with HT. The G5 is quickly catching up in the speed race, but the Xeon is currently the King. I have seen very few CineBenches for Opterons. I'm almost certain my new worksation will be a Dual Xeon.

 

Workstations are a different beast from Render Nodes tho. For me, it all boils down to which can render the fastest for the least amount of money. When I built my farm, factoring HDs, cases, mobo's, and everything, single CPU 2.6GHZ P4s with HT offered the most. Prices have changed radically, your milage will vary today. I would use the Cinebench DataBase as a guide to figure out what will work best for your situation.

[alanmac]

Whilst i'm not a techie I was saying how great it would be to see a Xeon rendering with four lines like a venetian blind on another list for Vectorworks users, which of course has a plug in for direct export to C4D.

 

This brought the following response from Kai Pedersen. If you have not heard of him, he is quite active in Cinema circles and has a book coming out on Cinema so I feel he has knowledge on the subject.

 

Quote "

 

I will point out that first of all this is only the case if HT is turned on

in bios, many HT capable systems with P4 HT processors aren't actually set

like that by default.

 

Second, Cinema thread lines aren't really an accurate measure of how many

processing threads you actually have, its set to optimal, which means even

on a quad processing system you may only get three render threads if that¹s

the optimal rendering cinema sees fit. Often with dualprocessing you will

only see a single thread especially for simpler faster scenes where a second

one just isn't needed.

 

Also you can set the render threads manually in cinema 4D often even on an

old single athlon having two render threads can see minute differences in

speed.

 

Also it depends on what operating system you have, older ones won't

recognize the second thread in a hyperthreading processor.

 

Lastly, I believe cinema only supports up to eight in a single system, at

least it only supports eight rendering threads so the other 6 aren't helping

any there. Maybe its possible with the optimal setting"

 

I'm not knowledgable enough to comment on this but I thought it may be of use in this thread.

 

Alan