Dual xeon X Network rendering

[Igor]

I`ve been read a lot about render farm and network rendering and a question come up to me, wich one is faster, a single dual xeon 2.4 machine or render farm with 4 pentium III 1ghz ?

(consider still images using max5 w/ vray, brazil or fR stage-1)

It is sims like a stupid question, but since i´m going to buy a new machine next year i am began to consider another options instead spending 3k in new one I could buy some olds pentium III to do the job. Is it a good choice?

Forgive me for my bad english.

[blaz]

Hi,

It happened to me mid of this year, i bought 2 dual 2.8 xeon with 2G ram, for my rendering server.

but afterthat I saw article about purecard, and cpst about 1 machine of mine, and it looks good from the article, I have a bit of regret of buying this 2 new server, cause i look at ther review of this card, it done well in rendering.

and work very fast.

you can try search the forum about this pure card and maybe can consider about it.

 

Cheers,

[Igor]

Hi Blaz, Thanxs for the answer, I already knew about PURE card but i´m looking for less expensive solution, for exemple an used old pentium III 1ghz w/ 512mb in Brazil cost between US$150-250 a PURE card according ART Online store costs 1899 pounds or US$ 3651 with this amount of money a could buy 12 of these machines. The question remains does 4 of these machines rendering in network are faster them a dual xeon or a purecard ?

 

Thanxs.

[mbr]

I don't know about your main question, but I can tell you that you probably will have problems with 512mb ram in those PIIIs.

 

I have a dual xeon 2.2 with 768 mb ram and I ran into a wall with fR Stage 1 (pretty simple scene, it just eats up the ram). There is a way to get around it, but it slows things down. I just bought a gig on ebay last night (some great deals).

I'd think that the dual would be better as fR and Max are optimized for the dual usage. The distributed rendering (DR) in fR Stage 1 would be something to look at.

 

Just a purely naive hunch, but I'd guess the more current hardware would be the best bet.

 

Look at Dell's refurbished worstations. I bought mine that way and it was perfectly new and I saved about 40%. They usually have the most current processors, too. It fluctuates though, both in price and inventory, so keep an eye on them.

[Igor]

Hi mbr, I thing you are a right. Maybe the solution is to buy a dual system. I already looked at Dell and they do have good deals, but i have do import the machine to Brazil and there is a 60% tax over the recipt value that i have to pay here. But thanks for tip.

[Greg Hess]

If you got the xeon's, but bumped them up to 2.6B's or 2.8B's...they'd definitely best the quad ghz p3 system's.

 

Then of course, you can always come up with a situation where the networked ghz p3's would win.

 

But generally the P4's would best the older technology...especially considering you probably don't consistently netrender to the other machines.