some thoughts about AMD hardware

[HeDaCoM]

quick question: any recommendation in MP motherboards? thanks. now if you want to read more....

 

Hi, I recently had the opportunity to compare render speeds of two AMD systems. a single Athlon XP 2700, 1 Gb DualDDR-400 CL2, FSB333. And a single Athlon XP 2400, DDR333 CL2.5, FSB266. and there was only 16 seconds of difference in the "underwater scene" standard max benchmark scene. rendering in 5:16 and 5:32... so. my thought... is ... it doesn't matter too much if your motherboard has 266 or 333 or whatever... simply.. any new system rocks

Having seen those systems. now I want to get a new workstation for me... I always had dual systems. so I will get a DUAL MP 2400. and I think it's not very important if the FSB is 266. It will be great. I don't know how is intel hardware.. but is not the worth for the price.(for me) I haven't seen any problems in those AMD with the latest bios updates and drivers for one month. (with windows XP).

 

one question. any recommendation in dual MP motherboards? because I only have expericence with single ones. I mean in drivers updates. and stability etc... becacuse performance I'm quite sure it will be similar.

 

I'll get an AMD while waiting for those DNA computers and quantum computers, millions times more powerful than today computers, are learning to render

 

PD: hey it's has bee a long time i wasn't posting in CGA. greetings back.

[STRAT]

yeah, welcome back Hect, long time no see.

 

i'm usually partial to AMD pc's, but with the state of fast computers these days there aint really much to write home about in speed different between pentiums and AMD's.

 

I've just purchased a dual xeon pc. reason - speed difference? nope, as i say, speed differences are next to nothing, but stability and reliability.

 

My single processing athlon 1900xp would quite often crash due to overheating during beefy renders. pentiums wont do this. im also finding recently that pentiums are more stable with w2k and wxp than AMD chips are.

 

ppl will have their own take on this, but reliability and stability mean more to me these days than raw speeds, which are pretty much similar.

[HeDaCoM]

well. yes in fact what I wanted to say also is that stability in those XP2400 and XP2700 and XP is GREAT. Maybe the XP1900 has another kind of core. Had rendering all night an animation and recorded all the temperatures in a log. and never got more than 54º in the CPU. And is has a Silent 2700 rpm coolermaster, not a very powerful cooler. SO I think I could overclock them but I don't like to do that. by the other way.. I got one of those athlons becase a Pentium 4 1500 I had crashed. it's completely dead. So we have different experiences with amd and intel

 

I was thinking... a bad thing about a dual system would be the noise of another cooler... I'm quite sensitive to the noise. I was wondering if it is the worth installing a liquid cooling solution. anyone has experience with that?

[Greg Hess]

Hed,

 

If its max5, turn SSE on before you render. (Its in the render dialog box)

 

Also try islands.max at 2048x1536 on both machines. You should note a greater difference between the two. Especially since the 2700+ is a higher clock speed. (Just 1 frame, frame 0)

 

Also note that 2600+ MP's are available now.

(2.13 Ghz)

 

The 1900+ is a different core then the 2400+. The newer chips run cooler at higher clockspeed the old cores at lower speeds.

 

Overheating is easily solved. Just invest in a nice heatsink. The best on the market currently, the Thermalright SLK800, can be combined with a medium-low rpm 80mm fan, and still give excellent performance with less noise then the standard p4 hsf's.

 

As for stability between Intel and AMD machines...The Apple's and P4's at work encounter problems more often then the 25+ user athlon machines do. The machine I'm on right now is running a 1600+ XP, and has been on 24/7 for almost 4 months without a single crash. (25+ user base). Its even using a cheap 50 buck ECS motherboard.

 

Of course the P4's lack of stability means a crash every other month . Its just that the athlons have yet to crash...period.

 

[ March 05, 2003, 07:45 AM: Message edited by: Greg Hess ]

[nisus]

Greg, what does the SSE do exactly?

 

tnx

 

nisus

[Greg Hess]

It turns on SSE or streaming simm executions. Basically nitrous for Pentium IV's.

 

Makes a LARGE difference with Pentium IV and Xeon processors. Not so much a difference with AMD proc's, but still shaves off a few % of the render time.

 

Its disabled by default because rendering with SSE on with some machines and not others, can produce artifacts in an animation.

 

On average enabling SSE in Max5 will jump the processor up an entire stepping level. (A 2.53B with SSE on is faster then a 2.66B Pentium IV with it off)

 

http://www.3dluvr.com/content/maxbench.php

 

On the benchmark page, * signify's either Max4.26, or Max5 with the SSE checked on.

 

HT signify's Hyperthreading Enabled on either a P4 HT, or a Xeon system.

 

Vray and Brazil have optimizions like this already built in, and do not require any specific switches.

[AHaidar]

If anyone is interested there is a good explanation of SIMD , or as Intel calls it SSE, on Ars Technica. There is also an article on hyperthreading.

[HeDaCoM]

thanks. As Greg said... turning on SSE only rendered 6 seconds less than with SSE off in a 6 minutes rendering in islands.max at 2048x1536. Maybe SSE is not very well optimized for AMD in MAX. Maybe VRAY is more optimized. I wonder how it will be if max is optimized to use SSE2 and HT also with Intel processors. hmmmmmm I may get a dual xeon.. heh...

[Greg Hess]

1) The MAX5 SSE2 is mainly geared towards intel processors. Although AMD's XP and MP class Cpu's include SSE (which is a part of SSE2) they don't gain the same level performance from enabling it.

 

2) Generally with 3dsmax5's renderer, an Athlon will outperform a P4 at the same PR rating. (A 2400+ XP is faster then a 2.4 P4)

 

3) Enabling HT on a dual xeon under 3dsmax gains a 6%-8% improvement in render speed. This # is much greater on a single HT chip. This is due to serious scaling problems within max's renderer.

 

4) If you move to a 3rd party renderer, like Vray, the P4/Xeon's take the lead again. Vray is exceptionally well coded for Hyperthreading, and you can see upwards of 20-25% performance increases just from enabling it under windows XP. (HT)