Vray on a Centrino vs P4 Laptop.

[cpnichols]

Hey guys... thinking about getting myself a laptop, but portability is a big factor for me, so I would like to go with the centrino proc. Is there a big hit in Vray when using a Centrino Proc? Anyone test a something like a 2.0ghz Centrino compared to a 3.0ghz p4 in terms of Vray for example?

Chris

[natty]

Well there's going to be a bit hit due to the fact of less power .. Centrino's as you know are built for on the move mobility not work station replacement.
I went for a Dell Inspiron 8500 with 2 gig of ram 16inch wide screen and a 2.8 P4.. its not to heavy but it very nice to travel with and not bad to render with.. But the wide screen is superb for DVD's on the train..

[percydaman]

how much onboard cache does the centrino have?

[cpnichols]

well the cache on it is nice and high... something like 2megs. BUT, I hear that the FPU (floating point) may be low on the centrino which may give it really bad performance with raytracing. I am wondering if someone on this forum has a centrino based laptop that can give me an idea of the performance they are getting with it, and then I can compare that to a normal P4.

[cpnichols]

Well the FPU rumor proved to be false. Check this out! A the 2.0 Centrino proved to be about the same performance as a P4 3.4 XE!!!

This is based on a POV ray test, which a a fairly pure raytracer. So this a "raw" power. Not sure if something like Vray has any special P4 optimization code built into it such as SSE...

Also notice how all the Athlon 64's are kicking ass on the pentiums in this test....

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q1.../index.x?pg=16

[DanielBrew]

I've got a Centrino 1.4 GHz with 512 MB. Just rendered the scene from http://www.chaoticdimension.com/foru...ic.php?t=10391 and got 25 mins 21 secs. I even reinstalled 1.46.10 to make the test accurate.

The result looks slow compared to the dual Xeon etc. but there weren't many single cpu machines in the test.

Dan

[cpnichols]

actually looks about right... I would say it is equivilant to a p4 2.8... and considerign the fact that your centrino is only a 1.4... that is pretty good.

[Fermi]

Hi Chris,

The Centrinos behave really great.

Rendering using VRay (1.09.03r) Laptop Dell Precision M60 with 2.0 Ghz Centrino clearly outperforms a Desktop P4 3,2 Ghz, slighly outperforms a Dual AMD 2000+ but is ouperformed bya a Dual Xeon 2,8 Ghz.

Besides they are absolutely noiseless, + they keep cold (probably both things are realted).

We have 2 laptops around both Centrino, 1,4 and 2,0 Ghz, when possible, and though they were not adquired for that purpose, I plug them to the to the network to have 2 extra render servers for backburning.

If you want I can run what test you point me.

Fermí

[Fermi]

OK, did small testing using a scene I am working on at the moment, rendered form 3dsmax7 with VRay 1.09.03r, sending a single frame via backburner, Irradiance map is calculated, and later the frame rendered with following results:

Laptop Centrino 1,4 Ghz 1Gig of RAM XP pro SP2: 31'10''
Laptop Centrino 2,0 Ghz 1Gig of RAM XP pro SP1: 22'10''
Desktop P4 3,2 Ghz 1 Gig of RAM XP pro SP2: 23'08''
Dual AMD MP 2000+ 2Gig of RAM 2K SP4: 22'23''
Dual Xeon 2,8Ghz. 2Gig of RAM 2K SP4: 16'35''

the dual xeon was running both render server and render manager

Fermí

[cpnichols]

Fermi... thanks for the test... that is really cool. Now if only they would make a dual core Centrino.... hehe

[Syclone1]

Heres also a screen shot of the servers that I have currently rendering and the performance index is quite accurate. In there is a Toshiba P-VI 3.2ghz with 1024mb RAM. And yes there is a reason for the jump in numbers in server names as the missing ones are at another location

The laptop renders great as long as I can keep it cool, but if it gets to hot the CPU starts clocking its self down and after that it will just shut down if it gets to hot and that is quite easy to do as I recently found out. TIP: make sure there is plenty of air space around the intake for the CPU cooling fans as the farther you can get it away from the desktop the better. Mine is sitting about 4" off the desktop on a wire like stand I built and that made a workd of difference in cooling.



-dave

[Da_elf]

i can thear your p3 crying of constant abuse

[Syclone1]

LOL Elf, yea that slave has been working like a dawg

-dave

[mcphep]

SYCLONE, I recently saw a laptop cooling unit in the states that looks really good, i almost bought one for my p4, but didnt!

I will try and find a link for it........

[Syclone1]

SYCLONE, I recently saw a laptop cooling unit in the states that looks really good, i almost bought one for my p4, but didnt!

I will try and find a link for it........

Are you talking about one of these coolers?
http://www.coolermaster.com/index.ph...PNC-U51CoolPad

Ive seen these around but I can accomplish the same for what I need with about $2cnd in lumber and if I need more put an 80mm fan under it

-dave