About the AMD 2x...

[Giovanni]

The thread was sooo captivating, I had to go to Newegg and configure my own Athlon 2x....

Questions for you guys:

I do not seem able to stay under $1600 US, for the AMD athlon 2x 4800, on a ASUS A8N (no SLI), 2 gig PC3200 ram (rosewill), a Raptor 37Gig, and WinXP PRO, everything else dirt cheap components (case/power/DVD-CD-r combo...)

what U guys spent at Newegg for your AMD 2x?

Since I do not need to "gamer" performances, I was looking up a $50-100 US video card, the only requirement = dual head (DVI/VGA should be fine). Any suggestion?

Also, Hyper Transport is not like Intel HT, right? that is, does not create 2 virtual CPUs out of one....right?
So you would see two buckets in V-ray...

I was wondering if the P4 D dual core with HT would not be a faster machine for what we do...Reviews say it beats the AMD 2x over multitasking processing...What about v-ray 4 buckets agains two?

Anyone with some data?


Thank you,

keep posting, U guys are great, very cool forums, and, boy, do I start to love v-ray...

regards

gio

[Da_elf]

price vs performance you can get a g-force ti 4600 i guess.

[jacksc02]

FYI its an x2

[rpc212]

Hey Gio,

Hyperthreading and Hypertransport are two totally different technologies and are not related.

"Hyper-Threading Technology enables multi-threaded software applications to execute threads in parallel. Hyper-Threading Technology provides thread-level-parallelism (TLP) on each processor resulting in increased utilization of processor execution resources. As a result, resource utilization yields higher processing throughput. Hyper-Threading Technology is a form of simultaneous multi-threading technology (SMT) where multiple threads of software applications can be run simultaneously on one processor. This is achieved by duplicating the architectural state on each processor, while sharing one set of processor execution resources. Hyper-Threading Technology also delivers faster response times for multi-tasking workload environments. By allowing the processor to use on-die resources that would otherwise have been idle, Hyper-Threading Technology provides a performance boost on multi-threading and multi-tasking operations for the Intel NetBurst® microarchitecture."

Above quote off of Intel's website.

Hypertransport is NOT two cpus. Read below:

"HyperTransport technology is a high-speed, low latency, point-to-point link designed to increase the communication speed between integrated circuits in computers, servers, embedded systems, and networking and telecommunications equipment up to 48 times faster than some existing technologies.
HyperTransport technology helps reduce the number of buses in a system, which can reduce system bottlenecks and enable today's faster microprocessors to use system memory more efficiently in high-end multiprocessor systems.
HyperTransport technology is designed to:
Provide significantly more bandwidth than current technologies
Use low-latency responses and low pin counts
Maintain compatibility with legacy PC buses while being extensible to new SNA (Systems Network Architecture) buses.
Appear transparent to operating systems and offer little impact on peripheral drivers.
HyperTransport technology was invented at AMD with contributions from industry partners and is managed and licensed by the HyperTransport Technology Consortium, a Texas non-profit corporation. The full specification and more information about HyperTransport technology can be found at HyperTransport.org."

The above quote is off of AMD's website.

So the AMD x2 is two physical processors that use Hypertransport to increase throughput of the two processors. In Vray you will see two buckets for one AMD x2 processor.

With a Pentium 4 you will see two buckets for one processor. However which technology is better is really up to you and your own research. I think price to performance ratio goes to AMD with the x2 because it is two physical processors and it is relatively cheap in comparison to Intel's offerings. In saying this I am neither a Intel or AMD fan as I own both these companies products. One thing to keep in mind though is that Max is optimized for Intels processors as you should see on your Max box. I think the benchmarks provided on this forum are an invaluable test for all of us looking at different configurations and trying to find what is best for what we all do.

[DaForce]

Giovanni:
hehe its X2 mate heheh
Anyway, for starters dont get the 4800 the performance gain isnt worth the double price tag, just get a 4200 or a 4400.
That should help you get under the $1600 budget

Also at the moment there are no dual core Pentium with HyperThreading. And the current dual core pentiums are not that great anyway.

Dont skimp on the PSU dude, get something decent like an Antec...atleast 450w. You may have problem otherwise.
Also raptors are not that amazing anymore... you can get other drives that are very close to performacne if not better and much large storage sizes. Cheaper too.
Check out www.storagereview.com for more info.

[RErender]

Also at the moment there are no dual core Pentium with HyperThreading.

Actually there has been since the intel dual cores came out it's the Pentium D 840 Extreme, x2's are still faster though.

[Giovanni]

Thank you guys, good info...

The Athlon XP64 x2 is two processors? I tought it was a dual core, just like the P4 D 8XX series...Maybe is just matter of wording

About performances, yes, I saw the tests and the AMD x2 seems to ouperform any pentium...

Also, searching a bit more the P4 dual core HT abled, it seems it is not really available, and the price tag is HUGE....

Gees, still the choices out there are soooo many.....Everytime I need an upgrade, so much to choose from!

And the purchasing strategy too, so much to decide: is it better to invest 2 US grants on a fast machine, knowing I can get 4 off the shelf Costco machines each performing maybe half the speed? (that is, you double the total render power with the same money, and maybe pick up a couple flat panels in the process!)

I know, I know, you are going to destroy this thread in disgust ("off-the-shelves" systems?!?!), but since when I got this $450 eMachines for my wife (Athlon 2200+), and discovered that it is a killer render node, I have always wondered....

Thanks again,

regards

gio

[jow]

the x2 is dual core,just made better than the p4 d's

[DaForce]

Also at the moment there are no dual core Pentium with HyperThreading.

Actually there has been since the intel dual cores came out it's the Pentium D 840 Extreme, x2's are still faster though.

Ahh oops, must not have got that memo

Long live X2 !!

The Athlon XP64 x2 is two processors?

No, dual core just like the Pentium D series. But as jow said the X2 is alot better made

[tricky]

Just built an AMD 4400+ X2 Shuttle based render machine with 2GB ram and it rocks! It did the Cornelltest in 5:47 with no overclocking! Our Dual P4 Xeon 3GHz 2GB ram worstations only rendered in just over 6 minutes!

I think we may be building a new renderfarm!

[DaForce]

Its impressively fast isnt it

My previous time was 5m49s i think, and i did some fixing in the bios... like locking in all the proper voltages...etc.. and go it to 5m40s.
Sure it could have just been that small randomness that you get when rendering with vray, but i prefer to think that my bios tinkering was the cause (not overclocking)

What are temps like in that little suckah?

[tricky]

I'm running the AMD Dashboard app and it seems to be showing a stable 40 degree C even when rendering. However, I don't believe that - even when they aren't doing anything, processors can run much hotter than this!

One things for sure - they are darn quiet - the fans can't even be heard! I think we will have another eight of these on order in the next week - a nice little stack 3x3 - how lovely.

[mike_kennedy]

Just got my new system last week. Not over clocked in the least I scored a 23,000 on the 3d mark bench test.
AMD X2 4400+
GA-K8N Ultra-9
2 gigs of ram
160 gig SATA
80 gig SATA
ATI X800 GT 256 PCI-E
Anatec Sonata 2 case

The case design and the heat pipe make this a really quiet system for the actual power of the system.

I love this new chip... my old 1700 Athalon sounds like a freaking vaccum cleaner and is way slower.....

nice to see the improvemnt AMD has made.

[tricky]

mike - does the 3d Mark test test the whole system (graphics card, hard disk and all) or just the processor/m-board/ram?

I'd be interested to know how fast my new little machine is, but it only has a cheap graphics card and middle-of-the-road hard disk, so it wouldn't be a fair comparison of pure rendering power.

[DaForce]

Assuming he is talking about the 3dmark series 01, 03 and 05.
Then its almost purely a graphics card test. So yours would not fair so well.

Your best bet is to get PCMARK and then get one of us other X2 users to compare results or some other people with different machines.
You could also try one of the benchmark threads and see how your little shuttles compare to its bigger brothers