new rendering machine considerations

[Gijs]

Hi,

just saw this (though it is a render test with maxwell). Looks interesting
http://www.maxwellrender.it/files/te...it2_11_936.jpg

In this case the dual opterons seem to disappoint in comparison with the dualcore athlons. I guess those dual athlons seem to be the best in terms of price performance ratio.

I was thinking about going for the dualcore dual opteron, but it seems you have lot's of expensive components that go with it: more expensive motherbord, registered ram, maybe better cooling, what do you think?

Another question, what graphics card would you recommend? Most important factor being the slow viewport of max...

[undamaged]

hey all,
long time lurker 1st time poster
i just got a system ordered 2day...
cpu: amd 4600(2x)
mobo: asus a8n32-sli delux
power supply: antec phantom 500 silent power supply
case: antec p180 advanced super mid tower
OS hd: wd raptor 36.7gb 10k serial ata
storage hd: wd 160 gb serial ata
ram: ocz 2gb pc3200 performance series dual channel ddr (x2=4gb)

not sure on the video card....high end gamer card or a low mid prof 3d card?
from what ive read, game cards give u great fps (useless in 3d) but u cant push high poly scenes in ur 3d program....thats about all i know of.
any1 know of any other pros/cons?

[pshupe68]

Similar machine here - upgraded because of puter failure.

AMD X2 dual core Athlon 4600
4 Gig DDR 400 Ram
2 x 72 Gig WD Raptor 10,000rpm
nVIDIA 1300 video
Win XP Pro 64 bit

Loving it so far but still waiting for auth code to run my vray.

I did quite a bit of research and the Athlons seem to be the best bang for the buck. Close to the dual Opterons for benchmarks but a couple 1000 less money.

Regards Peter.

[Gijs]

O.K. what about this:

MSI K8N Master2-FAR, nForce4 Pro2200
AMD Opteron 270, 2.0GHz, 2way (2x)
Corsair PC3200 DDR-DIMM 1024MB ECC REG (4x)
NEC DVD±RW brander, ND-3550A, 16x
Cooler Master Wave Master Black
Fortron/Source PSU ATX 550W Bulk
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB SATA
Asus GeForce 6600GT 256MB GDDR3 Silencer (would actualy want a quadro fx 1400, but couldn't find one at komplett)
Win XP Pro x64 OEM

total: euro 3377,-

[jujubee]

Hey guys. And welcome undamaged to the forum. Hope to see you join the discussion.

@Undamaged: if you're spending that kind of money, minds as well sprint for a RAID striping solution... Be much faster.

@Gijs: Excellent specs. I was thinking along those lines as well. How much will that run you about $3,500?

@Gijs & Undamaged. Currently, one of the best video cards out there is the Nvidia 7800GT gaming card - which I've seen for about $275 US. Don't bother with the GTX version. It has significant benchmark gains over the 6600 and the 6800 series.

[DaForce]

Yeah i have to aggree dont bother with the GTX (even tho i have one) as the GT is damn close in terms of performance and alot cheaper

The advantage of getting on of the 6800 cards is that you can softmod them into a Quadro equivilent very easily. Whereas you cant do this with the 7800 series of cards.

Also great choice on the raptors for your OS drives guys.. good choice.. they may be a little noisier than a standard drive but the performance is all there.. been running one myself in my x2 system for about 6months now. Although ideally i would stay away from the 36gb version as they are a little noisier than the 74gb version... but its not a huge difference.

Enjoy your new machines and dont forget to isntall the AMD cpu driver from there website

Oh and Gijs, im not sure about your PSU, i would certainly invest in a more known brand such as enermax, antec..etc..etc. oh and get yourself a 74gb raptor for your boot/os drive

[jujubee]

Ive got a softmodded 6800 - but mind you that only works on the AGP version. IF youve got a PCI Express board youre out of luck...

[DaForce]

oh.. really.. didnt know that.. well then you out of luck.. as 95% of nforce4 boards are PCI Express only. So yeah 7800GT's are great

[glyph]

what gives the most noticeable improvement?
striped raid or a raptor OS drive?

Gijs - is that Komplett's X2 bundle with your 'expert' upgrades?!
(i think Anandtech rates Fortron Source as a good psu)

-edit: cant be the Komplett X2 bundle.. its an Opteron, duh

[DaForce]

probabaly striped raid, but its more of a pain in the ass to setup.
And seeing as your using 2 drives it then halfs you mean time. meaing something is more likely to go wrong.. bloody unlikely tho. Although a raptor has a 5 year warranty which is pretty good.
The "safest" bet would be the raptor.. hands down. The fastest would be the raid especially if you use 2 raptors. LOL

Personally i would just go with the raptor for the boot drive.. having a raid although it is technically faster wouldnt be a huge improvement in OS load times etc..etc.. I would use that more for a data server or video editing drive if that what you needed.
My mate has a raid 0 drive setup and when comparing my Battlefield 2 load times compared to his they are the same... if not quicker.
But when copying files around HDD's his is quicker.. but not by HEAPS.

[jujubee]

Striped RAID is faster and quieter. It's pretty easy to setup - I've done it twice. You will need identical hard drives (same manufacturer and make.) Once you connected everything (just like you normally would), windows install will ask you to install andy 3rd party device drivers and this is where you hit F6 (yes) and put in the floppy with the RAID drivers on it.

Then, it will ask for generally three methods:

1) Striped - two disks that right at the same time - 7400 RPM + 7400 RPM - or you could do dual raptors.

2) Redundancy for automatic backup. Again 2 drives. No speed increase.

3) Striped plus Redundancy. 4 drives total.

Then windows installs as normal.

There's also several new methods which work in parity such as RAID 4 or 5. The structure is very similar to PAR files for RARs. I haven't looked into these methods yet and not sure how many drives it requires - perhaps only three.

#1 can be bad tho - if one drive goes dead than the other is useless which has happened to me. You basically double your chance of drive failure. This is another example of where parity or the other methods would work instead.

[DaForce]

yep so as i said.. faster but not as long lasting (potentially)

Raid 5 is great.. if i went for raid it would be raid 5.

[Da_elf]

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[DaForce]