render slaves

[s0real]

sweet! that's a good price!

i've been asked to price up a small farm for work - my boss was like, "the IT guys have got a few old machines lying around, you could probably just use those"

i had to explain to him that a couple of 8 year old PIII's probably wouldn't make much of a difference to productivity!

i think i might borrow your spec and put forward the prices from vantage for a couple of those bad boys...

have you ordered yet? i'd be interested to know how you get on...

cheers!

[SteveC]

sweet! that's a good price!

i've been asked to price up a small farm for work - my boss was like, "the IT guys have got a few old machines lying around, you could probably just use those"

i had to explain to him that a couple of 8 year old PIII's probably wouldn't make much of a difference to productivity!

i think i might borrow your spec and put forward the prices from vantage for a couple of those bad boys...

have you ordered yet? i'd be interested to know how you get on...

cheers!

If you hav'nt oredered yet, I found somewhere cheaper so your in luck, an online store called acmw.co.uk, i got the following spec for £522.00 per machine, including building, vat and delivery.

X2 4.2 Ghz with Nforce mobo
2gig ram
80 Gig HD
CD-DVD rom
Floppy
Gigabit Lan card
Onboard sound and graphics

spoke to a chap called Alan in the trade sales dept, give em a go, tell em a bloke called steve just ordered 4 of the above and you want the same deal

see ya
steve

[PixelJockey]

It turns out the Tyan system I put together was TOO LOUD for my system administrator. It is REALLY LOUD!!!!! I looked up the specs on the (5) 40x40x28mm Sunon cooling fans.

15,000 RMP
24 CFM
55.5 dBA

Five fans running at 55.5 decibles! Ouch! If sound is not a problem I'd highly recommend the configuration. It's a great 1U setup. Since it's been banished from the server room I'm going to return the Tyan barebone part and get a 4U rackmount chasis and a nForce4 mobo. It'll actually be a little cheaper than the Tyan barebone. Although setup time will be longer.

[instinct]

Well...the slaves we recently got sound like a powerplant too...but that´s what you got a server room for, no ?? Safe Powersupply, Autoclimate and get out the noise....

[s0real]

...i got the following spec for £522.00 per machine, including building, vat and delivery.

bloody heck! that's a wicked deal! cheers for the info!

let me know how you get on with them (build quality, noise etc. etc.)

not ordered any yet, but at those prices we can hardly afford not to! (at least that's what i'll tell my boss...)

[arobbert]

Is that for a 4200? Does it include the OS? I can't buy the parts for that in the US.

[arobbert]

You must be talking Pounds and not Euros.

[SteveC]

Hi, yep, that's in pounds and it's for the 4.2ghz. The price does'nt include the OS, I always buy my OS's from ebay, around £60 a go.

steve

[s0real]

hi mate - just wondered if you'd got your boxes yet and if so how are they working out for you?

Cheers.

[SteveC]

hi mate - just wondered if you'd got your boxes yet and if so how are they working out for you?

Cheers.

I got the little beauties and they're running like a dream, i've got them all overclocked by 5% to 2.31Ghz instead of 2.2 and i've had no trouble at all
with them.

The only trouble i did have was with the courier, intercity link, who lost 2 of the machines, so ACMW had to build some new ones for me.

What i have noticed is, correct me if i'm wrong, vray seems to count each core as an individual cpu in the amd's but not in the hyperthreaded xeons, like this morning for example. I set a DR render going and initially i had the following machines assigned to it:

X2 4800 (2 cores) (2 buckets) (1 physical cpu) (vray server)
X2 4200 (2 cores) (2 buckets) (1 physical cpu)
X2 4200 (2 cores) (2 buckets) (1 physical cpu)
X2 4200 (2 cores) (2 buckets) (1 physical cpu)
X2 4200 (2 cores) (2 buckets) (1 physical cpu)
Dual Xeon 3.2 (2 cpu's with hyperthreding) (4 buckets) (2 physical cpu)

Giving a total of 14 buckets, but the last 2 machines to join in the DR was unable render\rendered black (X2 4200's). I kicked the dual xeon from the DR list and everything rendered fine.

So is the vray limit on DR 10 buckets rather than 10 physical cpu's?
hope someone can answer me this.

cheers
steve

[DJ-Studd]

The DR limit per VRay license is 10 machines. Each machine could have quad processors and you'd still be able to use it. IE, 10 x 4 processors = 40 buckets :P

I'd say your problem lies somewhere else.

-- DJ

[harperperkins]

quick note....4200 does NOT mean 4.2 GHz and is misinterpreted a lot. The actual operating freqency of this CPU is 2.2 GHz, but it was still a good buy so you've got every right to feel chuffed!

HTH,
ME

[DaForce]

I live in the belief that after 7 years or whatever its been since AMD have been marketing it that way, that people have actually work that stuff out!

But I am continually suprised

[TRGraphics]

I actually had to stop using my dual 2.8 xeon for DR renderings. The renders were slower if I used the zeon than if I render with just my other 5 amd's. 3 3800's 1 4200, 1 dual dual core 265 opteron. I have a gig network as well. Strange!

Tony

[SteveC]

cheers for the replies chaps, i'll give it another try this morning, see if i can work out whats going on.