Dual Opteron 280 rendernodes or wait a bit?

[tricky]

We are on the verge of purchasing a new renderfarm comprised of Dual Opteron 280 2.4GHz.

Is it worth waiting at all - ie is there anything better 'just around the corner' or should we just take the plunge? I know that new things are always coming out, but I'm starting to loose track of processors! It used to be so simple

[instinct]

it's too damn crazy those days...fully agree...once you got AMD rigs sorted roughly, intel announces....you decide to wait...it's out...you wait for benchies...get rigs sorted...AMD announces...We decided to simply go for it recently and got 10 Dual Opteron 275...and am pretty happy as rendertimes are HALF compared to the current dual xeon 2.8 Workstations...

I'd say go for it...as AMD will move again soon, and you'll never get slaves if you wait for the next big kahuna :P

Thorsten

[tricky]

Yep - a proverbial nightmare. Our renderfarm is made up of X2 (4400?) dual core processors at the moment. Would you think the dual opterons are significantly quicker?

[DaForce]

dual opterons would be about twice as quick.. as they are basically 2 X2's

Assuming you get the 275 or 285's

But yeah should be about twice as quick as you have ... twice as many cpu's

[tricky]

But would you say that the 275s (or 280s) are much quicker than an X2 when compared 1 on 1, or would one X2 processor be very similar to one 275 processor?

I imagine the 275 would be quicker as it is a more up-to-date chip, but is it a big jump in speed? Akin to going from a Pentium 1 ptrocessor to a Pentium 3 processor (remember those?)?

[DaForce]

the difference between the X2 and the 275 , is basically none.. mhz vs mhz they are practivcally identical. If anything the opteraon is a little behind.

If you check the benchmark thread.. you will see for instance my X2 doing around 5m40s (from memory) and i think the dual 275's are in the 3's so certainly not half.

So getting a swag of Shuttle X2 nodes would be better value for money i would think and overall faster. But takes up more space more noise and more power.

Pentium 1 to Pentium 3 was totally different ball game.. completely diferent design etc..etc..etc..

the X2 and the opteron are VERY similar.

[instinct]

the noise depends...we have our farm as 1Unit rackslaves...they are pretty nastily loud lol...if i find the time i'll record a bit for you lol

Thorsten

[DaForce]

hahaha yeah... well the 1RU units will usually be rather noisy.

We have a DELL 1RU unit at work.. and has a bank of 5 across and 2 or 3 deep fan setup, and when that puppy turns on... WOW its so loud.

I was basically getting at that the more machines you have it will generally be louder.

Get us a sound clip.. i could do with a laugh