AMD and INTEL mixed environments

[jacksc02]

Has anyone got a mix of AMDs and Intels in their working environment?
I am interested if there is any difference in rendering outputs between the 2 brands i.e different colours/noise.

[rivoli]

we used to have a few mixed machines some years ago, and didn't have any problem with them. rendering was just fine both with backburner and dr.

[sakana7]

We have mixed processor environment here. No difference at all. Workstations are Intel but render nodes are AMD. We've been able to get more processor cores for the buck with AMD and will go with AMDs for sure in the future.

[vlado]

We've been able to get more processor cores for the buck with AMD

Does that translate to more speed as well? I mean one Intel core (with HT) compared to one AMD core - how do they compare?

Best regards,
Vlado

[jacksc02]

Vlado,
Here in Australia an 8 core AMD chip is $222 and runs @ 4.0 GHZ where an 4 core (4 physical + HT) costs $389 and runs @ 3.2 GHZ
So the AMD is better bang for your buck but it also uses 250% more power than the i7 so there is that extra cost to consider.

[Morbid Angel]

250% ! thats a lot, it must run very hot!

[jacksc02]

Im waiting for Lele to weigh in on this.
I know he is an AMD fanboy

[alexyork]

Vlado,
Here in Australia an 8 core AMD chip is $222 and runs @ 4.0 GHZ where an 4 core (4 physical + HT) costs $389 and runs @ 3.2 GHZ
So the AMD is better bang for your buck but it also uses 250% more power than the i7 so there is that extra cost to consider.

Just so you are aware, core speed and marketing numbers mean absolutely nothing at all when comparing processors for actual real-world render speed. A 4.2ghz AMD CPU is not going to render at the same speed as an Intel 4.2ghz CPU. In all cases Intel will be faster core-for-core. They cost more, but they are always faster for rendering and this is unlikely to change any time soon. Bang for buck AMD are better VFM but you end up needing to buy approx. 1.5 AMD machines per 1 Intel machine for comparible performance, and then the VFM drops massively and you're into extra expense in utility bills etc.

Also, as above, an 8 core AMD is not twice as fast as a 4 core Intel, for the same reason. You basically can't compare these chips on their numbers. You can only compare them on actual real-world rendering performance and Intel trumps AMD every time in this area (sadly!).

So, basically, don't be fooled into thinking that an 8-core 5ghz AMD chip is going to trump a 6-core 4.2ghz Intel chip, because it probably won't.

[sakana7]

I guess when I say more bang for buck with AMD isn't it all about buckets? You are right it is probably too subjective to argue one over the other based purely on GHz (and I should probably benchmark same scene with one of our Intel machines and one AMD) but between the two we get 16 cores (physical + HT) with two Intel Xeon processors per machine but 24 physical cores with the AMDs (2 Opteron processors x12 cores each)...8 more cores per machine.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it true that virtual/HT cores only have a percentage of the output of physical cores and shouldn't be considered equal to physical, therefore the more physical cores available the better? I'm not a fanboy of either one CPU or the other so no agenda, but our calculus here is that if AMD has more cores packed into a processor (physical, not virtual) at the same or better GHz(although prob subjective measurement between the two), the output quality is the same, and we get more buckets working especially as we multiply the number of render nodes, along with being less expensive that this is a reasonable approach? I guess I should also say our bldg pays for electricity so no added cost there.

[vlado]

Well, the only way to verify this is to actually compare the render speeds

But the "more buckets==more speed" notion can get you into trouble when you get to NUMA machines. There are some people recently that get these 4 CPU machines thinking, hey I have 64 buckets now, my renders will fly... but it's more complicated than that.

Best regards,
Vlado

[alexyork]

I guess when I say more bang for buck with AMD isn't it all about buckets? You are right it is probably too subjective to argue one over the other based purely on GHz (and I should probably benchmark same scene with one of our Intel machines and one AMD) but between the two we get 16 cores (physical + HT) with two Intel Xeon processors per machine but 24 physical cores with the AMDs (2 Opteron processors x12 cores each)...8 more cores per machine.

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it true that virtual/HT cores only have a percentage of the output of physical cores and shouldn't be considered equal to physical, therefore the more physical cores available the better? I'm not a fanboy of either one CPU or the other so no agenda, but our calculus here is that if AMD has more cores packed into a processor (physical, not virtual) at the same or better GHz(although prob subjective measurement between the two), the output quality is the same, and we get more buckets working especially as we multiply the number of render nodes, along with being less expensive that this is a reasonable approach? I guess I should also say our bldg pays for electricity so no added cost there.

This is kind of what I was talking about earlier - a 6-core xeon at 3ghz is surely faster than the *same generation* 4-core xeon at 3ghz. But a 6-core xeon is not necessarily faster than a 4-core AMD. And a 6-core Xeon of one generation will not be the same speed as a 6-core Xeon of another generation, even if at the same clock speed. With each generation come many efficiency improvements and other "tweaks" that can enable processors to do their thing better. The race for Ghz and core-count died off a year or two ago - you can see now that both AMD and Intel have all but given up with increasing core speed and core count on their enthusiast and consumer chips - they are concentrating on power use and efficiency. It's a mixture of all sorts of factors

Imagine 2 identical cars with 2 identical engines. They are both able to move at the same speed. But then you use a better, more efficient fuel injection system in one of the cars and it's suddenly able to move even quicker, even though the engine hasn't changed. This is sort of what CPU manufacturers have been doing lately. Keep the engine pretty much the same but find ways to push the info around more efficiently to make the most of it.

So in other words, an 8-core AMD might well not be as fast (in real-world rendering tests) as a 6-core Intel equivalent modern generation CPU, and certainly not faster. AMD processors are always, always slower per-core and in general across the chip for rendering - this is one reason why they are so much cheaper. So, on paper, the numbers mean nothing whatsoever - they are there purely for marketing (because 8 looks faster than 6, right?). And as Vlado says there are also other even more complex factors to take into account as well.

Bottom line - ignore the numbers completely and just look at benchmark scores for real-world comparisons. In all cases, Intel CPUs will be considerably faster and considerably more expensive. You can get probably 85% the performance with an AMD that costs 50% the price (sounds great on paper) but if you NEED the equivalent of 100% performance to match the Intel you will need to purchase additional AMD machines to make up the difference, and then VFM reduces massively. Ignore clock speed, ignore HT, ignore all numbers - you can only compare on cost v attainable performance.

[^Lele^]

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_value_available.html

my FX8350 is undeniably quick, to the point where i don't really feel impaired compared to my 24cores intel i had at work.
To be perfectly honest, the whole system seems a heck of a lot snappier than the intel one.

when i bought this rig, with an asus sabertooth military-grade (seriously. it's certified.) mobo, and 32gb of ddr1600 Crucial Ram, i spent ~500 euros.
That was six months ago.
Looking at anything remotely close to the same performance, but Intel, would have set me back two and half times the amount, at the VERY least (edit: it's not just the CPU price, ofc,as memory and mobo for some obscure reason follow suit.).

Re-EDIT: the 4ghz single core speed DOES make a difference for the usual single-threaded operations in max, for instance. where the operations aren't so heavy (turbosmooth, for one) computationally, but the tick-tock of the cpu makes quite a difference. The 24 cores (dual-6cores+ht) was doggedly slow on the interaction, and this far, i am seriously not convinced the setup is OVERALL better (maybe for rendernodes. although 12 to 24 cores was never twice the speed on the farm either, and we did get some oddities across the production, specific to the many-cores.)

[^Lele^]

Bottom line - ignore the numbers completely and just look at benchmark scores for real-world comparisons. In all cases, Intel CPUs will be considerably faster and considerably more expensive. You can get probably 85% the performance with an AMD that costs 50% the price (sounds great on paper) but if you NEED the equivalent of 100% performance to match the Intel you will need to purchase additional AMD machines to make up the difference, and then VFM reduces massively. Ignore clock speed, ignore HT, ignore all numbers - you can only compare on cost v attainable performance.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ck,3407-8.html

"Using the average power consumption and average performance of all four configurations as the average for our efficiency chart, AMD's FX-8350 generates around two-thirds as much performance per watt compared to Intel's Core i7-3770K. If you’d like to run these calculations yourself, please note that we zeroed-out the average by subtracting one (100%) from the charted values."

66% more power per watt is not quite something one keen on saving dosh would miss out on, and combined with the actual hardware prices, it could well be surmised that an AMD farm is hugely more performing for the same price as an intel one.
AMD just doesn't spend nearly as much money as Intel does to market stuff, and it's clearly at a huge disadvantage outside of EMEA (which i believe, but don't quote me on it, it's still AMD's biggest market).