Workstations advice. Intel or opteron ??

[csmiles]

Dear All

My company are looking to purchase a couple of worktations for our visualisation department for use rendering architectural visualisations using vray.

My question is can anyone advise a particular workstation, or recommend either intel or opteron chips so that we get maximum performance whilst rendering with vray.

kind regards
chris smiles

[redsky]

Microsoft still have to rewrite some xp code files for the opteron 64 bit chipset.
technology of amd is to quick and ppl have to catch up.
it will take some time.

[cocolas]

I would go with opteron/amd....pentiums/zeons are way overpriced and don't seem to give an edge over amd porcs.....I'm talking for personal exterience......I got a dual athlon at 1.7 ghz at home that still seems to render faster tehn my dual zeon at 2.4 ghz at work......

you can also check out:

www.tomshardware.com

for reviews....

paul.

[finish]

mmm.. the money you will save with amd's will probably be lost when you'll realize you need very good ram (certified, twin..) to get your system stable enough

personnaly i'll not go with amd before they do good 'systems'
good cpu's are not everything

[graphicsgriffin]

Hello my friend, I really don't know much about Opteron processors, but I once went to a site talking about how to choose the best hardware for 3D rendering, if this what you want go to

http://www.zaon.com/company/articles/hardware.php

Actually my hardware experience is limited to the fact that I am a 3D-Artist-at-home and I hadn't used more than one computer at a time, my PC (I call it a mini workstation!) has an Athlon XP 2100+ with 768 MB of memory,and I find it excellent at every aspect of any program out there, and I'm welling to get a new one about one year from now (then I can afford for a new one!) and it will be a dual whatever-AMD-workstation with 2GB of memory.

I'll go for AMD, not because Intel is bad, (Intel's processors are top, AMD's are too), but it's a self-opinion thing maybe,
focus on your RAM too, actually you'll find alot of good information on that site,

Finally I hope you and all of 3D artists get better computers of thier demand, (me included!)

Your's Faithfully
Graphics Griffin

[dbuchhofer]

Actually, one of the best forums for hardware and 3d is over at cgtalk.com's hardware forums...

a quick search through there will put you on the right track..

[mike_kennedy]

The Ram comment is based on the board set your are using and is not entirely accurate.
I have a fairly cheap Dual 2.4 AMD system I use 10 hours a day and it has never ever blue screened on me, ever. It was half the price of a dual Zeon system and renders as fast.
Cheap ram is cheap ram, but AMD systems don't require a fortune for ood ram, just buy brand name if you want less headaches.

[zaki79]

AMD / INTEL ?

I recommend this site

www.xbitlabs.com

they're reliable source of many proffesional hardware tests.

ps. I don't know if they've tested CPUs like zeon yet ...

[snowMAN]

Cocolas you said that you run a 1.7 dual athlon. I was wondering what motherboard you are using for those atlons since they are not meant for a dual chip setup. I have always wanted a dual setup but i dont want to have to work over a huge amount of money for a new system.

[cocolas]

I bought it about a 1 year and a half ago and the mboard is Tyan something w/ MP athlon type procs. I can't remember off the top of my head what the mother board name is .....but when I get home tonight I'll look it up and post it.

When I bought mine it wasn't very expenive (I think it was around 1600 or 1700$ and that included an 80 gig hardreive and 1.5 gigs of DDR ram, plus a large case for future expansion, CD burner, win 2k pro and offcourse the dual 1.7ghz athlons.....)

I bought it from these guys:

http://www.polywell.com/us/index.asp

they are among the top manufacturers as far as reliability ranking(I never had any problems with mine - and believe me I worked it day and night w/ 100% usage out of the processors).
don't know what their prices are now, but when I bought mine they were cheaper and more custumizable then any Boxx, Dell or HP machine out there.....
look thorugh their AMD workstations and see what you can find....


paul.

[J_Bug]

Another option is the Dell outlet. I think they are just returns most of the time. Mine has been fine for 3 years now and before that I had a Micron that was a refurbished system also.

http://www1.us.dell.com/content/prod...=22&l=en&s=dfh

--Jon

[snowMAN]

Thanks for the quick response. I have been wanting a dual proc machine for so long. Maybe now i might get one.

[Da_elf]

im not too sure what finnish was talking about the spending on RAM. that should be one of the key things you want to get the best of. no matter what system your running. My dual AMD 2400+ has 2GB of ECC registered crucial ram and same in my dual Xeon. although only 1gb in the xeon

[Robert]

We bought some new stuff just a view days ago...

So, we use only Xeons (dual or single) as workstations, because they are very fast and have a very good performance.
We buy them from Dell, but we only buy the simpliest configuration, the 2nd processor and RAM (you need registerd Ram too) is bought from somebody else. With this, we save about 20% price (Yes Dell is mad!).

For our Renderfarm, we take DUAL AMD MP proc. only. We have very good exp. with AMD. Our board is a Tyan Tiger 2466, one of these PC comes at a price of 1000,-€ (with 2.8 Gig). System is WinXP.

As far as we did tests, the Xeon was a little faster using HT on Raytracing. But is not really worse the extra money for rendering only, because the price is nearly 50% higher then the AMD.

We did some tests with an Opteron and once with a G5 (with C4D). Both are slower, but maybe it's because there is no 64bit render software at the moment optimized or what ever. But, I think it will take time till we some very fast rendering 64biter. At least 1 year.

Next, you do not need more the 1 Gig Ram for rendering. So, the price for RAM should not be to expensive.

regards,

robert

[moruh]

hi!

i just bought dual xeon 2.8ghz o/c 3.3ghz (standard intel xeon heatsink/fan)with asus pc dl deluxe mainboard (check aus.com), 2 gb crucial ddr 400 un buffered ecc ram and systems take bout 2.05 minute rendering single PAL scene animation in 3d viz 4 (v ray enable) compare p4 3.0c o/c to 3.6ghz, 2gb ram bout 5.47 minute... both systems hyperthreading enable.
Suggested not to go with amd coz it will spoil ur animation eg: amd dun hav Hyperthreading, hot!!, max6/viz utilize intel.

here some xeon spec .

dual xeon 2.8ghz 512cache
asus PC DL deluxe mobos
4 X 512mb ddr 400 crucial
nvidia Quadro FX 500 128mb
8x dvd gigabyte
cooler master aluminium casing
120 maxtor SATA 7200 rpm
win XP profesional

i bought it bout $2400 cpu only