Dedicated Vray Render Box

[probe3]

Hello everyone,

I want to build a dedicated Vray render box. Any tips or suggestions are greatly appreciated. I would like to use it for single DR and batched (nonDR) backburner animations.

What are your renderfarm setups like ? Do you prefer Xeon over P4 HT Processors ? I have built about 15 pcs already so I don't mind building from ground up... Or has anyone used any "out of the box ready" systems ?

My budget is $1000 USD. (no monitor needed)

Thanks

[Morbid Angel]

well...for 1k usd you'r not going to get much...at least not the latest ones. I think amd opterons and dual cores are much better then dual xeons. We got here dual xeons 2.8 with 2 gb of ram.

[vlado]

In my tests here, the dual opteron beats dual xeon (with or without HT) almost every time...

Best regards,
Vlado

[davexl23]

In my tests here, the dual opteron beats dual xeon (with or without HT) almost every time...

Best regards,
Vlado

Vlado, can you give us an idea of GHz of the Xeon and the Opteron you tested?

I want to get a sense of how close they are...

[Morbid Angel]

its not so much the Ghz as much as the bus architechture. Im not too deeply knowlageble on this but I think opterons have wider channel streams which allow them to read/write more data faster then dual xeon.

[probe3]

Thanks for the great feedback !

Dual Opterons it is. Do those run on a 400 or 800 bus ?

Any recommendations on memory ?

Looks like I'm up'ing my budget

Thanks again

[DaForce]

i recommend the athlon x2 4400+ cheaper than dual opterons (by far) and actually faster than all of them except for the most expensive dual-core ones.

See here.

[vlado]

Vlado, can you give us an idea of GHz of the Xeon and the Opteron you tested?

The opteron is at 1.533 GHz, and the xeon is about 2.4 GHz.

Best regards,
Vlado

[GALACTUS]

Hey Da Force

Where did you get that bench mark, is there more data at the site like 3Dmark 05 cpu results, or maybe some video encoding benchmarks etc?

Regards

Colin

[DaForce]

Hey Mate,

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2...2/index.x?pg=1

Its has everything except 3dmark

They are a mighty good performer.
There are plenty more reviews floating around, just google and you will find plenty of info.

[paulison]

I was just looking up prices here in Perth Australia and the athlon x2 4400+ is about twice the price of the Pentium D 830 but maybee only about 30% quicker based on that chart for the max scanline renderer. Maybee the prices here are just screwed up, but the Dual core 830 looks good value to me...

its funny (and dissapointing) thats the Xeons are being left in the dust. I use a dual Xeon 2.8 here and its starting to seem really slow after seing that chart!

im guessing result comparisons in scanline should be about what we could expect in vray?

[DaForce]

Similar to the x2 4400 and the x2 4800, the 4800 is basically twice the price of the 4400 and the only difference is 200mhz (2.2ghz vs 2.4ghz). Everything else is identical.
Just amazing.

[twinxel]

I was just looking up prices here in Perth Australia and the athlon x2 4400+ is about twice the price of the Pentium D 830 but maybee only about 30% quicker based on that chart for the max scanline renderer. Maybee the prices here are just screwed up, but the Dual core 830 looks good value to me...

its funny (and dissapointing) thats the Xeons are being left in the dust. I use a dual Xeon 2.8 here and its starting to seem really slow after seing that chart!

im guessing result comparisons in scanline should be about what we could expect in vray?

Well, if you add all the other components like memory, MB, HDD, etc. you can see the difference for the performance is not so high at all...
And if rendertime is critical in your work you should consider an Athlon or a faster processor.

Twinx.