Best render node...again!!

[RSF]

Hello.
I'm in the process of building a small render farm...10 nodes.
I've seen through out this forum that AMD 4400 x2 is one of the best choices (regarding speed/price ratio of course)
I was very disapointed to see that 2 opteron 242 or 245 don't perform better than the dual core 4400.
Putting two processor in a mechine has some advantages regarding software licenses and space but...is it ever worth it??

I'm trying to get at least 10 times the power of my 4400 in this render farm.
Any recomendation for this farm? Of course...the value shoudn't be heigher than 10x4400.

Thanks

[efx2004]

I definitely would go to X2 4400+ for a small render farm....
I’ve just got a new X2. It is faster than my dual xeon 3Ghz with 1mb l2 cache.
For that price X2’s would be the first choice.

[DaForce]

there is no way that 2 single core opterons of same or lower mhz will perform better.. im not sure why you think they would.

The X2 is a great chip at a great price. and has an advantage of dual cpu machines in that the X2 is able to communicate between the 2 cores VERY efficiently meaning you get very close to double the rendering speed. Where as some dual cpu systems the 2nd cpu is only beterrn 70-90% effective.

[cyrille32]

I would go as well for the AMD dual core,
Im very happy with the two 3800x2 I bought,
They're faster than my dual Xeons 3gigs (between 20 and 30% without overclocking), cheaper, and WAY quieter.

[arobbert]

It's a great time to buy X2's they just came down in price.
I just baught 6 X2 4200's.

I got 6 4200's for only $650 more than the cost of 5 440's (about half the price of a machine). It seemed to me like I would get more rendering power out of an addtional 4200 node then the slight difference in speed between the two processors.

[apexmotion]

arobbert, did you build these yourself? What is the configuration/vendor? I'm looking at getting a few boxes myself.

[arobbert]

arobbert, did you build these yourself? What is the configuration/vendor? I'm looking at getting a few boxes myself.

I bought them assembled from a place in Atlanta called Monarch. You can configure the machines yourself and they have a great selection of parts. Go to the custom machines. The desktops as opposed to workstations have lower build and warranty fees (a little trick I discovered). You can get pretty much the same parts. The only limitations I noticed are on dual boards and higher end video cards. If you need those items you will want to go to the workstations. They cost a little more.

It's hard to get them on the phone but they have a realtime chat thing you can get to from the configurator. It works real well and when your done you can e-mail yourself a transcript. They also do bare bones kits with motherboard and CPU installed in a case and tested. I ordered these Friday so I'm still waiting. I think "Percydaman" on this forum has done business with them as well.

[RErender]

I have bought from Monarch in the past, no problems and great prices.

[gilicom]

arobbert can you please post here those nodes configuration and prices for each part of that node.
I'm in Israel and we don't have monarch here so i would like to get something around that price.
Thank you
gili

[arobbert]

80311 Monarch Furia Custom Desktop (PCI-E) build fee------------$75.00
Case: 100988 -PS 350W -Antec SLK1650B ATX 2.01 w 120 mm fan-----$63.65
Case Fan: 100395 - 80mm - Enermax UC-8ABS-S 80mm Case Fan-------$6.99
Mboard: 110645 - Asus A8N-VM nForce410 Audio/LAN/PCI-E/SAT------$80.00
Processor: 120233 - AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Dual-Core 512K-------$349.75
Thermal Grease: 800018 - Shin-Etsu G675 Thermal Grease----------$14.99
Heat Sink Fan:130956-Thermaltake A1770 AMD Opteron/64 Heatsink--$12.65
Memory: 140226 - DDR (400) 3200 - 2 GB (2 pcs 1GB) OCZ Dual-----$249.88
Hard Drive: 150935 -SATA-Western Digital (WD800JD) 80 GB/72-----$57.71
O S: 210111 - Microsoft Windows XP Professional-----------------$155.72
Warranty: 800009 - Standard Tech Support, 3 Year----------------$79.00
Shipping 3 day-------------------------------------------------$86.8
total-----------------------------------------------------------$1232.14

[ShaunDon]

We're looking to build a proper rackmountable render farm and at this point we're quoting out Dual Opteron 270s w/ 4gb RAM. A quad-core node like that is gonna run $4k through Boxx or the equivalent, but the saved space and power consumed is awesome.

Shaun

[muzzy]

O S: 210111 - Microsoft Windows XP Professional-----------------$155.72

If it is rendernode go with windows x64 , better handling memory and stability

[arobbert]

We're looking to build a proper rackmountable render farm and at this point we're quoting out Dual Opteron 270s w/ 4gb RAM. A quad-core node like that is gonna run $4k through Boxx or the equivalent, but the saved space and power consumed is awesome.

Shaun

I looked at dual 270's (due to drop in price soon) but I think you get more power for the money out of the 4200's. For less than $4000 you can get 3 4200's with a total of 6 gig ram. I think that would significantly out perform 2 270's mounted on a single board sharing 4 gig ram and resources. The rack mount thing is cool but I couldn't justify the additional cost (one man operation). I own two Boxx workstations that have been great though.

I posted this question X2 or dual Opteron on the Autodesk hardware forum and got an informative response that includes power consumption.

To get an idea of the performance metrics of each CPU, we can base this using
the 3ds max 7.0 scores as reported by GamePC:
http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_cont...d=a64x2&page=7
http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_cont...eron275&page=7

Benchmark scores:
1 x X2 4200: 161
2 x Opteron 275: 144
(lower times are better)

Given this, we can see that a dual Opteron 275 system kinda spanks the single X2
in rendering tasks, being around 10% faster. No surprise, as you are pitting 4
CPUs of computing horsepower against 2, and 3ds max/VIZ is one of the few apps
that can actually use these extra CPUs. But is that 10% enough to make your
rendering farm better? Especially since there seems to be a point of diminshing
returns after 2 CPUs in max.

At the hardware level, the Opterons give you 3 boxes to deal with instead of 5.
That means a savings by not having to pay for 2 extra systems, not to mention
lower shipping costs. This savings is somewhat offset by the added cost of each
dual Opteron system, however. We can probably call the price a draw. Network
connections are essentially free and not part of the cost issue.

In terms of power consumption, GamePC's benchmarks show the Opteron systems
consume 282 Watts under full load, while the X2 only consumes 181 Watts. A
3-system Opteron farm is 846 Watts, while the 5-system X2 farm is 905 Watts.
Thus, the Opteron farm will cost about 7% less to operate, which is also about a
wash.

But to make a final determination we must compare IF the additional 2 X2 systems
make your distributed rendering system more efficient and make up for the slower
rendering times against fewer Opterons.

Let's assume a single X2 will render a scene in 10 hours. Given the benchmarks
above, one dual-CPU Opteron system will render the same scene based on the
equation

[(10 / 161) = (x / 144)]

Solving for X = 8.94 hours for the Opteron system.

Assuming the additional systems in the rendering farm divide a task equally, 5
X2 systems would render the scene in only 2 hours. However, 3 Opteron system
would render the scene in 8.94 / 3 = 2.98 hours. 4 Opteron systems would finish
in 2.23 hours. It would take 5 Opteron systems to see any time savings!

Conclusions:

The marginally faster rendering times provided by the Opteron do not scale
against using more but slower X2 systems in this scenario. At this level it
takes the same number of Opterons to beat the same number of X2 systems.

Go with the 5 X2 systems.

[DaForce]

those scores dont seem 100% correct.

Check out the scores of the opterons in the benchmark thread their render times are far quicker. atleast half the time of the x2's

[arobbert]

I agree they seem a little off but they're just scan line. I also notice the results from Mental Ray were similar. Looking at the Vray results in the infamous benchmark posts the 4200's average about 5.5 min. and the 275's average about 3 min. About 50 percent which I would expect considering the cost difference between the processors. I know that there were better results for both but I'm talking rough average.

3 dual Opteron 275's with 4 gig ram each will be about 8170.26 (in a few weeks when AMD drops the price). For 8017.38 I can have 7 X2 4200's which I think (hope since this is what I did) would out perform 3 dual Opterons in a render farm. Two X2 4200's are very close to the same power as a dual 275's. In the above scenario you would have and additional processor for the same money.