NEW Benchmark scene (Max 8 Vray RC3 required)

[gilpo]

Wow, thanks for all the work Geert. I've been meaning to do something like that for a while. That's awesome!

Does anyone out there have any lower-end Woodcrests (5140, 5130) that they could test? I'm debating these vs the 5320 for our farm. Something I've been wondering is how a low ghz per core on a quad-core would compare to a higher ghz per core for a dual-core in real world rendering. Especially considering that there are parts of max/vray that are still single-threaded (displacement, particle systems, etc) so a higher ghz per-core would be more beneficial than more, slower cores on scenes that were heavy in these areas. In theory, anyway.

Am I making any sense?

[meanadam]

Awesome! Thanks.

Looks like dual 5310 is the best way to go currently. Have to trade in 10 of my AMD 4200/400s on 2 of these.

What about memory usage on these bad boys? We are still using 32 bit cause of our dumb max plug-ins. In the past the dual MB splits the ram 1/2 per chip. So you can only get 1.5gb of ram in 32 bit OS? And then with the quad core - you get 750gb per ram per core? Wouldn't this crash out a lot with vray?

[Geertvdp]

Gilpo,
that's a no brainer as the 5130 and the 5310 have the same price.
A 5310 system would be A LOT faster...
Same applies for the 5140 versus the 5320.

For buying a new system, don't even consider the "old" dual core xeons (5100 series) anymore.
the quad core rip them appart, even at lower clock speeds...

[gilicom]

Geertvdp , thanks for the list.
what is the renderfarm value stand for? and how did you calculate it.
Gili

[Geertvdp]

The render farm value attempts to calculate the total cost of a render farm, by including additional costs for each machine you need to achieve a comparable performance to 1 dual Xeon 5355 system, the highest performing xeon system you can buy at the moment.

It assumes that you can buy the rest of the Pc parts, like: case, 2Gb ram, small video card, a hard disk, a motherboard and maybe a cdrom for about €700 (± $950). It also include the additional cost of a 2 cpu socket motherboard (that's what the additional 300 is for)

The formula goes :
(CPU's + additional MB cost (2cpu’s or not?) + PC parts (same for every system) x performance multiplier = renderfarm value

The problem when evaluating render farms is that you need to look at the total price of a system, not just the CPU's as each additional system adds 700 to 1000 euro of additional costs.

To give a typical example :
Buying a P4 3.2ghz cpu is VERY cheap and as a result, your cost/performance on the CPU is very good.
However, to achieve the same performance of 1 xeon 5355 system, you need 9 P4 systems to equal it's performance. This means that compared to the single 5355 system, you need to calculate the additional PC cost 9 times.
It then becomes far less attractive, read even very costly, to buy P4's, because what you win on CPU cost, you'll loose multiple times on buying more HD's, cases, etc...
Although it doesn't make sense to buy 1.25 systems it does allow to level each cpu system to the same level....

The values on themselves are not so important and prone to change when you modify the additional PC cost (from 700 to 1000 or to 600 f.e.)
What is important when calculating your own render farm is that you know the performance multiplier as this is the indication on how many “equivalent systems" you’ll need...

[ene.xis]

shouldnt OS and electrical consumption costs been taken into account when adressing a renderfam value?
it doesn t make sense to compare multiple cpu s vs single cpu s if u don t take this into account!
me thinks...but then again i might be wrong!


Geertvdp: nice tables man!Thanks!

[EricCamper]

Well....Finally got around to doing this.......Sheewww.....
Cant wait to get the new system

Dual 3Ghz
Win XP
3 Gigs---switch
etc etc

10m 2.5s

[meanadam]

Anybody? The RAM split issue? Do the dual machines split the ram across the 2 chips? Do they crash more then?

OR are you sucessfully running at 64bit with 6-8gb of ram?

[flipside]

Dual Xeon 2.8GHz, 3GB ram:




Dual Quad 1.86Ghz, max8:


2m23s


Dual Quad 1.86Ghz, max9 - 64bit:

[zeilveen]

Here we go

After long doubting decided to put my money on this honey:

Dual Xeon Quad core 5320, 1.86 mhz, 4 gb, win 64 bit, max9 64 bit
render in 2:02 minutes, hell of alot better than my dual core laptop (10:04)



btw, the 32 bit version of max was only 6 seconds slower

[flipside]

If you install max9 and vray, 32 bit versions, on a 64 bit ready system, will vray be able to use 4GB ram? Or do you need the 64bit max/vray for that?

[OPEN_RANGE]

dual xeon 2.66
Max 9

Seems like the about the right amount of render time compared to comp systems in this thread. Time for new machine

Thanks for this thread

[jacksc02]

Anybody? The RAM split issue? Do the dual machines split the ram across the 2 chips? Do they crash more then?

OR are you sucessfully running at 64bit with 6-8gb of ram?

we have a 2gb dual quad machine and its noticably slower than the 4gb dual quads

[vlado]

So anyone gotten this under a minute yet?

Best regards,
Vlado

[jacksc02]

that would be an impressive machine to get this under a minute!