Pentium4/Xeon, Athlon/Opteron SSE2 and vray

[cabfl]

is vray optimized for SSE2 of Pentium4/Xeon?

What configuration is better and faster for vray?

What dual is better?
Dual Xeon
Dual AthlonMP
Dual Opteron

What single is better?
Pentium4 3,2 ghz
AthlonXP 3200+

does takes vray advantage of the L3+L2 Xeon 1.5 mb?
is the Xeon 3.06 Ghz 1.5 mb L2+L3 faster than Xeon 3.06 ghz 512 Kb L2 with vray?

does takes vray advantage of the L3+L2 Pentium4 EE 2.5 mb?
is the Pentium4 EE 3,2 Ghz 2.5 mb L2+L3 faster than Pentium4 3.2ghz 512 Kb L2 with vray?

thanks

[RErender]

I'm sure someone would have said something if "SSE" in the other posts did not include SSE2.

I would vote for the dual Opterons if money is no issue, then Xeons and then MP's..

[nully]

I think tomshardware has most of your answers

regarding L3
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/2003...l_xeon-18.html

3dsm max cpu comparison
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/2003...lon_64-48.html

and

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/2003...pteron-23.html


couldnt find a good athlon mp comparison - but there were some tests based on a vray displacement scene in another topic here

dual athlon mp 2400 10:18

p4 2.6 ht, 1 gig ram xp sp1 = 16:42

athlon xp 2600+, 1 gig ram xp sp1 = 16:30


per box the 2x xeons are fastest - but very expensive, you would be wiser to purchase athlon MP systems imho

[Fermi]

Only way to answer this question is to intensely test all the systems.

Greg Hess did make a great effort in that direction:
http://www.3dluvr.com/content/section/17

Problem is that it is simply imposible to keep it updated, since both software and hardware change everyday.

My personal limited experince:

I've been working for the last year and a half on a Dual AMD MP 2000+ 2 Gb RAM Win 2K SP3.

Friday Got a new toy: Dual Intel Xeon 2,8 Ghz 2Gb RAM Win XP

No time for indeep testing so far, but first impressions:

Rendering several VRay scenes averages as follow:

What Dual AMD 2000+ (1,67 ghz) takes 100 to render
The Dual Xeon 2,8 Ghz take 65.

So it is faster somewhat as expected.

What has surprised me is the much, much, much better performance on the viewports!, no objective testing that I've done, only subjective impression, but may I say that I am impressed with the Xeon perofrmance in the viewports?

Graphic cards are not spectacular in any case:

Dual AMD with Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti 4800 SE
Dual Xeon with Nvidia GeForce FX 5600

As for the Opterons... I'll wait till we live in a 64 bit world, now our worl is only 32. May be they are my next upgrade... who knows.

Fermí

[rgbxyz]

Here's another take on things:

Ace's Server Guide: Dual Xeon, Dual Opteron and Quad Opteron
http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=60000275

Peter