Athlon 64 or Pentium 4 HT ? this is the problem...

[Comanche77]

Hello!

I've a technical question:

For Vray's rendering process what's the better system?

Pentium 4 HT 3.0 Ghz, 2GB ram

OR

AMD Athlon64 3000, 2GB Ram

Vray has some optimization for the core of Pentium 4 (Hyper Threading & pipeline of 21 states & core speed fast)?

And Athlon64 3000? The core speed is "only" 2 Ghz but pipeline of 12 states (much short than Pentium) can improve performances?


Your opinion?

Should be interesting to see benchmarks for 2 systems

Thanks!

Comanche

[davidaleon]

Pentium 4 by a knock out. VRay hates Athlon and Opteron. There are a bunch of benchmarks that expose this fact. I posted them awhile back. If you trace my scant few posts you will see the benchmarks. Vlado commented on those. Basically, there is no point in throwing the compiler switches for Opteron or Athlon when 3ds Max itself is hyper-optimized for Pentium 4 and XEON. This would like ice-skating uphill.

[Robert]

We notice little difference between Atlon and Xeons.
HyperT. speed up rendering by 7% but slow down workspeed as most functions a only single CPU related. So, you get down till 25% speed.

Xeons are the best performing CPUs, while Atlons are cheaper. Xeons are also the only ones with Power Managment. Meaning you save money on Energy and your rack don't hear up.

It's your choice, for larger companis I would say take Xeons only.
For startups: Take a mix out of Atlons (Duals) and P4s.

regards,

robert

[egz]

Pentium 4 by a knock out. VRay hates Athlon and Opteron. There are a bunch of benchmarks that expose this fact. I posted them awhile back. If you trace my scant few posts you will see the benchmarks. Vlado commented on those. Basically, there is no point in throwing the compiler switches for Opteron or Athlon when 3ds Max itself is hyper-optimized for Pentium 4 and XEON. This would like ice-skating uphill.

You make it sound as if VRay is unusable on Athlons or Opterons
The way I read Vlado's response in the other thread was that you just won't be able to get all the power out of them untill everyting is available in 64 bit (windows, max, VRay) Lots of people render on athlons and have no complaints about the speed.

[cocolas]

Pentium 4 by a knock out. VRay hates Athlon and Opteron. There are a bunch of benchmarks that expose this fact. I posted them awhile back. If you trace my scant few posts you will see the benchmarks. Vlado commented on those. Basically, there is no point in throwing the compiler switches for Opteron or Athlon when 3ds Max itself is hyper-optimized for Pentium 4 and XEON. This would like ice-skating uphill.

You make it sound as if VRay is unusable on Athlons or Opterons
The way I read Vlado's response in the other thread was that you just won't be able to get all the power out of them untill everyting is available in 64 bit (windows, max, VRay) Lots of people render on athlons and have no complaints about the speed.

very true

I've been using athlons for 2 years w/ max/vray and brazil with no problems what so ever!!!.....I'd get an athlon over a pentium any day


paul.

[Geddart]

Hey guys, i'm not that active at the Moment cause i do what's called "Zivildienst" here in Germany

Let me just add that there are some optimizations on Vray working with multiple Threads in the newest build (Memory sharing) so some Limitations on HT Systems should be removed.

Reduced memory usage - all rendering threads share the same dynamic geometry pool (for proxies, displacement, fur, subdivision), thus drastically reducing memory usage on dual and/or hyperthreading machines.

With this thing in mind Pentiums get even more interesting.
However a A64 MultiCpu System would rock here too...
(Collecting Money for such a thing right now... )

[davidaleon]

[Scan down to the VRay benchmark]
http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews...lld19JRD04MjI=

This is the latest benchmark reproducing what Gamepc.com showed us awhile back. I do not mean to say that VRay won't run on Athlon 64. What I mean to say is that performance cannot compare, either on an absolute or relative basis when measured by cost-effectiveness.

[Bolteon]

well basically your wrong...

just like it was put in the end of the article you posted:
"To sum up, small-cache Xeon just got usefully faster, but Opteron still easily holds the lead."

you have to remember that that opteron250 is a whole 1ghz slower then that xeon... and under the dual configuration... the opteron setup is lacking 2ghz worth of processing power... and still the xeon only maintains a slight lead at best...

personally, i can't see the point in xeon outside of need for rack-applications... cause amds do get hot...

what i'm waiting for is a 3.0ghz opteron... so that it can be compared to the intel's on a fair level... (and then show the blistering speed they contain)