To All AMD/Intel users....Conclusion...opti wins for now

[timmatron]

The Clock Gen utility is great! By using this, I easily overclocked my 3.06 cpus to about 3.45 each and took my render time from 14:29 to 12:44

Thats nothing compared 4 minutes but I'm not very smart when it comes to all the fsb & agp settings etc, so I will have to do some more research to figure out how I can get even faster times without crashing the scene.

[reza]

Just to share some intresting info with you guys....

Intel Xeon 533(1mb level 3 cache) is actually faster than Xeon 800(1 mb level 2)...this is a fact. so if youre buying Xeon consider this.....
same spect motherboard from intel...se7525gp2(800) and intel..se7505vb2...both with 2gb ram....266(533) and 333(800) with same raptor sata hdd

time diffrence is about 1 minute.

facts not fiction.

[jbond04]

Reza, there are actually quite a few differences at the microarchitectural level between the 533MHz Xeons and the 800MHz Xeons. Basically, at clock speeds of 3.2GHz and below, the 533MHz Xeons will perform better in situations where memory bandwidth isn't stressed, because they have a higher IPC (instructions per clock) than the 800MHz Xeons. If you go to Anandtech.com, read their review of the Pentium 4 "Prescott". They do an excellent job of detailing the advantages and disadvantages of the new processor core. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=1956

All of the 800MHz Xeons are based off of this Prescott core, which is not always faster than the older "Northwood" core (the one the 533MHz Xeons are based off of). Quite a bit of research is required by the user to determine which core is best for them.

On another note, I think it would be interesting if we could get Vlado to post his thoughts regarding the potential performance increase a 64bit processor would bring Vray. Vlado, any comment... ?

[reza]

Yeah...i work with the University here and we get to test systems that is available in market for our client...and result have shown that the older Xeon are far superiour due to the cache structure.
the test was done on similar clock speed which is 3.06 and 3.0
Apart from the usual benchmark...we do rendering on max...simply open a file and hit render. and like i said earlier....the older is faster by 1 minute plus...

[Robert]

Just an example out of a current project (lot of blurry raytracing!):

Dual AMD 2.8 Ghz, 533 FSB: 43m:55s
Dual Xeon 3.0 Ghz, 1Ghz FSB: 31m:39s
Dual Xeon 2.8 Ghz, 800 FSB: 33m:49s

HT is really a winner on XEONs with lot of Raytracing.

PS: I don't really know if the FSB is fully 1 GHz, but it's writen in the Spec.

regards,

robert

[vergefio]

Asus pc-dl rev 1.05 with ddram voltmod, viomod and socketmod

Vergefio, I have the PC-DL also, but still not sure where to get started as far as overclocking. Can you point me in the right direction - a website that says how to do it?

Thanks
Tim

Sorry for delay guys, but i was away...

I made a socketmod miniguide here:
http://www.datamine.tk/overclocking/...d_pictures.htm

You can give more juice to your xeon following this picture (from default to 1,6v)... but you need to cooler more your baby.

I perfomed the ddram voltmod you can read here:
http://www.datamine.tk/overclocking/..._vdimm_mod.htm

This is a MUST if you want to raise up your fsb and it's solderless... I was the first in the world to do this, you can see my video here (i soldered):
http://www.datamine.tk/downloads/vdimm_mod.wmv

In this way you can give from 2,6v to 4v to your mem.

Would be other mod... but are only for high soldering skills... if you want to know more, you can go here:

http://www.datamine.tk

and here:

http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.ph...threadid=40755

Hope this help!!

[timmatron]

Wow, so how much performance increase could I expect if I did the socketmod only? Say if I go from 1.525 to 1.575? That looks pretty easy to me but the voltmod looks a little out of my league.

Right now pretty much the max I can get out of bios overclocking is 155x23 = 3.56ghz & still have it stable when rendering. (3.06 533bus)

I decided not to use clock gen afterall & just stick with bios overclock since clock gen was sometimes not predictable.

[dbuchhofer]

guys keep in mind before you get too hardcore with the overclocking.. it makes a difference in render speeds yes, but it also makes a difference in HEAT production...

the hotter the computer runs, the lower the life expectancy is.. and the noisier you need to have the cooling to be able to keep the machine cool.

i know you all spend a lot of money on these machines.. and its nice to keep that investment for some time in my opinion...

SO! if you do it... research it first.. well.

[Dynedain]

Dont forget, with the above times using dual opterons, vray 1.45.7 was being used, whereas the scene was created on Vray 1.09.3.

Bringing scenes in from 1.09.3 to 1.45.7 typically produces a very large speed drop when compared to recreating that scene in 1.45.7 from scratch because of certain settings that don't transfer over.

The super-fast Xeon benchmarks were done with 1.09.3, so I don't think its a valid comparison yet.

[timmatron]

Well I got my time down to 12:22 using version 1.45.7 so that is a valid comparison. That was with overclocking up to about 3.56ghz.

I'm not so worried about cooling yet since I decided to not use the stock fans/sinks & went with these huge Coolermasters. They are designed not to use fans at all, but I noticed I wasn't getting enough air through them so I strapped a couple of fans to the sides. Really does a great job with hardly any noise. The coolers are $40 a piece but very much worth it to me.



p.s. Sorry for getting so far off topic...

[THINKTANK]

I've got a:

Opteron 250 DUAL (there both running at 2.4ghz)
6 gig DDR 400mhz
x800 ati gfx card.

I'm gonna render the test tonight and beat the hell out of any Intel scum (I actuall do hate microsof t) :P

Question tho, and I'm sure its been said before, but, I want to install 64bit windows, but will 3d max run or not? if so will it just benifit with more memory untill a better version comes out....

thanks

[Dynedain]

'm gonna render the test tonight and beat the hell out of any Intel scum icon_biggrin.gif (I actuall do hate microsof t) icon_razz.gif

Intel != Microsoft

Yes, 3dsmax7 and vray both work on WinXP64...I haven't encountered anything other than drivers and my anti-virus software yet that does not work on WinXP..

[THINKTANK]

Dual Opteron 250's
6 gig RAM 400MHZ

Render Time: 12m 53.4s

take that Dual 3.2 Xeon!

[reza]

thinktank....is it possible for you to post your rendered image with the time stamp below...this will convince them better...

[timmatron]

I don't need to see a frame stamp to believe. Thats a great time, but still about 30 seconds slower than what I am getting with my 3.06's.

Although I bet if you tried overclocking your opterons you could get some very impressive render times!