I thougt I might skip the dualie this time and go for a uni AMD shuttle- system. do someone have any opinions on one vs two proc? I´m just so tired of the big case. and the small ones look so cute. The one thing I realy wondering; is the heatpipe reliable?
For modeling 1 proc is probably enough if you have a decent video card, for rendering though a dualie pulls way ahead, As far as the heat pipe from what I have read the heat pipes are pretty efficient. In the end I would go for raw power over cuteness but that is just me
Well, when you’re tired of waiting those renderings to be completed late night, the small shuttle is easier to throw away trough the window…
I would definetly go for a dual, mainly if I’m using more than one program at a time.
You can also let it rendering at one processor and use the other to watch a dvd
It’s better than just waiting…
My two Cents,
Joao.
Dual procs make sense for anything that is multithreated. Not all multi-threaded apps are the same. For example, 3d studio is only multi-threated with rendering. A lot of rendering prep stuff, such as shadow calcs are not multi threated…
BUT, Vray is EXTREEMLY multithreated. So is Mental Ray…
Bascially, when rendering you get about a 60% speed advantage in max, and about a 95% advantage in Vray… this is based on my experience…
Think about what your computer will be doing… if you are rendering in Vray, I would get dual… P4’s with hyperthreading will give you an even bigger advantage in Vray.
Not in all points true. OpenGL supports Multi Processor support. Even Max supports two prozessors in some tasks (well not much). So the viewport will become a little faster. Anyhow because Max use a lot of memory it is more importend to go far a machine which use a fast Ram.
Hyper Threasing (currently only with XEONs) brings about 7% more speed with Vray. But it really improves working with multible application.
Workstation: Go for P4 or Xeon. Get a good OpenGL card (no DirectX card) and look for fast memory.
Well in the future all P4 will be HT. But currently there are only some. I think the centrion technology is far more interesting. I have 1.3 Ghz Centrion notebook, that is fast like a 1.8 Ghz AMD.
If you realy want the smaller form factor get the P4 shuttle with HT that would end up preforming better than the AMD. I just finished building one for a relative and it rocks with a P4.
2) make sure your motherboard supports HT (maybe it would requires a bios update), then enable HT in your bios.
3) If you are running Windows 2000 you MUST REINSTALL because multi cpu or HyperThread are detected during its install.
(there is an other solution but it is much more complex and not very safe)
If you are running Windows XP then simply start a new install process, XP will try to find for existing install and will ask you if you want to REPAIR it.
That is the option you must choose.
4) to check that everything is OK (and hyperthreded :lol: ) launch the task manager (ctrl+alt+dell) and you should see 2 differents graph for each logical CPU.
OK. I desided to go for a litle shuttle. I know that it´s half of what I can get, but I´m more in to modeling and animate, or at least that´s what I´m going to do for a time now. Allso I´m realy gettin pissed by the design of the towers and I´m forced to keep the pc at home as I had an inbrake in my studio and all the junkies know were to get the goods.
So, thankyou for the advise, and keep up the hardwareknoledge.
/Daniel
ps: I allso have a 2.2ghz inspiron to plugg in and a renderfarm of about 30 good workstations 15 minutes away