Hi All

I am currently working on a large plant design project in Warrington.
We have to create a set of animated 3D models / movie files fo the clients board of investors.
We are creating the original models in AutoCAD / AutoPlant, individual model sizes upto 200mb approx, then XREFing these into a master model.
We need to buy a ‘SUPER COMPUTER’, that will just render nothing more including ACAD / Studio Max installed.
We are looking at a Dell Precision T7400 Dual Xeon X5482, 32gb Ram, Quatro FX1700 any thoughts?
Do anyone know the benefits of a separate Render Drive?
Quadro or high end gaming cards?
Anything we should be aware of before spending £0000’s

Hope you can advise

Best regards

Matt

Check out Boxx Technologies on the web, they make the top rendering stuff and it won’t come with all the “extras” .  The reps there will help you evaluate what you need.

Stephen

Gaming cards over quadros any day of the week. Dual xeons with 32gb of ram, do fall nicely into ‘super computer’ category in my book.

I have never had project of that magnitude, so I really cant tell you for sure, but- it does seam logical that several less expensive rendering satellites would be better for rendering this.

Get:
CPU

Core 2 quad 6600 2.4ghz 200$
or
Core 2 quad 9450 2.66ghz 400$
I know this one is twice the price, but it should fit in your budget anyway and it is slightly better at rendering and 40% faster in video encoding due to sse4 instructions.

Memory

Get 8gb of pc800 ddr2 ram. This should be about 200$ per 8gb (4x2gb)

I could be wrong in thinking that 8gb should be enough for this project.
You can go as high as 16gb (4x4gb) of ram on “mortal” motherboards today. I have no idea how much does this cost, but rest assured that it should be much less than crappy ram that HAS to be put in double xeon computer.

Motherboard

Gigabyte EP35 DS4 ~180$
(8gb max)
I’m including it since I’m certain that its rock stable and good overall

Asus P5Q Vanila/Pro/Deluxe- P45 140$-220$
Basically all variants are the same motherboard with minor (and at times, nice) extensions the higher you go. Deluxe is the best one. Still i don’t think that price difference justifies getting deluxe over vanilla, but if you have the money and need the extra gadgets…
I’m including it since I know it can do 16gb of ram… its new and ASUS.. shouldn’t be too bad.

Graphic card

ATi HD4850 ~200$

Best card for 3d on planet. period. no quadro/firegl variant available yet. Has only 512mb of ram, so you might want to consider its previous generation cousin hd3870 with 1gb of ram/ or wait a week and get 4870 1gb when it coumes out. (edit: its out)

4870 is 4850’s sibling, that has 2x faster memory and slightly faster 3d processing (1.2 vs 1.0 teraflops). This one costs ~300$

That said, I think that you can get away with either, or even cheaper variants since viewport performance has nothing to do with rendering speed.

Case

Coolermaster 690 ~100$
Good sized, well ventilated and quiet. What more do you need from a case?

HDD

Due to the size of you xref files:
Raid 0 (+1 for hdd information security if you like)
2x 750gb western digital wd7500aaks ~130$ each

raid 0+1 means you get 4x 750gb, but you only get to use 1.5tb of that space. 2x hdd would be redundant.

---

In total its 1500$ per rendering node if you choose the most expensive parts. I’m pretty certain that two of those machines are going to outrun the double xeon server, not to mention if you use 3 or 4… The thing to notice is that while this would be best bang for buck it does have “only” 16gb of ram limitation.

If it was my project, I’d probably go with several of these computers. If for whatever devilish reason one rendering node breaks, you have at least one doing some work. Than again, I never needed more tha 8gb of ram…

EDIT: I just looked over at dell site to see if they’re reasonable in their prices. Turns out that just single their xeon 5482 processor is 1900$. Sure its 3.2ghz and what i said is “only” 2.66 ghz. but for less than a price of single CPU you get a complete kickars rendering node. For the price of what they’re charging, you can fit in at least 4 of my nodes. No contest there. Do yourself a favor and skip dell. Build your own rigs.

EoDEo

Ideas drift like petals on the wind. You have only to lift your face to the breeze.

Does the system you describe here support 64bit windows ? If so, is it better to use 64 bit XP or 64bit Vista ??

Does the system you describe here support 64bit windows ?

All computers built at or after 2005 support 64bit OS. Computer mentioned here is no exception.

If so, is it better to use 64 bit XP or 64bit Vista ??

If you wish to play DX10 games get windows Vista, its actually very good OS for most newer games.

If you plan to use your computer for anything other than games- even browse the web, you should go with Windows XP.

If you plan to use 3DS Max a lot, you should consider getting at least 4gb of RAM and Windows XP x64.

If you plan to both play dx10 games and work in Max (like me), you should consider setting up dual boot system with both Vista 32bit for the new games, and Win XP x64 for Max and the rest of the programs.

At the moment, Max has severe graphical speed limitations under Windows Vista. Whose fault is it and if and/or when the problem will be fixed is anyone’s guess; but it has been here since the Vista launch- ie not a short amount of time.

EoDEo

Ideas drift like petals on the wind. You have only to lift your face to the breeze.

I plan to only use the system for rendering.  So Xp 64 bit is the way to go, i presume.

I plan to only use the system for rendering.

If that means rendering only, I guess you can’t go wrong with even Vista 64bit. As rendering has nothing to do with the way the scene is previewed and GPU power.

If it was my rendering only node, I’d pick WinXP x64 over Vista 64 even if Vista was fully compatible.

You should try to stay with one OS during your entire process from modeling to rendering. Presumably Vista or XP built scene has nothing to do with rendering, but I’d stay with one OS the entire time just to be safe.

When building rendering only node (ie no max work is anticipated) you should get cheaper GPUs- like ATI HD 2600xt or nvidia 8600gt. These should be about 50$ and capable to work with up to 2 million polygon scenes. Obviously they aren’t powerhouses, but they’re both cheap and powerful enough in emergencies.

(note that my most intensive scenes had at most- half a million polygons. So, these cards, while slow compared to other cards mentioned in this thread, are still very capable GPUs- for 3DS Max only purposes)

EoDEo

Ideas drift like petals on the wind. You have only to lift your face to the breeze.

Sorry to butt in on thread, but questions may be relevant to first poster.

Eodeo, I’ve seen several of your postings and you seem to be one of the few people giving advice that makes sense.  Your input is greatly appreciated (and often copied to my clilents).  Thank you!

I’m an Architect and now own a computer company, and we have a new client with a complete 3DS division.  They are looking at workstations, and I’ve done some testing.  From my understanding, the day to day working with models relies heavily on the video card, but when it comes time to render it only relies on the CPU’s, the more the merrier and the faster the better.  My question’s are;
1) Since version 9 can use DirectX 9, wouldn’t a gamer card be best over a Quadro as they are cheaper, and I assume would eat up directX commands?
2) Are all the polygons loaded into memory on the video card?  Are there other limitations to having 512MB video memory?
3) Does motherboard RAM speed make a difference once the rendering starts (I’m assuming it would when loading models, but not sure once you start rendering)?

Thanks again.

Eodeo, I’ve seen several of your postings and you seem to be one of the few people giving advice that makes sense.  Your input is greatly appreciated (and often copied to my clilents).  Thank you!

I’m glad to hear that :)

1) Since version 9 can use DirectX 9, wouldn’t a gamer card be best over a Quadro as they are cheaper, and I assume would eat up directX commands?

In short- exactly like that.

In long, if you have the time and are interested in more details feel free to reed my posts here:
http://area.autodesk.com/for...axtreme-10/Page-10/#48487
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/FireGL-Quadro-Workstation,1995.html#t8199
scroll down to comments and find me with the nick eodeo.

2) Are all the polygons loaded into memory on the video card? 

All the visual info of the scene is loaded to the GPU ram and than processed from there.

Are there other limitations to having 512MB video memory?

My most complex “real world” scene was less than half a million polygons and in it I had couple of textures with 2x2k pixels. Most of them were less than 2x2k. For that my 8800gtx with 768mb of ram is super fast. In fact, the same scene for preview purposes (GPU speed alone) my old ATI 9600pro is enough. That one has 128mb of ram.

To see some tests I’ve done with my old 9600pro card, please see this thread:
http://area.autodesk.com/for...e-cards-on-3ds-max/#78300

512mb should be more than plenty for most purposes. Also keep in mind that for 50$ more you can get 1gb variant and for 100$ more you can get the 2gb variant of some (gaming) cards. So, price isn’t that big of a barrier if you have many high res textures, you might want more than 512mb.

3) Does motherboard RAM speed make a difference once the rendering starts (I’m assuming it would when loading models, but not sure once you start rendering)?

Yes, Big difference. It won’t make CPU render any faster, but having enough of RAM won’t make CPU choke while waiting for RAM to clear and load new information to be processed. So while having more than you need will do nothing for speed, having less than you need will slow down rendering to a crawl.

For reference, my most complex scene needed 4.5gb of ram while rendering. That one had ~2m polygons (guess- I’m really not sure about this number)- including grass that is not visible in viewports. In general 3gb is what I use at the most. So my 8gb system usually has 5gb of ram idling.

Good luck!

p.s. I just read RAM speed- ram speed wont make any difference. Having faster than ddr2 pc 800 wont make it any faster, while ddr2 pc667 is going to be most of the speed 90% CPUs use today, while NOT being overclocked. For sensible OC, ddr2 pc 800 is the best, and since its only slightly more expensive, I always recommend it- since I recommend overclocking too.

EoDEo

Ideas drift like petals on the wind. You have only to lift your face to the breeze.

Hi
I have a few questions about renering node that I am not clear on.
I built a computer in january of 08 (Q6600, 4 MB G.skill ram, Nforce 680 LT MOBO, 640 GeForce 8800 GTS. 64 bit XP)and am now looking to put together a render farm.
The question or two that I cant seem to understand (wrong word perhaps) is, if I am going to build a node or two do I need to have a GPU in each node?  Are there any advantages to having a grphics card in the nodes? Would the 16MB of RAM suggested in your build list(....thank you for that...)be sufficient.  Do I even need a graphics card in redering nodes?  If so would there be any conflicts with having a GeForce in one and the HD 48_0 series in the others?
Thank you for your time

do I need to have a GPU in each node?

Yes. However, it doesn’t need to be a discrete GPU. It can be integrated, or better yet, if you plan to do some 3d work on them, get one of the low end discrete models like, 8400gs from nvidia, or 2400 pro from ati. Both are <50$, and they wont bottleneck your OC attempts, if any. Motherboard that has integrated GPU isn’t built with high standards in mind.

Are there any advantages to having a grphics card in the nodes?

1) the computer will work- a very good thing :)
2) If you get a discrete card and ever need to do any 3d work on one of them, you won’t feel depressed doing it.

Would the 16MB of RAM suggested in your build list(....thank you for that...)be sufficient.

Its 16gb and as I’ve said (i think) its way more than I ever needed. I have 8gb of ram, and 5 of those 8 are sitting idle most of the time anyway. I really can’t tell what scene magnitude is required for 8+gb ram. Probably something like- pixar level animation with thousands of objects and billions of polygons. I never had to do anything close to that, so.. It depends on what you do.

would there be any conflicts with having a GeForce in one and the HD 48_0 series in the others?

No. Each GPU is specific to the unique computer it’s seated in, and it plays no role whatsoever at rendering time.

If you plan to never do any 3d work on the rendering node, you really don’t want a high end model like 48x0. For never-plan-to-do-3d a low end discrete cards x400 from ati/nvidia are best. You can have a decent motherboard and not pay much for some decent 3d speed.

On the other hand, a perfect card probably is ATI HD 4650. Its <70$ now and it should be able to handle 10million+ polygons with relative ease. For that price you just can’t get anything better. In fact, it questions the need for 200+$ card very much; if Max work is your only concern. And on the other end, it devalues cards like x400 that are hundreds of times less powerful for only couple of bucks less.

EoDEo

Ideas drift like petals on the wind. You have only to lift your face to the breeze.