Greetings!!
Is the Powermac G5 any better for Blender then the G4s? As far as rendering times and animation?
heh :-?
new better faster computers must be better than the old ones…especially when they are 64bit based…
is that hard and unlogical to calculate ? 
"is that hard and unlogical to calculate ? "
Well its supposed to be.
Was Blender 2.31 re-compile to take advantage of 64bit? Is there a OSX 10.3 and Blender issue? Lightwave on G5 and 10.3 does not work well.
Early release of G5 render (lightwave)slower than top Powermac G4s.
If an App is not optimised then usually you won’t see a diff.
Blender was made to run on 64 bit SGI way before Apple even thought of doing G5s. It’s just a matter of compiling with some different arguments.
Martin
SGI went 64bit with the Indigo2s and after.
Wasn’t Blender before those days. I run Blender on a SGI o2 which is 32bit.
Blender running 64bit on G5 will depend on if GCC for it is 64bit or if IBM drop the new compiler for it.
Alot of apps for SGI are still 32bit Apps. Sun is 64bit also but Blender is running 32bit mode on it.
SGI and Sun came out with 64bit way before Apple and AMD did. But me being a Sun Microsystem Field Engineer can say G5 and AMD 64 is passing them.
I’m not trying to start a flame war. I just wanted to know how it run on it, if anyone bought a G5. Thats all. Over in the LW world there is some issues. Just looking for info.
I’m pretty aware that new machines should run faster than old ones but usually with a leap in like going from 32bit to 64bit is not an easy thing to adjust too. For those who use SGI knows with all the o32 and n32 and 64bit lib errors.
And alot of apps crap out even when moving from UltraSparc II to UltraSparc III.
I guess I will crawl back under the rock from whence I came.
I didn’t see it as a flamewar either. I’m just saying Blender has been 64bit capable since a long long time, so there’s no problem compiling a 64bit version for G5s (actually, I remember a conversation just like that some time ago, where someone was asking how he could compile a 64bit version on a G5).
Martin
cool news theeth. Any plans for an official 64 bit release version?
It could be put here: http://www.blender3d.org/Download/
One will need to know what to change in the source code also to support 64bit.
How good is GCC for G5? Xcode is supposed to have G5 optimization in it.
Another quesition is Blender optimized for Velocity Engine? That will be a good thing for rendering and mesh handling. Native OS X Blender should be multithreaded since alot of Powermacs both G4 and G5 are Dual CPUs. That can be a tall order support for 64bit, Dual CPUs and Velocity Engine.
Would 64bit give that much of a performance gain? Main diff between 32bit and 64bit is in long integers. Raytracing is based on floating points. FP is same on 32 and 64bit, correct me if I am wrong. But having access to huge memory will be a plus for 64bit blender when rendering animation.
No idea. Will ask tomorrow at the meeting.
Blender in itself is not multithreaded. What you can easily do however is lauch a new thread for rendering. I’ve got a script to do that called Background Render.
Martin
Tested , Works great ! BUt has the same affictions as current blender on all OSX machines and some windows. The Armature rig poseing is a pain to play with. Other than that it just moves fast, not beyond fast as it still needs to be compiled for the 64 bits but their is nothing that can be doen for that yet.
Blender is NOT optimized for Velocity Engine. I poked around with that for awhile, trying to understand what might be “optimize-able” but frankly my understanding of vector computation is nil, so that didn’t go far. Someone with more knowledge of the rendering engine might have better luck if they were so inclined, but so far no takers.
As for GCC, the flag “-fast” on compile turns on a whole slew of G5-specific (okay, many are non-processor specific, but some are) optimization flags… none of which have been really tested to see how they affect Blender either functionality or speed wise.
Blender, being cross-platform, has to be very careful about endian issues and therefore some of the standard optimization flags can cause problems because they make assumptions about the code and memory structures. I hope to have a G5 by the end of the month, and have been playing around with Blender’s code in various ways, but for the moment there is no support for multithreading or Velocity Engine.
Doesn’t mean it won’t happen… 
-Bischofftep
The last Replies are/were very informative. Thanks!!
blender being Portable kind of put some restraints on it to be optimized for any one system. Even thought its a kick butt App anyway!!
Making a G5 optimized one with support for velocity Engine will be a nice stuff for OS X fans. Being that there are 3 other good 3D app for OS X only. Cinema 4D, Lightwave and Maya.
Thanks for everyone replies.