The reason I won’t lock into any vendor (dell, HP, gateway, etc) for a q6600 cpu based rig is that the q66 is extremely overclockable, and the vendors’ motherboards/bios setups (plus warranty for thw whole system) won’t allow overclocking. I know OCing will void the manufacturers warranty too, but that’s just the $260 processor, not the whole rig. Plus you get to control the brands, qualities, and configuration if you build it yourself - and you don’t have to worry about custom drivers for the “HP” version of the video card…
I’m going to be ordering parts to build an 8-core xeon machine (2.66) from NCIX (Since memoryepress doesn’t have the xeons in yet) in a week or two…I’ll be sure to post results etc.
To me, one really fast one is better than multiple fast ones. Power supply/energy usage, redundant parts, OS config, noise, etc. are the most important.
Coolermaster cosmos case
LG dvd burner
Supermicro MB
4 gb supermicro pc2-6400 FB-Dimm
WD 320 gb SATA2
evga 8800GT 512
Corsair 620w PS (might not be big enough…need to research more)
2-5430 xeons (2.66)
If I manage to talk myself out of this, I’ll wait until Memory express has the new 45nm quad 2.5 consumer chip - it’s supposed to be cheaper than the q66 at 2.4.
My current machine is where I learned the lock in nastyness…it was a refurb HP with C2D e4400 (2.0) with 2gb + 400 gb + HP version GeForce 7500 256. It was $399. (vista home premium) (I’ve upgraded the ram to 4 new and faster sticks for 4gb total)
since we’re running down specs, and since I just finished buuying this bad boy and am awaiting shipment-
vid-2 8800 gts 512
mobo-680i striker extreme
cpu- e8400
mem- 4g Corsair
Hopefully this thing will chomp thru blender as effortlessly as I believe its going to eat thru tomoroows games…specially with the damn near limitless OC capabilities of every part lol. Some are stating they’re getting thier 8400’s OC’d to 4g with 50-60c full load. 4g dual core with that low of a temp on air alone…needless to say it’s very impressive.
I’m jsut hoping the 1503 bios update is up to snuff…here’s to hoping I’m not buying a paper wieght.
The following is NOT an argument or bust on your decision – I’m just trying to understand if there’s something I’m missing:
If I have $2,500 to spend, would I be better off from a rendering speed standpoint purchasing, say, four of those $600 quad core/3GB boxes? I have to think so. If you can buy 4 for the price of one, do you need to OC? Will you be able to OC that custom-built screamer to be as fast as even two of those cheapo boxes put together?
from a rendering speed standpoint, you are correct. But I’m worried about energy and time spent setting up and physical space available. (plus I’d need to expand my network switch). If I had an actual office/studio with room, I might do something like that. But since I am home based, I don’t want to impose my computer glory all over the house (as much as I’d like to).
This machine will be my main workstation - a fault I have is hitting f12 more than I should after changes I make…so a really fast workstation makes sense to me.
8x2.66=21.28, 2x4x2.4=19.2 (plus xeons have 12mb cache per chip, the 2.4 q66 has 4mb)
my 8 core machine without OC will be faster than 2 of yours.
the 2.4’s are going for cheap right now because Intel is trying to push out the old 65nm based chips to get the new 45nm chips out there when they come. Personally I don’t want to buy the 2.4’s because they’re older technology with lower cache.
I recently found in my computer help section that my computer has a dual core processor in it so I can render twice as fast as if I only had one.
Some of the Peach people have dual quad core processors in their systems, but would probably be expensive.
I also found out if you wanted to do the cheap option, you can find out if your computer can support a CPU swap to a Quad core, and thus save over 700 dollars by just getting the chip from Intel.
If money is not a concern, I would go for a single 8-core system over 2 quad because:
lower energy consumption, less space, less heat, less noise
faster interconnect. on a dual socket setup, the CPU talks to each other via the northbridge, on a dual box setup, you’d probably end up with 100/1000 Ethernet, which is a lot slower.
Better managability: on a dual-socket-single-system setup, the artist spend less time assigning tasks to nodes and doing maintenance work on the nodes.
less ram usage: for 2 nodes, each has to load their own copy of the OS, app, and scene data. On one node, this memory space can be shared. So if two nodes requires 2GB of RAM each, on a 1 node setup, you will probably only need 3GB total.
The only problem is that right now, multi-socket CPU/mobo/RAM is a lot more expensive than single socket CPUs. :no:
As far as I know I would have to wait because I don’t think Dell offers 8 core systems yet, the most powerful that they have is a high end Quad core XPS computer.
and fyi the motherboard is very important when you are building a system for anything
im not sure how much it affects speed of rendering but it is good to find one with good ocing features and there is also a difference in speed for things in general
i was reading some benchmarks and an nforce 680i was almost 20% faster than an nforce 570i
I use a Macbook Pro, 2.4 Ghz, 2GB RAM 250 GB HD(I tink), but it is super fast(I dunno why!)I also have a PC
Dell XPS, 3.20 Ghz, 2.5 Ghz, 70 GB Hard drive but it’s not as fast,Mac is better.some renders are slow though.I can’t do any upgrades currently.I’d say the best most awesome maybe humanly achievable computer is 4.0 Ghz,16 GB RAM, 4TB Hard drive.I once found a website where you could get a computer with only 3.2 Ghz,but 8GB RAM,4TB Hard drive!
Well, Cheers!
mpan3: howdy. Even if money isn’t a concern, you can still get four quad core systems on the cheap for the price of a single 8-core system. That’s some heavy duty computing power.
there you go. by saying you could get x number of A for the price of y number of B, you are bring in money as a factor. I was saying given that money is absolutely not a factor, 2 Octocore is better than 4 quadcore.
Of course, in the real world, 4 quadcore will be a much sensible choice.
If you’re going to quote BladeCenters, better to stick with the JS22, as POWER is currently better handling than Cell.
My ultimate Blender machine? IBM p550 Express (Maybe with a FireGL or two thrown in there if I could be damned using AIX, but software GL should be quite fast enough) – if I had AU$200K to throw at it, that is… Worth the effort to make sure blender can take advantage of it (If anyone wants to donate me one of these I’ll quite happily put the gruntwork in…)
(If anyone wants to donate me one of these I’ll quite happily put the gruntwork in…)