I'm getting ready to build my Athlon 64 box (hopefully starting tomorrow), and I'm wanting to create a scene, or set of scenes, that I can render on the current box, save, and then render on the new one to see how the performance is, and if there are any potholes the new technology might fall into. Any suggestions on just what kind of scene(s) could make Vue 4.2 and VuePro scream in agony? Already plan to do a multiple Poser import (probably with Dina, as she has an even higher polycount than the Unimesh does), a single figure with one of Steffy's hires texture sets. That handles import issues regarding memory, but doesn't get into what Vue itself can do...

Well i had just recently did an image that used a few terrains, a water plane about 6 or seven bush trees and i also imported a horse which i then gave them water materials with a high refraction index. Now the amount of polygons was in the "red", but still handled pretty good until rendering time came. So maybe use lots of terrains and trees and also water with high refractive index.

My last image (not posted yet) just has one character, a handful of objects... very simple scene. However, it has a dozen of lights, most of them quadratic with soft shadows, a volumetric atmosphere and two large volumetric spotlights. Time to render in Broadcast mode, in 3500x2600 pixels - 57 hours. Same scene in screen resolution - 6 hours. On the bright side, my biggest scene (The raft of the medusa) had 17 Michael characters imported into Vue with multiple props. It required some juggling with layers but it was workable. The trick is to group parts of the scene in layers and just make them invisible if you don't work on them anymore - it makes Vue a lot faster for very complex scenes.

Just crank up the resolution of the terrain meshes. I notice that Vue automatically creates a pretty high mesh with a lot of polygons. A lot of people then flatten their meshes to indicate fairly flat ground, or a path or something, but they don't reduce the "resolution" of the meshes, even when they are using materials with 'noise" to generate the acutal surface appearance. So, many people's scenes have an unnecessarily high polygon count (red numbers). It follows that you could just go in and crank up the mesh resolution without changing any real features of your scene. Mesh resolution probably is the single greatest source of polygons in anybody's scene.

Say DaleB, do we get a digital phot here of your new box in your front room?

I just use one of the more complex tutorial scenes for comparing box performance. Bot

Now forester.... You know better than to ask about the new baby's pictures..... :P Here's a good clean shot of the front; it's still empty at the moment (FedEx is due today with the chip and a gig of DDR 400ValuRAM). And actually, this is going to get even more interesting. Microsoft has just this morning released a trial version of XP-64 for download (all 422megs of it), or if you want to wait til mid Feb, you can order a CD for free, as well. So I'll get to throw Vue and Poser at both Win2k and XP-64 and see how it runs... I know I'm insane testing a beta OS, but my current main system is going nowhere until I'm positive the new box is stable and ready to rock.

What a beautiful child! And no trailing cables to spoil the picture. Is that your pillow in the foreground on the floor? Are you sleeping next to it until its done? Just jealousy talking.....

And here's the mainboard I went with, GigaByte's K8VNXP. And no, your eyes do not deceive you. That is a dual IDE port RAID connector...and 2 SATA RAID connectors. And from my reading, -all- of them can be hot, so you are looking at 2 SATA drives and 8 Ultra 133 EIDE ports. It also has dual ethernet controllers (one a gigabit, one a 10100), so the rendergarden will be going onto a dedicated feed and off the house router. The board supports up to 3 gig of RAM, and that blue slot behind the backpanel connectors is for a second power regulator array. The ad copy says it gives you 6 phase power smoothing, and if it or the motherboard regulator fails, then the remaining one takes over with standard 3 phase smoothing. And there is 6:1 sound, USB 2.0, AGP 8X, and a nice little idiot light feature. Next to the DIMM slots is a memory LED, and if that is lit, you have power to the slots and risk damage if you pull a stick. And GigaByte is courting the OC community with this one, as you have BIOS (and Windows level utility to same)level access of all the voltage and freq settings. I don't OC, so that is just FYI. Oh, and the XP-64 download took about 80 minutes on cable, and seems to have come through uncorrupted. You get an ISO image, so you either have to burn it to CD, or unpack it with WinImage and copy the files to a CD-R.

If you want more pics, I have them... O:)

Here's the inside. It -si- that roomy, btw, it isn't a trick of angle. The Lian Li PC-70 case is designed to mount dual chip server boards, so single chip boards have...adequate clearance. And that HDD cage on the bottom lifts out and can be mounted to hold the drives horizontally, and the 3 bay 3.5" cage removes also. And all of it is with thumbscrews. Show your hubby. Torment him. This case is incredible, and there are a couple more in the series that are even better. And actually, I think that's me... And right now I'm chewing on old CD's waiting for that bloody truck! I'm not going to install that board until I have the chip and memory in. I'm not. I'm not. I wannna!!! But I'm NOT!!!

I am so envious, you're a lucky man MrB. I'm so envious, I've just had a look at the specs of that case and it's incredible, I reckon I'll be having one of those Lian Li cases. Oh there're in stock too, and the store is only 15 miles up the road. You're a bad man tempting me like this. Quick question, what Graphics card are you putting in?

nice comp man, btw the winxp 64 amd edition sounds mighty promising, ive seen some serious performance increases, of course it depends on what apps you run aswell. looking forward to hearing your vue benchmarchs with it :) ive already set up a couple of amd64 comps and im mighty impressed by it, but im waiting building my own until they release the new motherboards later this spring.

Still waiting....grrrrrrrrrr.... In the initial box, I'm just slapping in a GF4-MX440 card with 64 megs of DDR. The GF4-TI4400 I have in the current box will get shifted over, and the cheapy will get placed into the current box(which will get relocated into the rendergarden, and let me use the Athlon 700 as a DX7 DOX-Win9x box for games and such). I'm going to be doing multiple installs of the OS, seeing how it performs on the IDE, RAID, and SATA controllers. I'm sure there will be driver issues, and the drivers out now are all 32 bit code, but that is what the Internet is for. Sentinal; If you think the case specs are bad, they have an insert that lists all the aluminun faced goodies you can put in it. About the =only= thing that won't be shiny is when I move my Audigy 2 over, and the breakout box goes in. All you have to do to use the CD fronts is remove the tray end piece, and snug the device against the new end, so the button contacts the end button on the drive. The floppy requires you to remove the face and button, but it snugs just fine, as well. About the only thing I would change is getting the PC-75 case, as opposed to the PC-70; the former has casters on it.

I've seen the bezels you can get for the cd and floppys, didn't know they came with the case though as the supplier I've got in mind lists them as accesories. Having a look at the different cases I'm drawn towards the PC6070 for it's quietness. Thanks for the info, Oh and your pics are better than the manufacturers ones I've seen :)

Thanks, and an update. She lives! I was having a royal PITA on boot....as in she wouldn't. What it finally turned out being was the daugther card that provides extra power smoothing. Apparently something there isn't right. But Kingston ValuRam seems to work so far with the Gigabyte board (it boots). Now comes the Win2k install, then the upgrade to XP 64. It seems that a lot of vendors have been waiting for the OS release. VIA has beta Hyperion unified drivers for XP-64, as does Nvidia and ATI (although I have a very cheapy GF4Mx440 for testing purposes), and Sun has released a beta of 64 bit Java, both runtime and SDK. Oh, and the bezels were easy to adapt. The floppy one requires you to remove the faceplate and button (and it's easier to do with a disk inserted), then place it into the frame and butt it against the bezel. The CDCVC bezel only needs the end of the tray removed, but you have to remove the bezel, insert the drive, reattach the bezel, then position the drive so that the plastic button rests on the drive tray button. The next test is gonna be if the OS installs correctly....