Hi, Im planning to buy a new pc so Im wondering about what cpu (celeron, pentium, sempron, athlon oder athlon 64 ?) would be right for rendering with vue 5. Are there any other components that are a "must" for rendering with vue ? thanks

the only cpu to consider today when buying a new rig is the amd64. make sure you get a socket 939 mobo, preferably nforce4 ultra or sli(brand new mobos so you might have to hold your horses a few weeks,neither one of them are that much more expensive but offers more of everything and better features then the vanilla nforce4) and if possible go for the amd64 3500+ its a 90nm cpu and thus renders less heat and uses less energy then the other top cpus from amd. the amd64 3200 is probably your best bang for the buck tho. performance wise amd64 wins the big majority of all the tests, the p4 has its strong points, but you do get less power for more money generaly speaking and no 64 bit compability and a realy thin upgrade path considering there wont be any faster p4s then 3.8, and vue doesnt look like an exception. anyway, enough of my rant, check a up to date and very good test by anandtech. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2249&p=1

Though I can't give you as thorough a rundown as war2 did I will also recommend the Athlon64, I've been running with Athlon's and P4's at home and at work and by far I always prefer the athlon, it just seems to run faster. Just my 2 cents though.

Will a gain from an AMD64 even if not running a 64bit OS?

Will it work just as well with Windows 2000 as with XP?

Yes -- most of the improvements from K7 -> K8 have nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that it's a 64-bit processor. And most of the improvements that come with 64-bit mode on the K8 are just "freebie tagalongs" that just aren't available in 32-bit mode. :)

I was using Pentiums but my new machine is an Athlon 64 (with AMD 3200 chip) and is VERY FAST with Win XP Pro and Poser and Vue 5 working great! The extra room the 64 bit processor has makes 32 bit processing easy. And when the 64 bit OS comes out- which will be fairly soon, (as it has been in beta for nearly a year) means you are ready for the FUTURE of 64 bit software... which is VERY SOON! BTW- I also use the faster SATA drives (serial) which speed up drive read/writes a lot over older ATA drives. New motherboards should be SATA ready, as well as offer ATA connectors for your older drives. I use a very fast WD Raptor SATA C drive, so my boot-up time is only a few seconds... (But I like Maxtor drives overall). Finally- don't forget getting a good ATI or nVidia graphics card for great performance in Vue 5 (E-on recommends either one). I have an nVidia Geforce in my Athlon and ATI Radeon in my older P-III. Vue 5 runs great on them (as long as you keep your drivers up to date) but the NVidia Geforce is the best, in my opinion.

My athlon also runs great and better than my P4's. Can two athlons 64 bits cpus go on one motherboard for dual processors? If so that sounds like it would be a great machine.

I'm probably looking for something like: AMD +3500 1-2GB Ram 2x300Mb SATA in RAID configuration or to save some money 1x250-300Mb IDE and later add 2x200Mb SATA in RAID (moved from my current computer). gForce 6800 GT or ULtra. I'm also looking into a DUAL CPU solution but if so I have to save on something or it will be way to expensive.

No, they can't. The core is the same, but the CPUID instruction and the external interface are tweaked to prevent that configuration from working. To run in SMP, you will need an at least an Opteron 200 series processor. However, other than that tweak, the Opteron and Athlon64 are pretty much the same beast, which makes you correct. :) BTW, next year (around June according to the roadmap), AMD plans to launch the dual-core Opteron and Athlon64FX. Dual core Athlon64's (read: mainstream) are planned for around a year later. It will make for a nice upgrade path for existing Athlon64 systems. :)

make sure you pick a pcix 6800gt or if you have money to burn ultra, couple that with the sli nforce4 motherboard and you can increase the gpu performance from 30 to 80% by tucking in one more gpu once the price has dropped or you need more power.

i would recomend the 6800gt since its cheaper and almost on par with the ultra. and as mentioned the tests on anandtech is made with standard 32 bit software, and as you can see amd64 is ahead in almost all the tests.

Message edited on: 10/21/2004 16:36

The problem with 6800GT seems to be to find one ;( Is it worth the money to go from a 6800GT 128Mb (around $350) to a 6800GT 256Mb (around $500) card. (Ultra cost about $600) And what about PCIexpress cards?

Living in the US, I have been buying my computer stuff from CompUSA as their prices are very low, especially when you catch the sales. A few months back I bought several Maxtor 250 GB SATA drives for $129 each! I devote one drive to Poser and one to Vue, so I have plenty of expansion room. I tried out the built in Promise RAID card on my Athlon and had the two 250 drives in a RAID configuration for about a month- but it actually seemed a little slower- so I reformatted them back to single 250 GB's and I think they actually run faster that way. Plus I was always a little worried about the possibility of a RAID crash and losing a lot of stuff- so I like the single drive system better and feel they are actually more secure and reliable that way. I think RAID is best used by people doing large animations, and then only as a temporary workspace for assembling their finished project. I still don't trust RAID for longterm storage, unless you make everything fully redundant-- so you might as well use single formatted drives anyway. But- if you are into animation- then RAID, in some variation (0,1, etc.) is probably the way to go...

The nForce4's were just announced, and won't be available for at least another month in any volume. Even then they will be much more expensive, relatively speaking, than a KT800 or nForce3-based solution, and the benefits for today's systems are questionable at best. Next generaton Serial ATA drive support? No drives available yet. Gigabit ethernet? Who has a gigabit switch, and multiple other gigabit systems to network with? It certainly won't help on your broadband downloads. The built-in firewall might be useful, but there are quite a number of free and fairly low CPU consumption firewall options available, and they're probably more easily customizable (there are no reviews of this feature yet). PCI Express support? There are basically no performance differences thus far. If you're going for SLI, then yes it's the best option, but that's only something I'd do if I had a lot of money to play with. A single graphics card is going to be fine for most users. We haven't heard much about their performance tuning feature yet, and that is more aimed at the casual overclocker if I understand it correctly, so it's not something I'm too interested in. If you're going for Athlon 64, you'll actually get the most bang for your buck out of the socket 754 3400+. At 2.4Ghz, 512KB cache, single channel memory controller it's actually as fast in clock speed as the latest Athlon 64 4000+! It's only missing the 1MB cache and dual channel memory controller, neither of which increase performance enough to get even close to justifying the several hundred dollar price difference. Socket 754 motherboards are also cheaper than 939's. And, since AMD is coming out with dual core processors next year, that will signal a price drop for the single cores I would say. So if you're serious about Vue, want performance, but don't want to pay the moon for it, I'd recommend buying a 3400+ on the 754 socket now, and then in a year or so buy a dual core machine or a discounted single core at high clock rate. Use the machine you buy now as a render box. Here's a Newegg Wishlist I put together for a friend that has pretty much everything you'll need: http://secure.newegg.com/app/WishR.asp?ID=994218 I ended up buying a very similar system in components from Newegg (different motherboard, RAM and Hard Drive), total cost at the end was $1400 or so including tax and shipping. We bought the RAM straight from Crucial, a 1GB DIMM, because it was a bit cheaper there and they have a compatibility guarantee. Otherwise everything came from Newegg. The machine is kicking all sorts of ass so far, in everything we throw at it, from rendering to gaming. And it was a pleasure to work in the case, too. Very well designed, and it comes with a good power supply as well - cheap at the price. The Radeon 9800 Pro on there will be more than enough for your Vue needs. So unless you're a gamer, don't bother spending the extra $150+ for a 6800GT. If you are a gamer, and have the money to burn, a 6800GT is one of your better buys. The sweet spot for that market segment has shifted back to Nvidia for now. - Oshyan

Do you consider a AMD64 +3500 faster then a Pentium 3.4?

The processor to beat is the 3400+ on the Newcastle core and socket 754, as I said. Two other models of the 3400+ on the Clawhammer and Newcastle cores, as well as the 3500+ on the Newcastle core, run at 2.2Ghz. 200Mhz slower than the 3400+ on socket 754, which runs at 2.4Ghz. I know that doesn't make much sense, but blame AMD's "PR Rating" system. Now in the case of the Clawhammer core 3400+, the only difference is it has 1MB cache. The Newcastle 3500+ is on socket 939 and has dual channel memory controllers. Neither of those things will inrease performance enough to make up for a 200Mhz raw clock rate deficit, and in any case both are more expensive than the Newcastle 3400+ on socket 754. Suffice to say that the socket 754 3400+ is really a "sweet spot" right now. In any case the 3400+ will beat a P4 at 3.4Ghz on many applications, but certainly not all. Both still have their strengths. Athlon 64 is better for games and some rendering applications, particularly those like Terragen and (I believe) Vue Esprit, that are more heavily dependent on traditional floating point performance, whereas the P4 is better in some rendering applications like Lightwave, particularly those that are optimized for SSE2, as well as on a lot of media encoding like Windows Media, etc. So really it's a matter of determining what applications you'll be using most. Another factor is cost, and it can help sway the decision considerably in some cases. The Athlon 64 3400+ costs around $245. A 3.4Ghz P4 starts at $280 on socket 775. Motherboard cost is fairly comparable although an equivalent Athlon 64 motherboard in terms of features will tend to cost a bit less. They have similar cooling requirements, particularly the new Prescott core which runs hotter than the P4 Northwood (Northwood core P4's are more expensive and slightly higher performance). A power supply that will be good for one is good for the other. So really it comes down to the base processor cost, and the Athlon platform, as always, is slightly less expensive. For whatever that's worth. - Oshyan

big thanks for your great answers...I guess Ill have to make a choice now ;)

Ironically, the P4 is now the value option :) There are, by the way, inexpensive socket 939 Athlon64's out also. The dual core models will definitely suffer on a single channel memory bus, but they'll still scream -- AMD's planning to give each one a full cache hierarchy (1 MB L2 for each, I think) to mitigate that. No matter which socket you choose, it will be a good upgrade option, but it will definitely be available for socket 940 (Opteron) and socket 939 (FX) before for socket 754. And btw, socket 754 isn't the long-term platform. Sockets 939 and 940 are, in case you are planning on doing a lot of upgrading. If not, that doesn't matter anyway.

How is the P4 now the value option? I just showed it's more expensive for equivalent performance. :p Of course there are inexpensive 939's. It's just that, price for price, the 754's are ahead of the 939's. Particularly around the 3400+ price/performance point. The 939 platform is the future platform, that will run the dual cores, etc. Initially the dual cores will only be in the FX and Opteron models, and since the memory controllers are built into the chip, there will never be a single channel dual core model as far as I know. By the time dual cores are around outside the Opteron and FX lines, in the mainstream market, socket 754 will probably be simply phased out. Socket 939 is, incidentally, not just for FX processors by any means. Certainly the 939 is the socket of the future. But upgrading in this day and age is a notoriously poor value proposition. Motherboards are so cheap, around $100 for a good quality Asus, Abit, etc. with reasonable features, that it seems a bit silly to pay more for less performance now (socket 939), just so you can get a processor socket that you can put faster processors into later. The technology will be better when you finally do intend to upgrade, and the prices lower, so you might as well buy a new chip and board at that time anyway, and make your entry into the 939 platform only when you need to. Unless, of course, you're the type to upgrade every 3 months, in which case it would make more sense to go for the newer socket now. I strongly recommend against that kind of upgrade cycle though, unless you get a new motherboard, case, and memory along with it and simply roll the old hardware into a simplified renderbox. Within a year or two you'll have a great little render farm. - Oshyan

well it all depends on if you are buying your computer today or this year, if its this year i would seriously recomend a nforce4 mobo(sli) + a gf6800 gt pcix(pci express) just so you can upgrade it further on by picking up one more card, thats how i usualy buy the few times i start on a completely new rig, making sure i get as much future headroom as possible leaving room for possible improvements for a long time, which is cheaper in the long run then buying a brand new computer all the time. the upgrade path is also why im recommending a 939 motherboard and particularly the nforce4. however as i said earlier on and as oshyan has pointed out if youre concerned about money today then sli and nforce 4 is out of the question. and the same goes for if you need your rig today since it wont be available for some time. dont know i agree with alot of what oshyan said,but i woudnt pick up a 739 motherboard today. then again most ppl dont change cpu that often so by the time youll get your next cpu/computer youll most likely get a dual amd setup, or if intel has something better in 2006 picking up that. Either way you go you would shoot yourself in the foot if you bought a p4, unless youre using a specifiq application that does run faster on the p4, there are some instances and applications thats running better on a p4, but in the majority of todays situation amd64 is the clear choice. as far as p4 being the value option, instead of taking our word for it, check the anandtech test, you get less performance for the same amount of money or even more, so p4 is not the value option, its just less performance for as much or more money at the moment generaly speaking, but check some in depth tests and see for yourself its alot easier :)

Well, the way I usually buy my computers I tend to pay abit more when I buy it to get what the parts that usually wins the 'most bang for the money'. Buying a new computer is something I would do when I could get about double the processor speed compared to what I got and upgrading it relly never is a way to go as my wife(does some video editing) and the children (plays games,plays games,plays games...)always sceems for more power I have always had to let go of the old one. Today I have a P4 2,6GHz 1Gb 2x200Mb SATA in RAID(for safe data keeping not for speed) and a Ti4800 graphic card. It's obvious that I wont be able to double the processor power this time. So maybe waiting for the nForce4 with sli and get one together with a 6800GT and 1GBb RAM and then maybe in the coming 6months add a second 6800GT and a 1Gb more memory it will be running at full power before the wife and children starts to ask for more. ;) Some questions remains: 1. Will a 256Mb 6800GT give me more power over a 128Mb one in 3D applications or is it rather something usefull for on the edge gaming? 2. Another way to double the processing power would be to get DUAL mobo. I have however not found any AMD64 mobos or multi processors. Am I correct that the only AMD options for a DUAL setup is Athlon MP and Opterons and if so what kind of power could one expect from an DUAL Athlon setup compared to a single AMD64 +3500? 3. Also, is there any DUAL bords for the Pentium 4 775 socket or is Xeons the only option?

Oshyan, They're the value proposition because they are cheaper overall ;) (Yes, I know the P4 is generally not as fast as the K8 -- I was just making fun of Intel because during the Northwood's heyday (i.e. last year ;)), the Athlon was the value option). Hellborn, to answer your questions: 1) More memory doesn't add power, it's basically a bigget cache. If you're using a lot of large textures, you might see a difference, otherwise not. In other words, it's a definite maybe :) The card's ram has to hold a frame buffer (what you see), a back buffer (what the card is drawing to), a z-buffer (depth map, used during the drawing process), a bitmap cache so that it can redraw windows and the cursor quickly, and scene data (geometry). Whatever is left over it can use for caching textures. That's why the high-end cards have more memory. 2) You won't find any Athlon64 dual boards, only Opteron... but they're the same processor. So a dual Opteron would crush a dual AthlonMP like a bug, because the AthlonMP is severely memory starved. Comparing it to a single Athlon64 is hard, but since the Athlon64 will give you a huge improvement in graphics performance, it would probably be a huge winner if you plan to use it as a workstation. 3) Xeon. The current Xeon processors are based on the same Prescott core (current = Nocona) as the P4, using the same memory bus. So everything everyone has told you about P4 vs Athlon64 applies directly to Xeon vs Opteron, but with one exception: the Opteron's memory subsystem scales better from one all the way up to four processors. After that they both pretty much hit the brick wall of needing external logic, after which the better choice depends as much on the system as on the processors themselves, making the comparison a lot harder. But then you're also looking at the bargain basement price of $50k for the barebones system, so that's not likely to be a problem anytime soon, I imagine :)

Thank's :) I have been reading reviews for over 10 hours by now and it still feel as i'm just scraping the surface. Here are a couple more in case anyone has some time to spare.. The first one might be hard;) As I'm not in a hurry to change the computer I suppose I could wait a month or two and get one of the nForce4 SLI cards. The question is, how do the cards work together. Say I get 2 6800GT 128Mb card, would they run as 2 GPUs sharing a total of 256Mb or will they load half the data each and work with there own part or will they have load all the data into both the cards and maybe render every second frame each.? Do i have to install 2 cards of exactly the same model and manufacturer(in case one starts with one card and it goes out of stock)?

I think they share data per frame like the original 3Dfx SLI (SLI = Scan Line Interleave). I'm not certain though. I'm not sure about how it handles asymmetry, but right now it's an nVidia-only feature, most likely inherited from 3Dfx directly, since they bought 3Dfx :) In other words, I don't know the answer to the second question. Hopefully we'll find out more soon, as the nForce4 SLI boards start shipping. Which reminds me -- there are actually 3 flavors of nForce4; one low(er) cost model, an upscale single PCIe slot model, and an SLI model, so not all nForce4 boards will be expensive.

Hmmm.. Seems as there is a risk of the SLI mobos and other new cards will be PCI express only. Checking out my usuall dealers none of the stock any high end nVidia cards with PCI Express? What's the point of PCI Express if putting anything else than a high end card on it?

I built my PC around a Pentium 4 processor and ATI Radeon 9800 Pro card and it works very well for me. Anyway, whatever is 'best' today will likely be outdated in a weeks time!

SLI will be only PCI express. It's the only way to do it, since there are never 2 AGP slots. Interestingly, PCI Express is being used as the interface for a lot of budget and mid-level cards. Why? I'm not entirely sure. The truth is it doesn't even provide any real benefit to high end cards, yet (aside from SLI capability). So of course it doesn't help lower end cards either. One possibility is that it's an "OEM checkbox" feature, basically something that exists so that high volume OEM's can put "featuring new PCI express graphics system!" on the box and theoretically sell more units. As for the "SLI" technology itself, using multiple boards or multiple chips on a single board has been around for a while. 3dfx pioneered it in the consumer space back with the Voodoo II, but ATI and others have since dabbled in it. The only reason multi-card solutions haven't been found in the consumer market lately is because the AGP spec only allows 1 slot, and pairing an AGP board with a PCI board would create a large imbalance. The "SLI" technology that will be used for the nForce4 is not the same as the old 3dfx SLI, which used a ScanLine Interleave (hence "SLI") process for splitting up the work load. Most likely it is only the name and the basic experience and understanding of how load balancing works in graphics rendering that nVidia drew from their 3dfx acquisition. - Oshyan

I think PCIe is a bit less expensive than AGP, because it requires a lower pin count. While it's currently not any faster than AGP, it has headroom for the future. AGP 3.0 (i.e. 8x) does actually include a provision for a second AGP slot, but so far I haven't seen any implementations that make use of that capability.

you only have to use the same type of 6800 pcix card or if my memory isnt failing me the 6600gt pcix. anyway, all you have to do now is to pick up any "6800" gt or ultra card (pcix) and once you need some more performance, pick up your next 6800 gt pcix, no need for the exact same brand.

I have desided to go for an ordinary nForce3 based mobo with an AMD +3500, 2Gb RAM, and an 6800 256Mb Ultra. The reson I did decide on the ultra was that I wanted 256Mb of DDR3 memory (seems as the 6800GT 128Mb not have DDR3) the differense in price to the Ultra was about 12% and as the difference in speed is about the same I did get something for the extra money. I was close to go for a DUAL Opteron 244 solution but as it would have costed me about $700 more and as I also whould have had to buy by mail order with I don't like. When buying this kind of stuff I prefere the service a local dealer can give. This way I will give the PCI Express time to be standard untill next time I buy a new computer.

I highly doubt that AGP will vanish within a couple of years, so you should be fine. Odds are, AGP will last until the next-generation graphics architecture becomes mainstream, which will most likely begin in 2006 or thereabouts, at the earliest.