Hey Everyone, Does anyone have experience with the aforementioned? I am currently putting together a small render farm, and it was suggested to me that perhaps dual processor systems may acheive faster network rendering results as opposed to two computers with the same processor (single processor) in each. I suppose none of this would matter if C5Pro doesn't support dual procesor systems. Please! Provide me with your sagely advice :) Thanks :) Todd

Todd,

I have a Dell Precision 470 dual Xeon 3 ghz, Carrara loves it. I'd be really surprised if it was slower than having two single processor machines network rendering, it was probably cheaper, and I get to take advantage of the second processor all the time.

I bought mine through the Dell outlet as a refurb, got it real cheap, but these days I would probably recommend a dual core chip rather than a dual chip as the best bang for the buck.

If you want me to benchmark anything just let me know.

Good luck,
Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
Carrara plug-ins

I'm using 2 Intel 830 - 3GHz dual core based PCs (Gateway refurbs) mostly for render farm use. I get ~23% faster with one dual core PC compared to my Dell 370 workstation with a single 3.6 GHz CPU. Unfortunately Intel didn't implement Hyperthreading on this CPU. I imagine I would see ~30-35% better if both cores could Hyperthread?

I would go with the dual core based system, as Carrara (and most other 3D apps.) will use them. You can likely get 2 basic 840 (3.2 GHz) based, or AMD (which is faster)X2 based systems for the cost of a single dual processor PC.

If you want Mac, go for the new Quad system, or wait for the new Intel Macs.

Message edited on: 01/18/2006 14:53

Thanks LCBoliou and Eric (I love DCG plugins!!!!! And thanks for the benchmarking offer, that is very kind of you :). I really, really appreciate the advice. I wasn't sure if Carrara would take advantage of a multiprocessor environment, so this is good news! Once I wipe the drool off my keyboard, I'll get to some rendering. Thanks again! Todd

Hi, timely thread for me. I have just fallen heir to an old dual processor workstation. It is a twin P3 600 with 1Gb RAM. Now I know it is a bit slow for main use, but I though I might set it up as a render node. So does anybody know, do the C5Pro render nodes recognize the dual processors? This is not clear from the previous posts. If this is the case then does it use 1 node for both or 1 for each processor? Thanks in advance Tony

Yes, C5Pro will use your dual processor PC. Actually, clock-for-clock, the old P3 is better than a P4 at rendering. You might be able to match a single P4 based PC with a 1.4 GHz CPU? The Intel "M" series CPUs are based on the "old" P3 architecture. The Centrino has a higher Instruction Per Clock than either the Pentium 4 or Athlon XP.

Be interesting...maybe you could post some rendering results?

LCBoliou - thanks for the info, my own experience seems to echo your comments.

I had a 650 Mhz Pentium3 laptop that would render 4 frames of an animation in the same time as it took a 1.5 Ghz Pentium4 graphics workstation to render 5 frames. At the same time I had and 950Mhz Athlon that I built myself, and it ran circles around the 1.5 Ghz Pentium4 at 2.5 frames completed on the Athlon to 1 frame on the Pentium4.

In general a dual processor will be faster than two computer doing network rendering. A dual processor is also faster than a dual core processor. Our tests show that you get almost a factor 2 on pure rendering with 2 processors and about a 60% increase with a dual core processor. This is true on Windows. On Mac Os X, dual processor systems do not perform as well mostly because the multithreading calls on the Mac are really slow at this point. You can still get a factor of 2 in some cases but most of the time it is only a 40 - 50 % speed up.

Hi, I'm still not sure about this. I know that C5Pro will utilise dual processors. But will a render node do the same? Like having 2 render nodes in one box? At the moment the workstation doesn't have a hard drive or OS. I don't want to break up my P3 700 to get the dual processor working if the render node isn't dual processor aware. Hope that all made sense. Regards Tony

Yes a render node is dual processor aware. Regards, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild Carrara plug-ins

Eric, Thanks for clearing that up. Looks like I'll be working on getting that up and running at the weekend. Thanks again. PS: I also love your plugins, especially AnythingGoos.

Tony,

Yes, setting up the dual processor machine as a render node will make use of both processors on it (you will have 3 active "render boxes", assuming your using 1 single processor machine as the host and a dual processor as the render node). I have done this using a laptop as the host, and a dual processor machine as a render node, and it works very well.

Charles,
Thanks for the clarification on the performance of dual core vs. dual processors. I thought that the dual core macines might be a bit slower than an equivalant dual processor..

Too slow, sorry for the cross post!!

Message edited on: 01/20/2006 10:09

A little OT.... I have a G4 dual processor and a G5 Dual. I also have three Athlon single processor machines running XP. Is the renderfarm bi? I mean...can can you mix macs and pc's? ::::: Opera :::::: (evaluating Carrara)

Yes the rendering node use all the processors available. You can mix Macs and PCs however it is not recommended as it can cause some problem sometimes. For instance physics tend to give different result on Mac and PC so you can end up with mismatched tiles...

Had no end of trouble setting up the workstation. Turned out that the fan on the second processor was broken and it kept overheating. Managed to get hold of another processor/fan and installed it. Ran some tests last night and all seems to be working well. I have 3 activer render tiles, 1 for the main PC and 2 for the dual P3 :-) On the few test renders I did it looks like render time is reduced by over a third compared to rendering on my main PC (P4 2.0Ghz) Thanks again for all the replies. Regards Tony