Hey all,

Well, it's new computer time. 

I've been seriously doing my homework, and I'm considering getting the HP Z820 Workstation in a few weeks.

Reason being, before, when Iwasable to work, I have experience with this computer and it does seem to be quite well in ease of access, and set up.

This is what I'm considering on it, and then I have a few questions afterwards regarding Poser and compiling obj files and the like....

I am considering it having

Windows 7 Professional 64 Bit

12 gigs of unbuffered Ram

2 3.30 Intel Xeon Processors

4 TB Hard Drive

6 GB nVidia Tesla Card

Now here's where my question comes in -- will I ever have to run a render over night again with a computer like this?  (I'm sooooooo hoping not) and if I stick to Gmax (I do have Hexagon but just can't get used to it) will it take forever to still compile obj files?  Sometimes pending on the complexity, I've had to have it run all night before.

Thanks for everyone's input.  I really appreciate it, and hoping this computer should solve my rendering needs and model constructing needs. Didn't get it yet, should be in a few weeks. (like a kid in candy store thinking about this.......)

Your only problem will be that P8 will not take advantage of the extra memory nor will it run in the 64 bit environment, only 32 bit.  If you are going to upgrade your hardware, might as well upgrade to PP2012 since you are considering creating content.

Yeah, don't much matter what you have under the hood, Poser 8's 32 bit has you bootstrapped. Of course more horsepower is gonna help, just not nearly as much as you would probably be expecting.

Laurie

Wow -- glad I did my research then.  Upgrading to the Poser Pro2012 won't be a problem for me what so ever.

My only concern now is this, all figures such as V4/M4 and items should work as in the prior versions, right?

I don't want to be strapped to the 32 bit environment any more, and I realize the extreme limitations.

Now, upgradiing to Poser Pro 2012 I take it would speed up those render times then, correct?

yes poser pro 2012 by itself will give you a nice decrease in render times over poser 8.

Cool --- just what I wanted to hear meatSim.  Thanks!!!!! .   Looks like all systems are go then for this new rig.  I feel like a kid in a candy store shopping for it. LOL 

Which processors are you going to get in it? All you put was 3.3ghtz.

The only reason I ask is that you would be better off getting CPUs with more cores, even if they are slower.

Core speed typically has a smaller impact on render times than the number of cores does. Fast and lots of cores is even better, but also very expensive.

Just so you know:

Hp wants $2700.00 for a E5-2665 8 Core 2.40GHz 20MB cache processor.

Newegg will sell you a Intel Xeon E5-2680 8 Core 2.7GHz 20MB Cache for $1800.00

Makes sense to me, less costs more from HP.

I personally would build one before I would buy one already put together.

I just built a system for someone that used these. Yes it was not cheap to build, but far cheaper than buying it assembled.

And yes it screams. 32 threads for 64 bit programs to crunch with.

Processor link:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117262

Motherboard link: (130 watt max per processor, daul socket LGA 2011) that fits in a 30 dollar (ATX) case instead of a 600 dollar rack mount one you don't need. The case does not make it any faster, it just makes you more broke.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182343

I have always said if you are not running work station class software like Maya or 3DMax stay away from work station class graphics card.  The whole system is really overkill and may not run a well as a good gaming rig for the software you are using.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the extra RAM usage won't really speed up render times, since they are limited by CPU.

I just tested a single dragon figure in PP2012 and in P8 at 1600x1236 resolution, draft quality render settings (with IDL and 1 RT bounce).

On PP2012: 1:39; on P8: 1:49

I tried another smaller image featuring transmapped hair, a clothed Vicky, and SSS.  The SSS calculation only used 1 core and took up a significant portion of time. 

PP2012: 4.37 (of which ~2:30 minutes was SSS calculation).

P8: 4:19. Of course, without the SSS and GC, in P8, the same image look like utter garbage. 

PP2012: 1:48 without SSS.  So much, much faster.

The gain that you get with being able to use more than 3GB of RAM is that if you have a scene that requires a lot of RAM, Poser won't just quit in the middle of a render when it reaches that 3GB limit.  That used to happen to me all the time with P8, and has yet to happen with PP2012.  I would never go back to P8.  It annoyed me too much.

But don't be disappointed if a mere upgrade in software does not suddenly make all renders lighting fast. A bit faster with some scenes, a lot faster with others, maybe a bit slower with some (if you use SSS).

I am currently rendering a scene with V4 in it and a clothing/armor set on her.

15 clothing characters conformed to V4, 5 props including enviroment sphere. With one light, idl and sss enabled.

Firefly is using 24 cores and about 6 gig of memory. (I am using large buckets)

That's one clothed character in the scene, no background, floor, etc.

     Once P8 or P9 approaches that 32bit memory allocation, it will slow to a crawl - and start putting much mileage on the hard drive by page filing.

     By comparison, on a 64bit system, I intentionally burdened Poser Pro 2012 with a massive scene, complex materials, and lots of special effects (reflection, refraction, anisotropic sparkles, SSS, IDL, displacement, GC) and rendered it at 5120x1600 pixels, with 95% irradiance cache and 95% IDL quality with ten ray trace bounces.  I got Poser to draw a bit over 48GB (max occurred near end of the IDL precalc);  Firefly continued to run at full speed.  ^^

If I could make a suggestion.

I see you specified a 4 Tb drive. That's plenty of space, but I would consider using two or more drives of lower capacity. Drive failures do happen and 4 Tb is a lot of data to lose in one go if you are unlucky. With a couple of lower capacity drives you can put copies of your critical data onto both drives, and so reduce the risk considerably.

In a workstation, 4 terabytes could be multiple drives in a redundant raid array.

When the computer tells you to replace a drive, pop a new on in and it rebuilds itself.

Quote - Upgrading to the Poser Pro2012 won't be a problem for me what so ever.

Did you hit the lottery or something? A few weeks ago you couldn't afford $10 for the Car Patio.

Your new rig sounds mighty. grin

just my notes:

• you don't need the big video card, but nVidia pro products (like Tesla etc) have more stable performance / stable drivers compared to the consumer products
• a serious part of your Poser work will use single / dual threads (cloth room, render preprocessing, IDL prepass, ...) so a single fast CPU then is handy, over many idle ones
• the only real heavy multiprocess thing is rendering. Xeons are more steady high performers on long lasting full speed tasks. My workstation supplier now offers 2xXeon E5-2640 = 24 threads @ 3GHz. Must be something.
• note that Poser advices to run specific renders in single thread mode, like animations using IDL. Then my CPU (@4Gz) will outperform yours seriously.
• otherwise machines like this are intended for rendering HD animations, large scale high quality print result (7000x5000 etc) and - in my case - Vue scenes with large ecosystems.
• it does make sense to cut down render times from 24 to 8 hrs so you can run at night. Cutting down a night job to 4 or 2 hrs does not make sense. Cutting down an 8 hrs job to 30 mins (lunch break) makes sense. Your call.
• I can recommend SSD instead of HDD, at least for Windows / Programs (and switch off defragmenting for it). Not for data.
• I can recommend setting up a RAM-disk for all your temp files
• It's not only hardware (and Poser) that needs upgrading. Other software needs a step as well (64bit Photoshop / Gimp / Video editing, and so on). Your libraries might need an overhaul too, as large scale prints require high res textures. And your ability to handle all that must improve with it (master your shaders like BB or else...).
  Some time ago it was found that a lot of accidents on the German Autobahn (no speed limits) happened with the AudiTT-something, rather new those days, as the (young, male) drivers couldn't handle its speed (over 160mph) and acceleration (0 to 100mph within 10 sec). There is some message in that.
• from my own experience: you cannot cut down (render) time. 30 years ago, my simulation processes ran overnight and took a day or month for completion. Today, my stills / animations run overnight and take a day / month for completion. Output requirements and (customer) expectations just go up with the kit.

anyway, just go for it and have fun. It will bring us RagtopJohnny 2.0 :). Fast & Furious.

unless you are Bill Gates, way overkill on the processors -- especially the graphics card.

"Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the extra RAM usage won't really speed up render times, since they are limited by CPU."

ive seen RAM usage as high as 15GB with Poser. it depends on what you have in the scene, if youre using dynamic hair, your render settings and bucket size.

ideally you should have no virtual memory usage (hard drive clicking away) while rendering, or it really slows things down.

for the record im running Windows 7 x64 on a Phenom II X6 1090T @ 4GHZ
16 gigs RAM
GTX 560Ti 448 Classified
Seasonic X-650 PSU
main OS and programs on a 128GB SSD,
all my data on two mirrored 1TB drives in RAID 

what id consider a 'budget' system for someone who works in 3D, but i have been very happy with the rendering performance and i dont feel the need to upgrade anytime soon. my only upgrade this year was a better UPS.

unless youve won the lottery and dont care about money, the bleeding-edge high end CPU and GPU (especially workstation graphics) segments offer the least amount of value for your money. you pay out the ass for that last 10-20% performance.

you could build two less expensive rigs and use one as a full-time rendering machine while you worked/multitasked totally unimpeded on the other, or use them both with the Queue Manager (and still have a lot of money left over to put in the bank).  paying ~2000+ for a processor is insanity.

Yeah, I agree with Blackhearted. My little GeForce 240GT 1gig runs pretty well for everything, including Blender's Cycles, so a 6gig card is REALLY throwing your money out the window. The 6 and 8 core procs work pretty well these days - Most of the Intel procs have multithreading and work really well. I'd go with building two really good machines: after all, you can use them both to render at the same time, as Blackhearted has pointed out.

Laurie

I appreciate everyone's responses....it's been a big help.  For those wondering about the processors and forgive me for NOT listing the kind, its an Intel Xeon. 

Much appreciated, I take everyone's suggestions very seriously here.  .

Okay ---

Final specs of the machine:

Intel Xeon 3.1 ghz Processor x 2 @ 8 cores

16 gb unbuffered Ram

2 Terrabytes Drives  (1 Individual Drive Each in 2 Bays)

Windows 7 Pro 64 Bit

Nvidia Quadro 4000 2 Gb card

Got the price quote this morning, should be all set.  My other specs were around the price of a used car :blink: wouldn't dare spend that much.

Well, have a good one all, off to a Poser Creation Day!

Now that sounds much more reasonable ;). Even at that it's still gonna be nice and fast (and expensive...lol). Make sure the mobo is capable of going more than 16 if you'll ever need more. The mistake I made with mine is that it tops out at 8 gigs. Of course I'd love to have even just 16...lol.

Laurie

Thanks Laurie --- I thought so too!

Quote - Now that sounds much more reasonable ;). Even at that it's still gonna be nice and fast (and expensive...lol). Make sure the mobo is capable of going more than 16 if you'll ever need more.

Laurie

This is a very good point, many of the dual LGA 2011 motherboards will not take processors above a certain wattage. (they do that to keep the cost to make the board down) This will limit the number of cores per processor with even the best Xeons. Some cut off at 90, some at 130, some will run 150 watt ones.

Another thing to ask is if the secondary cpu is on the motherboard or on a daughter card. If it is on a daughter card I would upgrade to a motherboard that has both of them on the main board.

I have a Dell that someone gave me that is a daughter type (Westmere LGA 1366 Xeons), and it is no where near as fast as one with both cpus on the motherboard.

why do you think you need a quadro card?

the only place youll notice a difference with the quadro is that it supports hardware line antialiasing which is a big plus in some high end 3D apps and CAD applications. 

otherwise there will be no significant difference between a $1000-4000 workstation card and a ~$200 mainstream enthusiast gaming card in Poser. youre just pissing away a lot of money for something you wont benefit from and will be obsolete in 24 months.

even high end apps such as Mari are being optimized to run on much more affordable gaming cards like the GTX 480 and 580 (and BTW also run fine on a 560ti, 570).

IMO you are spending way too much money on this rig. computers are not an 'investment', and you could build something that would give you the same practical Poser performance for 1/3 of the cost.
component prices have dropped significantly. you can build an excellent machine for ~$1500 these days.

also - if youre getting 'quotes' for builds you are already shopping in the wrong place, and are forking over hundreds of dollars in profit margin to someone with each component upgrade. your best bet for building a system is to find a great deal on a preconfiged system or, preferably, an online parts retailer (like Memory Express in Canada) that also offers a system build/OS install service (usually for a paltry fee like ~$75) - theyll deal with any DOA/defective parts and compatibility issues onsite and usually warranty the build as well.  if youre talking to a sales rep and getting 'quotes' on high-end builds youre already getting ripped off.
just my $0.02, coming from someone who worked in Dell business sales for years.

The problem with building or buying a today's "top of the bill" system is that they age unbelivably fast. They will be 1/2 of the cost in 6 months.
Or twice the power for the same cost.

Only thing Poser needs is a fast multi core CPU, lots of RAM, and a reasonable Graphic card.

CPU, RAM, video card in that order.

Drop the video card a stage, Poser does not need it, and double or tripple the RAM.
RAM does not cost an arm and a leg these days.

In your current systen RAM will become the bottleneck.

I would tread careful as it is so easy to spend handfuls of money for little or no benefit.  

I had the same dilema almost 2 years ago when I wanted to upgrade my system my first thought was a top of the range system at a nice £2,800 (sorry based in the UK). Then someone who reallly knew what they were on about woke me up from the dream made me look at what I needed.  I Built the system myself with more twice as much storage than my dream and it cost me £1,200.  More to the point the PC is up off the floor as I know just how quick dust can impact cooling.  The downside it is on the desk and very close and thus could be noisy and distracting. By being able to hand pick every component I have a system that stays cool, whispers and more to the point meets my rendering needs.

A similar system would cost less today or alternatively the same price would buy a much higher spec but it will see me for another year of so.

Quote -      Once P8 or P9 approaches that 32bit memory allocation, it will slow to a crawl - and start putting much mileage on the hard drive by page filing.

     By comparison, on a 64bit system, I intentionally burdened Poser Pro 2012 with a massive scene, complex materials, and lots of special effects (reflection, refraction, anisotropic sparkles, SSS, IDL, displacement, GC) and rendered it at 5120x1600 pixels, with 95% irradiance cache and 95% IDL quality with ten ray trace bounces.  I got Poser to draw a bit over 48GB (max occurred near end of the IDL precalc);  Firefly continued to run at full speed.  ^^

I am suitably envious.

Make sure you can hook your monitor to that video card. The Quadro 4000 I have only has 2 display port ports on it. No vga, DMI, or HDMI on it.

On another note, Unless you plan on doing a lot of GPU rendering, the quadro is overkill. Not to mention the fact that it is slower than gaming cards that are cheaper now.

Ooooooo ---

Wasn't aware until now that the Quardro is slower than gaming cards.  May have to re-look at the option of the Video card....

Thanks for the info on the plugs too.

With a good video card, Octane render engine could spead up things for you. I don't know if it works with Poser though.

Quote - Ooooooo ---

Wasn't aware until now that the Quardro is slower than gaming cards.  May have to re-look at the option of the Video card....

Thanks for the info on the plugs too.

The Quadro is optimized for things that you will probably never use. I has a small amount of cuda cores compared to the newer gaming cards as well.

Quadro 4000 is a 256 bit card, with 256 CUDA cores. Clocked a 475 mhz, costs about 750 right now.

Geforce GTX 580 Fermi is a 384 bit card, with 512 CUDA cores, Clocked at 850 mhz, and is about 675 right now.

For what you will be using it for, the Geforce will smoke the Quadro, it has a wider memory channel, 2 times the cuda cores, and is clocked almost twice as fast.

Make sure they have sufficient cooling for your computer as well. Graphics cards get really hot these days as well as processors.

Laurie