Spec me a 3D rendering Supercomputer !!!!

[Subliminal Aura]

Looking at 4gigs of RAM

Processor maybe 2 x 4 quad ? Xeon ?

Quadro FX GPU ?

Budget 2000 - more if its not possible in that price.

 

[Subliminal Aura]

OK how about the dual xeon option ?

 

[Subliminal Aura]

I recently (last week) speced a CAD machine for use with engineering software. I investigated the Xeon route, and if my knowledge had been better I may have gone down it. But, it looked like a mine field. Most (if not all) Xeon motherboards are v expensive and use ECC fully buffered memory (we're not talking normal DDR2 prices here). The motherboards aren't ATX spec either so that makes me wonder about power supplies / cases etc!

If you can find someone who can give you a crash course then go for it ! . (I ended up opting for quad core and 4 gig of quick ram and £1000 Ati FireGL gfx because that's where most of the work is done.)

I'm quickly running into these very same problems and am wondering if I should invest in overclocking a quad and RAM.

The other issue with these boards is that the PCI-express slot is rated at 8x at best :|

Currently looking at the ASUS DSBV-D
http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=9&l2=39&l3=0&model=1210&modelmenu=1

Width is the right size but 1inch more depth.

 

[Subliminal Aura]

Blimey - get a life !!

OK what macs are out there that are up to competing with a q6600 with accompanied firegl card ?

I'm open to all options.

ps mdjmcnally thanks for the info

 

[Subliminal Aura]

WOW I came to the same conclusion - MAC PRO all the way !!!!!

It's unbelievable ! From what I gather they are using xeon 5300s and the same Intel 5000 series motherboard. Dirt cheap n all

I am trying to get get a detailed spec for the motherboard in the mac pro - any help here would be great.

I'm also trying to work out if the mobo has intels sata raid controller help me find some detailed specs guys

 

[Subliminal Aura]

Get two cheap quadcore PCs IMO.

Presuming you're doing the sort of 3d rendering that means you can slave rendering onto the other PC.

You could probably build 4 for the price of a xeon unit.

When was that last time you bought a software license

 

[Subliminal Aura]

I do not think that it has the Intel RAID controller since they offer a separate PCI-e card for SATA and SAS RAID functionality.

What else would you like to know about the mobo?

Looks like its a custom Intel 5000 built for apple as all the dual xeon boards I looked at were 533/677 ddr2 but the mac pro is at 800mhz ?

Also is the PCI-e is at full 16x ?

I guess I will have to buy a SATA pci raid controller - any options here boys ?

Wish me luck in trying to build windows xp-64 when I get it !

 

[Subliminal Aura]

Since Intel RAID is software RAID anyway, I suspect that you could set it up anyway. The RAID card available with the Mac Pro is a hardware RAID card.

Which RAID level do you want to run?

I'm thinking RAID0(2 disks OS) + RAID0(2 disks data/programs)

 

[Subliminal Aura]

mac pro arrived... 2 hours later it was running windows xp 64bit (dual boot must say I did like mac os too).

What can I say but wow.

Quick cinebench and I got 21,500 on multi cpu 3,500 odd on single core - all at stock of course.

Awe smacked !

 

[Subliminal Aura]

Sounds great, any pics?

I just configured a mac pro with everything at max to see the price: dual 3.2 Xeons, 32Gb RAM, 4 solid state 300Gb drives. Comes to £17,300 lol

LOL at your dream machine. I'm out an about now but nothing has changed as far as the mac pro is concerned looks the same as the old one except it comes with a sexy slim (may I say unusable ) keyboard.

Or maybe you want screen grabs of the benchmark

 

[Subliminal Aura]

Thanks mate but I've already started specing a farm of slave renderers