Thread: Hardware For Rendering
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Replies:
10
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Last Post:
Aug 21, 2008 1:18 AM
Last Post By: nathan
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Posts:
18
Registered:
03/16/07
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Hardware For Rendering
Posted:
Apr 5, 2007 9:05 AM
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Our company has decided that in order to allow me to work normally while rendering we need a dedicated Render PC.
The spec of my current computer:
Pentium 4 3.00GHz
2 GB Ram
2 GB Virtual Memory
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600
Basically we need an idea of what kind of hardware we would need for using Viz Render 2007 and maybe a different set of specs for running ACAD 2008.
ANy idea would be great, we were quoted a Computer and were slightly put off by the price to say the least.
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Posts:
22
Registered:
04/16/07
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Re: Hardware For Rendering
Posted:
Apr 25, 2007 11:44 PM
in response to: DownToEarth
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I'm just getting upgraded to 4 GB of RAM, as ACA 2008 seems to need 3 GB to do any sort of meaningful rendering within...also keep in mind that 2007 was the last year vizR is packaged with ADT, now it comes only with the built in rendering engine...I'm using a Pentium D dual core 3.6 GHz with soon to be 4 GB Ram, it works pretty well for me...I ran a 45 second motion capture film at high res (about 800 clips) and it took about 34 hours (and that was with the 2 GB RAM)
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Re: Hardware For Rendering
Posted:
Apr 27, 2007 8:49 AM
in response to: DownToEarth
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Core2Duo is the go!
wrote in message news:5542330@discussion.autodesk.com...
Our company has decided that in order to allow me to work normally while
rendering we need a dedicated Render PC.
The spec of my current computer:
Pentium 4 3.00GHz
2 GB Ram
2 GB Virtual Memory
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600
Basically we need an idea of what kind of hardware we would need for using
Viz Render 2007 and maybe a different set of specs for running ACAD 2008.
ANy idea would be great, we were quoted a Computer and were slightly put off
by the price to say the least.
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Posts:
1,661
Registered:
07/20/03
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Re: Hardware For Rendering
Posted:
Apr 27, 2007 9:12 PM
in response to: Nathan
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Would the new quad core CPU make a differance? I'm not sure if acad/ACA will make use of the additional cores.
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Posts:
5
Registered:
12/04/06
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Re: Hardware For Rendering
Posted:
Apr 28, 2007 12:25 AM
in response to: jmcintyre
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AutoCAD and ACA will not benefit too much from a multi-processor or multi-core system, but the Mental Ray render does apply one thread to each core in order to speed up rendering.
regards
mark webb, autodesk
Message was edited by: webbm
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Posts:
1,661
Registered:
07/20/03
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Re: Hardware For Rendering
Posted:
Apr 29, 2007 8:20 PM
in response to: webbm
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...so you're saying a quad core will benefit only a rendering machine? That's fine so long as it does make a differance, those quad cores are expensive.
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Posts:
5
Registered:
12/04/06
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Re: Hardware For Rendering
Posted:
Apr 29, 2007 11:10 PM
in response to: jmcintyre
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I guess should clarify. Quad core will benefit any system in some way, for example while one core is running the AutoCAD main thread the others can be responsible for all the other processes running as part of the operating system or other programs you have running. For various other reasons, a system running more processes than threads will incur an overhead simply dealing with switching between these processes.
What I really meant to say is that rendering on AutoCAD will get you the most bang for the buck out of a multicore system as it specifically creates one thread for each core and uses each to speed up render times considerably. I run a quad core system here and rarely are all 4 cores pushed to the limit, but AutoCAD and other intensive applications do run much more responsively than on a single core system with otherwise similar specs.
Note that over time you can expect all applications to utilize multi core machines more and more as they become more common.
regards
mark webb, autodesk
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Posts:
153
Registered:
09/05/02
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Re: Hardware For Rendering
Posted:
Jun 11, 2007 2:53 PM
in response to: jmcintyre
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I can confirm Mark's comments. I have a machine with 2 dual-core xeons for a total of 4 cores. Each core actually has 2 instruction pipelines for a total of 8 threads possible. When running ACA 2008 normally, only 1 thread is active. When rendering using the built-in Mental Ray engine, all 8 threads become 100% utilized resulting in trace times that beat a 1 or 2 core machine.
Although ACA 2008 normally only uses one core, I still benefit from the others. For instance, when ACA 2008 stalls (because I'm waiting for a large complex drawing to open or for the RMAT window to open) I can send and receive e-mail or fill out my timesheet while I'm waiting - the other programs I have running are very responsive.
Richard
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Posts:
1
Registered:
05/01/08
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Re: Hardware For Rendering
Posted:
May 1, 2008 2:36 PM
in response to: rellison@gssth....
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A while since the last message but...
I am interested what is the most powerful/reasonable machine one can built to run on WinXP32? If I am rendering with MentalRay, will each thread refer to the same scene loaded in VIZ/MAX or similar? Or will adding core require more RAM utilisation? If the latter is true, 3Gb limit in WinXP32 puts a constraint on how many cores one can reasonably have in one machine.
Thanks for the opinions,
Anna
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Posts:
1
Registered:
08/20/08
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Re: Hardware For Rendering
Posted:
Aug 20, 2008 11:04 PM
in response to: anwaldon
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I understood the video card was more important than the cpu or the RAM...I'm setting up a graphics machine for a client of mine, and it has vista x64 with 4GB of currently the best DDR3 16000 RAM, RAID 5 with 3 7200 SATA II drives (couldn't afford to go to the 3x300GB raptor drives), and a quad core with 6MB caches per core...AND a NVIDIA Quadro FX3500 256MB card (nearly $900 at this time!). I understand this could cut a regular gaming graphics card rendering time down by 80% or more! one client I replaced the card with noticed a 400% increase in performance just by replacing the card!
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Re: Hardware For Rendering
Posted:
Aug 21, 2008 1:18 AM
in response to: dlancelot
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Rendering uses the cpu not the graphics card. GC is for on screen display.
wrote in message news:6011756@discussion.autodesk.com...
I understood the video card was more important than the cpu or the RAM...I'm
setting up a graphics machine for a client of mine, and it has vista x64
with 4GB of currently the best DDR3 16000 RAM, RAID 5 with 3 7200 SATA II
drives (couldn't afford to go to the 3x300GB raptor drives), and a quad core
with 6MB caches per core...AND a NVIDIA Quadro FX3500 256MB card (nearly
$900 at this time!). I understand this could cut a regular gaming graphics
card rendering time down by 80% or more! one client I replaced the card
with noticed a 400% increase in performance just by replacing the card!
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