Render Machines

paul_ae567ab9

Any helpful response welcome.

I have two machines I use, one an AMD with 4GB GPU/386CUDA  the other an i7 both 4 cores 2GB/386CUDA.  The i7 renders faster, i assume because of hyper-threading. Same RAM in both (16GB which is max for each MOBO).

I have no commercial need but as a tinkerer I am never quite satasfied !

I note a lot of dual cpu XEON servers pretty cheap on eBay. Many 4 core processors, total 8 between the two CPU's. 16GB seems the norm.

Does anyone here have experience building a dedicated render machine on XEON not using a GPU, relying only on the CPU for render? For costs I would likely use Linux and run that machine as a Lux slave along with the i7 also as a slave.  That lets me render across two machines while my AMD machine remains free to work on other stuff.

So...speed?  ZEON with 8 cores, 2.8 - 3GHZ CPU vs i7 4 cores with GPU?

Would a used $150 dual processor XEON server be worth the effort?

( As of this post on eBay is a lot of 40 AppleServers dual cpu ZEON racks for $1,000. Imagine the server farm that could run! )

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nonesuch00

paul_ae567ab9 said:

Any helpful response welcome.

I have two machines I use, one an AMD with 4GB GPU/386CUDA  the other an i7 both 4 cores 2GB/386CUDA.  The i7 renders faster, i assume because of hyper-threading. Same RAM in both (16GB which is max for each MOBO).

I have no commercial need but as a tinkerer I am never quite satasfied !

I note a lot of dual cpu XEON servers pretty cheap on eBay. Many 4 core processors, total 8 between the two CPU's. 16GB seems the norm.

Does anyone here have experience building a dedicated render machine on XEON not using a GPU, relying only on the CPU for render? For costs I would likely use Linux and run that machine as a Lux slave along with the i7 also as a slave.  That lets me render across two machines while my AMD machine remains free to work on other stuff.

So...speed?  ZEON with 8 cores, 2.8 - 3GHZ CPU vs i7 4 cores with GPU?

Would a used $150 dual processor XEON server be worth the effort?

( As of this post on eBay is a lot of 40 AppleServers dual cpu ZEON racks for $1,000. Imagine the server farm that could run! )

/

 

There is a guy in the forums that runs some CPU heavy server rack by the name of Kendall that is one of the developers of LAMH and he says the electric bills are sky high as well as the heat generated. As long time programmer and sysadmin myself server rooms do go through a lot of electricity and the heat is enough to raise the server room I was tending to in the 90s. Such heat is enough to make such machines fail when they are powered down and cool off as part of the circuit may break in that cool down cycle. We avoided powering down and rebooting such that we'd have machine (in secure locations) with 3, 4, 5 and more years continous run time. I don't think it's a good investment for a consumer or a enthusiatic hobbyist with a lot of money. Intel will need to parallelize cheaply and affordably at the consumer level even more so than they are now, soon enough.

paul_ae567ab9

Not a concern for me.  At most I might build two machines, not a room full.