Workstations For Poor 3D-artists 240
Peter writes: "Ace's hardware has written an 'article for the creative people, who are searching to build or buy an affordable number cruncher to run their favorite workstation application. Maybe you already have an Athlon Thunderbird/XP and you are wondering if a dual Thunderbird/Athlon XP workstation might make sense for you. Or you might be interested in an affordable dual Athlon MP 1800+ workstation.' Included are benchmarks based on almost all available 3D-animation packages."
Macs (Score:2, Insightful)
3D Artists? (Score:5, Insightful)
What about cheap software for 3D artists?
(BTW - IANA3DA, but I'm pretty sure that all 3D software for modelling and such is mucho dinero)
Go figure. (Score:5, Insightful)
Softimage|3D and Softimage|XSI.
Those two give Lightwave, Maya, and 3D Studio MAX a run for their money, considering they're the modeling environment used by most all major CG Effects studios out there (coupled with either Mental Ray or RenderMan).
Re:Macs (Score:1, Insightful)
This article is about 3D Graphics..
Not many use Mac for that!
i think the top 3 is like this:
1- Windows
2- SGI
3- Linux
So it makes sense..
"workstations for poor 3d artists" (Score:1, Insightful)
Dual Athlon XP? (Score:2, Insightful)
FUD alert (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure about you guys, but I noticed a really subtle pro-AMD bias in this article. For instance, the banner ad on the top of the page was for the new Athlon XPs and linked to AMD's page. And the author gave Intel a few token references, and then completely ignored them in the benchmarks.
The author performed benchmarks in a number of major 3D applications, and in all the AMD chips absolutely rocked: If you have a problem with the methodology, or feel that it isn't telling the whole story, then post your own site (that's the beauty of the net). I think it's fairly obvious that putting an ad for a Xeon chip on an article where it was pummeled probably doesn't make an awful lot of sense.
Well, as a very satisfied Pentium 4 owner and a somewhat satisfied Athlon owner, I can tell you that if you're serious about getting work done (not just overclocking your Unreal box), you'd be best off going with a P4
Let me get this straight: You refute an article that is packed full of actual metrics by saying that it's biased, and then you say that people should get a Pentium 4 if they're not going to "overclock their unreal box" (again an absolutely absurd supposition given that we're talking about an article where the AMD trounced the Intel chips in something much more serious than "overclocking their unreal box").
My Athlon had some heat and manufacturing issues (this is my second chip because the first one was DOA), and really isn't any faster in the real world than my P4.
The absolute definition of FUD. "Uh, sure the AMDs are faster, but they have heat and manufacturing issues!". Whatever. Metrics are all that matter, and the metrics in the industry say that the power consumption of upper end Intel's and AMDs are very similar (hence similar heat), and that major manufacturers have roughly equal DOA rates with both chips. The metrics also say time and time again that the "real world performance" of the AMDs are often faster than the Intels.
In fact, having rebuilt my kernel with the new Intel compiler, the P4 just screams and leaves the Athlon in the dust.
I see [tomshardware.com]. Again please tell us when you've put up a site and posted some benchmarks with your platform and methodologies, because as it sits it sure sounds like a bunch of bullshit.
I'm going to shoot in the dark here and make a wild guess: You ran out and bought yourself a fancy new Pentium 4, spending top dollar to be the top dog in the tech arena (of course not doing any research), but now that you have your new purchase you're a little more sensitive whenever you see performance benchmarks, and everytime you see another review that shows the Athlon dominating it just burns at you, so here you are with your "real world" experience. Bullshit. I highly doubt you have an Athlon whatsoever.
I am not biased whatsoever, and if Intel comes out with something that is competitive with the XPs at a similar price then damnit, I'll be there. But I owe nothing to Intel, nor do I owe anything to AMD, so I lack "brand loyalty" and simply go for what is proven the best at the best $. If only more consumers were that way.
That's a Dual CPU Test? (Score:3, Insightful)
I keep an elderly PCI Pentium 100 box around as router and to play MP3s -top sez mpg123 usually has less than 10% of the CPU at all times.
In fact, there's nothing in either Slashdot's article or Ace's that really helps poor 3D artists. This is what's keeping Slashdot's editors so busy, eh?
What's up with that?
Re:Lies and statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, these "metrics" you claim to trust so much also indicate that the IBM 75GXP drives have a "normal" failure rate. And we all know the truth about that, don't we?
You see this really is humorous: You see a Slashdot story with a couple of people saying that their 75GXP failed, and you're sold (obviously just like the AMD issue). I actually HAVE a 75GXP that hasn't failed, and I am prone to believing IBM that the failure rate is normal. Let me put it another way: I know lots of people who are sure that Honda cars are the biggest POS out there because they had a lemon that had 27 faults, but the industry statistics say that they're the exception, not the rule. If there was more than anecdotal evidence (or biased polling) that the IBM drives were unreliable then I would be extremely happy to listen and take action based on it.
which, by the way, you haven't even tried out
I remember back in the BBS days asking a sysop to remove a "CPU Speed Up" program that promised to "convert your 386 to a 486/66!". The Sysop refused claiming that lots of people claimed that it really did vastly improve the speed of their systems. It's called the placebo effect, and it's one of the biggest truisms about people: People are extremely unreliable metrics of anything, because most people go into an evaluation with preconceived notions. As such, I'll be a little more trustworthy of site after site after site after site giving methodologies and performance metrics that show the Athlon XP winning. Again when Intel comes out with a cost effective (meaning cost effective all around: Memory, MB, etc.) high performing chip then I'm there, but as it stands there is a clear winner.
Re:Dual Athlon Motherboards are relatively expensi (Score:3, Insightful)
The dual-BX boards might be fairly cheap, but there also rather dated, in that they've been discontinued for about a year now and Intel hasn't made a new processor that will work in these boards in a while either. The fastest chip that will work in a dual-BX board is the 1GHz PIII, which is quite a bit slower then most of the chips in the comparison article. The system itself is also limited to a 100MHz bus speed (assuming you don't overclock your BX chipset), as compared to the 133/266MHz DDR bus speed of the AthlonMP or the 100/400MHz QDR bus speed of the P4 Xeons. Combine that with lower speed memory, and the system just isn't in the same performance catagory at all.
In any case, the Dual-AthlonMP boards aren't really all that expensive. The Tyan TigerMP sells for a bit over $200, and there are a couple new dual AthlonMP boards coming up from a few other vendors that are likely to be cheaper still. For comparison, the dual P4 Xeon boards in the article, based off the i860 chipset, start at $550 and go up from there.
Now, as for stability, that's another question altogether. It would be real nice if it were actually possible to measure how "stable" a system is without requiring a few months of use. Unfortunately that isn't likely to happen. Intel boards have traditionally been very stable (and the 440BX chipset mentioned above is an excellent example of this, probably the most stable platform ever released for a PC), but even they have had more then their share of ups and downs recently. I think the fact that none of the major OEMs are selling servers based off P4 Xeons is perhaps somewhat telling that they aren't 100% certain about the reliability of new Intel platforms any more then they are about new AMD platforms.
Re:3D artists don't need a "number cruncher" (Score:1, Insightful)
Absolutely - there is no machine fast enough to make big rendering jobs "fast"
32,64,128 cpu boxes - nope
Beowulf clusters - well, your are getting there.
Rendering production quality stuff is slow, Slow, SLOW. Get a bunch of fast machines, and measure speed in days or weeks.
1cpu vs 2cpu vs 4cpu, 1GHz vs 2Ghz vs (mythical)5 GHz Intel/AMD is not the right order of magnitude for discussing slow rendering vs really slow rendering.
Re:3D Artists? (Score:3, Insightful)
High-end software makers actually want you to pirate their stuff. That's how they maintain their marketshare without really discounting their product. They don't want your lunch money, they want your future employer's money.
Stephan