P4 or Athlon XP

[Palash]

I'm little bit confused - at TomsHardware.com you can see that Lightwave ran on P4 platform is much better than Athlon XP.

However if you see results at Blanos.com you can see tha 2200XP+ is quite the same as P4 2200Mhz.

I'm going to get a new platform for LW and I have a problem - which one to choose.

Thank you for any suggestions.

Pat

[mattclary]

Well first off, disregard Tomshardware: http://www.vanshardware.com/articles/2002/03/020317_THG_Slander/020317_THG_Slander.htm

I opted for the P4 3.0c after much consideration. P4 seems to have an advantage due to SSE implementation in LightWaves render. If you have the cash, go P4, if you're on a budget, go AMD.

[prospector]

I think (not sure anymore as it gets so confusing) that the new AMD bartons have the SSE code.
If they do then AMDs should be faster.

[garg]

Well just looking at those benchmarks here:

http://www.blanos.com/benchmark/

Set number CPU 1, LW Scene to: Rad. Ref. Things (which use reflections, radiosity)

None AMD XP will appear in the top 10. The firs AMD CPU is at the 25th position.

Beside that I have done some test myself, and for the same price (more or less) your intel will be faster than a AMD...

That's what I found.

Alain Bertrand

[Earl]

I couldn't recommend anything other than the Pentium 4 right now. For multimedia (especially apps optimized for it), it just performs better.

But keep an eye on AMD...they're not out of the race yet. :cool:

[mattclary]

If you can, hold off to see what happens at Siggraph. Maybe you'll start thinking about Opeteron boards.

[Palash]

The thing is that when you compare (at Blanos) the results of P4 and Athlon (P4 2200 Mhz and Athlo Xp+2200) the results are just the same.

[tapsnap]

How about a new Mac instead? Yes the New G5 has just been released. Go to apple.com and check it out.

[garg]

Well beside the price (which I think is expesiver than a selfmade PC), G5 computers are anounced, but I don't think you can buy them right aways.

Alain

[Palash]

I think the PCs are just more flexible. The technology changes faster so you can update your PC instatntly at a very low cost.

[mattclary]

Yeah, if you're going for low to mid performance, might as well go with an AMD 2200+ If you want high performance, go Intel (for the moment, this will change in a couple of months, probably).

[Alliante]

Going with a P4 would be a better choice, then there should be no question on compatibility.

The price differences at the 2.4 ghz is only like US$50-$70 between comprable platforms. (the extra $50 would be worth peace of mind that my software will work as the developers intended it)

[mattclary]

Ehhhhhhhhhhh... "compatibility" isn't an issue, just speed.

[Alliante]

Explanation: Most of the issues that I alliterate are probably old-school with the VIA chipsets last year.

[Palash]

What about any hardware "boosts" such a renderdrive - is it poosible to apply it to lightwave?

Is it worth it or maybe better is it to create a farm of a few PCs?

[garg]

Much better to buy other pc and make a small renderfarm

Alain

[Palash]

But is it possible to hook up a renderdrive or other hardware?

[garg]

I think renderdrive do not support LW. But in any case I would not choose such an hardware, as it will not be easly compatible with new plugins and/or render engines.

A small render farm is realy simple to setup, and you may also render a single frame across many nodes.

Alain

[Palash]

I run a 3 PC farm, but I haven't tried using it for one frame.

How do you do it?

[garg]

With some tools like:

http://www.rayserver.com

Alain Bertrand

[El_Toro]

If you are planning on getting a new system get the AMD Athlon XP 3200+. It supports 400 Mhz FSB. That means you can get 400 Mhz DDR and a 400 Mhz motherboard, thus vastly improving system performance. You get the RAM and Mboard before but since no CPU supported it it just bottlenecked.

The P4 can't even begin to compare, and on a second note Intel slips Tom money under the table. His other reviews are good, but when it comes to anything related to Intel the reviews are a bit weighted.

[garg]

Well I do not agree here... I you take whatever benchmark (blanos) you will definitly see the difference between Intel and AMD. And with my own test, changing the memory speed doesn't change as much as changing the CPU speed. So I do not belive changing to higher FSB without changing CPU will improve the rendering speed. BTW latest intel have a "800Mhz" FSB, and old one have "533Mhz". I know those are not the real numbers (because its quad-pumped) but this the bandwith (and this is what matter with FSB) is bigger on those intel 800Mhz...

Alain

[El_Toro]

FSB is different with AMD b/c their CPUs do more work per clock cycle, and its not the increased CPU speed that's the big deal. Its being able to run the faster memory synchronously with your CPU and motherboard. The reason you wouldn't have experienced much performance enhancement out of faster memory before would be b/c your system is not running synchronously. The speed bottlenecks at either your motherboard or your CPU.

[garg]

Again I do not agree....
All depends of what is your bootle neck.
For example, if you are just moving data around your drives, the bottleneck would be probably your drives. And increasing CPU, FSB, or memory speed won't change that much.
LW is extremly intensive on the CPU and normaly the speed of the memory do not change that much, that's why changing FSB is not changing much rendering time.
If you look at this graphic here:
http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030623/p4_3200-14.html
(Bottom of the page) you will notice that both 3Ghz intel (200 or 166 FSB which mean 800 or 533 because the use DDR ram) render the same scene more or less in the same time. Actualy the 0.06 Ghz more in the old cpu give a bit more speed.

Look also with other render tool. You will see that FSB doesn't change much your render time :-)

Alain

[El_Toro]

LW is CPU intensive I agree. In Intel CPUs it might not make much difference, but b/c of how AMD has designed their CPU the FSB speed does make a difference. Since the AMDs do more work per clock cycle it makes more substantial difference when you upgrade FSB, thus giving you better render times. But even more important than that is synchronization. That's the key point I was trying to get across. With the CPU, the memory, and the motherboard running at the same speed you get increased performance across the board. That is something that you can't achieve with the Intel CPUs.

[js33]

That might be true somewhat for say Video editing or streaming 40 channels of audio in a music program BUT for rendering it makes NO DIFFERENCE. Rendering is CPU speed and nothing else. Why is that so hard to understand?

Once the scene is loaded and rendering the CPU speed is all that matters.

Cheers,
JS

[Palash]

Check out Blanos.com - no. of CPU 1, LW Scene - Variations.

Palash

[garg]

Yes... this is because it seams that hypervoxels work better on AMD than Intel.

But most of the time you will see that Intels are faster than AMD (on LW).

Alain

[Palash]

Do you have any experience with HT on Intel? Is it recognized in Screamernet as 2 CPUs or 1?

And does that improve results a lot?

Palash

[garg]

HT "duplicate" your processors, but for LW it doesn't give realy a lot. The problem here come to the fact HT should help application use "unused" cpu time, for example if application A use only a part (integer op) of your PCU, then application B can use some other part near to in the same time if it's not realy in the same time. When you try to use 2 times the same part in the same time, then it does time sharing (what actualy is done when more than one application run in the same time on a single processor). So for LW HT doesn't help. It's more or less like running 2 threads or 2 LWSN process on a single computer without HT, it will not give you a lot of gain....

I hope this was more or less clear. I do not mean HT is useless for all, but in this case it doesn't give you what may give you a second CPU.

Alain

[Palash]

Thanks a lot.

I wonder if Opteron will be faster? The first results at ThomsHardware are very pesimistic with LW. But I don't really belive in them.

[garg]

I think AMD Opteron will at first not be a lot faster. What I saw, is that they simply added some cache and a x64 bit instruction set. 64 bit doesn't mean faster CPU, it simply mean that the CPU can handle a larger memory.

If every thing work fine, and at the end a 64bit instruction (fp operation for example) can be handled in the same time now a 32 bit is done, and LW will be recompiled for this plateform, then we will see some improvement. Until then, I do not think it will give us a lot.

32bits means 4Gb ram max, 64bits 16'777'216 Tera of ram (1 tera is 1024Gb)

OS should also be upgraded in order to work with those things :-) And from what I saw is that MS will not deliver WIN64 before fall next year... So we will have to wait a bit...

Alain

[Lightwolf]

Originally posted by garg
I think AMD Opteron will at first not be a lot faster. What I saw, is that they simply added some cache and a x64 bit instruction set. 64 bit doesn't mean faster CPU, it simply mean that the CPU can handle a larger memory.

Not quite true. The 64bit instructions set includes a larger numbers of registers as well, which can speed up re-compiled apps a lot.
Cheers,
Mike

[garg]

Yep... you are right ! I fergot registers (for who that doesn't know what are register, think of local variables inside the CPU).

In any case, I think the code need to be recompiled in order to work for it... That's mean we will have to wait quiet a bit before been able to see LW for 64...

Alain

[Strider_X]

I have always found that anay thing dealing with SSE2 takes twice as long, or dosent run at all on my Athlon XP.Thankfuly opteron has SSE2 built in. As for the P4 it's SSE2 instruction set is it saving grace. If the P4 was compaired to the P3 or athlon at the same clock it would get completely destroyed. Plus P4 run hot and there expensive but they do run sertan functions of lightwave faster than Athlon's because of SSE2.

As for mother boards don't buy ABit I have 2 dead ones.

G5 to me is a waterd down Opteron. It even uses AMD Opteron chipset. I guess that was the deal with IBM.

[mattclary]

P4 runs hot? Put down the crack pipe, my friend. Actually that goes for several of your statements. :rolleyes: