Wouldnt you get way too few ports with those motherboards? Usb, sata and pcie ? Personally i think such a board would be better as a render slave and not for a main system, or something similar.
Problem with these dual boards is that 99% of them are clearly server oriented, no expansion slots, no sound etc etc. Are u aware that pretty much all render engines do support network rendering ? u can just built a fully specced i7 2600k and use ur old rig / or a second rig with less ram / small hdd and onboard gfx to render as a node, this way ur power consumption would be a lot less aswell because the node only needs to be fired up when u really need it.
I use only 2 USB (keyboard + mouse), 1 PCIe (GPU) and am thinking about USB DAC. I also only use 2 SATA since I got my NAS (the printer is connected to the NAS, like any other external storage I can use). My router also has USB port for external storage sharing. Connectors are not much an issue for my use I'm aware about network rendering, but I do not feel like having several big cases in my appartment. I thought about throwing my Q6600 and it's geforce9300 mATX mobo inside a small case, and bying a new rig for daily use ... or I cn just sell it and saving some cash for a new rig. I'm trying to find the best solution ... but my brain can't stop running when I see a gorgeous piece of hardware : "Jeez, I could do that !" ... "Idea idea idea !". Maybe I'm thinking too much with my heart Edit : those board have 1 header for 2 USB2 port and 1 hearder for USB type A .... 6x SATA 3GBps. This is really enough for me. It costs $400 for the "basic version" and $700 with the 40GBps InfinyBand connector (which I do not need) ... meaning around €900 for a dual 8-cores opteron 6128 (remind me of my ol' Amstrad) rig Well I'll carefully think about it ... I'm not into a hurry. I'll see if my current rig is enough for my need and if I REALLY need to upgrade ... then I'll upgrade
it doesnt have a pcie slot though, so no added graphics card, not sure if u really want to run ur software on onboard gfx
It does have a PCIe-16x (gen2) slot Specifications : http://www.asus.com/Server_Workstation/Server_Motherboards/KGMHD16QDR/#specifications
I agree its looks like legacy PCI slot ... well I have to think about this carefully. But I still can make a design for this kind of board ... designing is free and it makes me very very happy
If you want a machine for rendering... MoBo: Tyan S8812 CPU: 4x AMD Opteron 6180SE RAM: 32 x 8GB ECC DDR1333 GPU: whatever Price: a small car Still... 48 physical cores on a single machine =
Somehow its weird, im still wondering why the bigger studios like Chaos group etc have so much problems porting ( atleast unbiased ) engines to gpus, afaik the kind of calculations raytraycing needs is exactly what gpus are made for. Imagine getting the performance of ur system from two generic 580gtx or similar...
Floating point precision is lower on GPU than it is on CPU ... and they are used everywhere in 3D computing since everything is based on float matrices (4x4, 3x3 and vectors)
deffo lost me there http://www.lostcircuits.com/mambo//...k=view&id=102&Itemid=42&limit=1&limitstart=11 Bulldozer Vray Benchmark, sadness ensues...
Yeah, static raytracing is definately better on CPUs still, if it comes to high details. That's why I asked Dark about the new V-Ray 2.0 and it's RT-stuff in this thread before aswell and didn't bother to buy it and using my old V-Ray 1.5 instead. There are engines that make good use of the GPU when it comes to live rendering, but those are not developed for the endconsumer-market. Look at Catia for example in that regard -> http://www.3ds.com/products/catia/portfolio/catia-v6/overview/
I use my 1090T for rendering and its pretty quick. I have it OC'd to 4.0GHz and it's faster than most of the i7s (for rendering). Plus its cheaper than an i7. It makes for a good rendering rig. Agree with whats been said before. GPU rendering really isn't worth it unless your willing to spend $1500+ on a high end Quadro or Tesla GPU.
They are more expensive either. I think that dual Opteron are good candidate for bang for buck ratio. Opteron 6174 vs Xeon X5670 : http://www.anandtech.com/show/2978/amd-s-12-core-magny-cours-opteron-6174-vs-intel-s-6-core-xeon/1 "We believe the 12-core Opteron is the clear winner. It offers 20% better performance at 20% lower prices, a good deal if you ask us. Intel’s relatively high prices for its six-core are challenged."
It's quiet easy actually, the more physical cores at reasonable clockspeeds the faster you can render an image. The cheap Opterons (8 cores) don't really cut it compared to the cheap Xeons (4/8HT), as they have very low clockspeeds and cost the same. The 12 core Opterons tho cost triple the money of the Xeon. So in the low-end-market the Xeon easily outperforms the Opteron when we're talking about rendering specifically. We need to ask tho, if you really need more then a single 8-core CPU for the stuff you're doing. Based on the Cinebench and POV-Ray benchmarks I've seen I'd go for the cheapest solution based on a single FX-8120 (€200). Paired with a GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 (nice colour and good board!) and 8GB DDR3-1600 we're then looking at a reasonable €450. Add a reasonable GPU for €100-150 and you're done with way under €1000. A dual Opteron-system will cost atleast €400 more because of the expensive motherboards and the second CPU.
Over here in France the cheapest 8-cores Opteron (6128 - 2.0GHz) costs 299€ while the cheapest 4 cores - 8 thread Xeon (E5620 - 2.4GHz) costs 370€. I'll actually bench my Q6600 at rendering and see what to do with it.
