Hi guys, I work for an architectural practice, and our work consists of doing CAD stuff, mainly technical planning drawings for big housing corporations like Barretts, David Wilson Homes, and also domestic stuff. Recently we've landed a fair bit of 3D rendering/modelling work, fly through's of the houses/street scenes etc which are being built. My good friend (who's a cinema 4d expert, and I will be helping out as I have some cinema experience) will be doing most of the modelling etc, but his computer is a few years old now and render times are really long for low quality visuals and we need the highest possible and as a result my boss is now willing to buy a system which can render very high quality videos in a decent amount of time. We don't have time to self build, so I recommended using a Scan 3XS build but not sure really what's best? His budget is ~£5K/6K, or 2 computers to make up that budget if that's better. Other suggestions are welcome for any other pre-built systems/companies. http://3xs.scan.co.uk/custom/professional-graphics
http://3xs.scan.co.uk/configurator/3xs-personal-super-computer configure to budget. Assuming the work your doing supports Tesla.
It's dependent on the rendering engine you're using. Some are CPU-driven, others are GPU-driven and support CUDA.
Yes but how can I find this out? I'm looking online and to be honest I can't see a great deal of results.
Cinema 4d depending on the renderer used will support tesla. This is the bit you need to check as you did not list the renderers he is using so I can not confirm or deny it will work. As theres a huge list of renderers that are supported.
It seems that cinema 4d is mainly cpu bound so I may drop the gpu and chose the best possible cpu and have a lower gpu instead.
Phone them up is how to get the best deal. They will configure that pc to your exact requirements btw. You cant disable the tesla online.
If you want to reduce rendering times you want to use Cuda etc on GPUs, you'd need a lot more CPUs to match performance, you have said you want quality and speed. could you build a renderfarm on ec2 and use the free hours to figure out what config suits you before committing to dedicated hardware maybe? probably a licensing nightmare?
Not sure buddy, all I know is that if we don't produce the quality that our competitors are then we'll loose the work and they'll be pressing us for a small few second clip soon so we're kind of under pressure. It's not the modelling ability, we have that, its the final render that needs to be top notch. What if we ploughed the money into the CPU and just bought a k4000 gpu?
If the work is critical then I wouldn't go for a Tier Z / hopped-up-DIYer level system like Scan. Yeah sure, looking into getting a watercooled gaming rig from them among others since I can't be bothered to build, but I'd pick Dell, Lenovo or HP with 4/8 hour onsite for work. A Dell T7610 with a useful spec should be doable for 6K. If the work is way more GPU-bound and you only need one CPU, then you could start with a T3610 chassis. There is an inbetween dual-socket T5610 but I'd rather go for the T7610 instead since complete configs rarely work out that much more. Dell's changed their ordering method a bit since they went non-pubic so you will need to call them for custom specs, but price is very competitive. I'm not on a budget so I use the HP Z-series workstations (mainly the Z820s) for the most part, but for when I have to buy stuff for temps / have a fixed budget for something non-core I use Dell - and for the most part they're almost as solid as the HP's.
Is it possible to effectively split the load over multiple computers? If so, a small rendering cluster built around 4570's, 4770's or even haswell UP Xeons may be a possibility. It's more cost effective than 2/4 way Xeons and can easily be scaled.
