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I'm planning to build a new system, specifically for POV rendering. My only
interest is in getting it to render pov scenes in the shortest time possible.
Budget is pretty flexible but not completely ridiculous, somewhere in the
thousands not tens of thousands of US dollars, and I'll be building the system
myself so all the money will go on components/OS.
So, what I want to know is: What hardware & OS configuration will give the
fastest povray rendering performance? And how much work would it take to get it
all running?
I'm open to options including multi-processor, multi-machine, custom pov builds,
etc... The only restriction is that the more work I need to do to get the thing
running the less likely it is I'll ever find the time to do it!
My ultimate aim is to improve my overall productivity in povray: I want to have
a fast way of rendering very complex high res still images and very long low res
animations, without needing any manual work to set the render going and retrieve
the result (i.e. if I have a PC farm it should be entirely automated so I don't
have to do any more than if I were rendering on a single machine).
One final note, I'm really not interested unless the system will be a number of
times faster than my current setup (Athlon XP 3000 overclocked to 2280MHz,
running Windows XP), which ran the POV 3.6 beta benchmark in 28 minutes.
So, what do you think? What sort of system should I build?
--
Tek
www.evilsuperbrain.com
P.S. Obviously if I do build such a system then I'd be quite happy to let other
people use it's power when I don't need it :)
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Why not buy a cheapo for $800 and render on one while composing on another?
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Because at the moment I want to render a 7800x5200 resolution image that runs at
around 15 pixels per second on my current PC. That's gonna take about a month!
The problem isn't tying up my main machine, the problem is the length of time
from the beginning to the end of a high quality render.
--
Tek
www.evilsuperbrain.com
"Greg M. Johnson" <gregj;-)565### [at] aol com> wrote in message
news:406500e8@news.povray.org...
> Why not buy a cheapo for $800 and render on one while composing on another?
>
>
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Wasn't it Tek who wrote:
>I'm planning to build a new system, specifically for POV rendering. My only
>interest is in getting it to render pov scenes in the shortest time possible.
>Budget is pretty flexible but not completely ridiculous, somewhere in the
>thousands not tens of thousands of US dollars, and I'll be building the system
>myself so all the money will go on components/OS.
>
>So, what I want to know is: What hardware & OS configuration will give the
>fastest povray rendering performance? And how much work would it take to get it
>all running?
>
>I'm open to options including multi-processor, multi-machine, custom pov builds,
>etc... The only restriction is that the more work I need to do to get the thing
>running the less likely it is I'll ever find the time to do it!
>
>My ultimate aim is to improve my overall productivity in povray: I want to have
>a fast way of rendering very complex high res still images and very long low res
>animations, without needing any manual work to set the render going and retrieve
>the result (i.e. if I have a PC farm it should be entirely automated so I don't
>have to do any more than if I were rendering on a single machine).
>
>One final note, I'm really not interested unless the system will be a number of
>times faster than my current setup (Athlon XP 3000 overclocked to 2280MHz,
>running Windows XP), which ran the POV 3.6 beta benchmark in 28 minutes.
>
>So, what do you think? What sort of system should I build?
To find out what's fastest, I suggest that you take a look at the
"Official PoVRay Benchmarks" site
<http://new.haveland.com/povbench/index.php>
The figures there are for the POV 3.5 benchmark and go as low as
11 mins 7 for a single CPU and 1 minute 12 for 128 CPUs in parallel.
--
Mike Williams
Gentleman of Leisure
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"Mike Williams" <nos### [at] econymdemoncouk> wrote in message
news:Nvn### [at] econymdemoncouk...
> To find out what's fastest, I suggest that you take a look at the
> "Official PoVRay Benchmarks" site
> <http://new.haveland.com/povbench/index.php>
Yes I know that site, my PC's currently ranked 20th on their single processors
list :)
> The figures there are for the POV 3.5 benchmark and go as low as
> 11 mins 7 for a single CPU and 1 minute 12 for 128 CPUs in parallel.
Those benchmarks are very interesting, but they're not giving me enough
information to compare the various options, like how to set up povray with 128
CPUs!
So I was hoping some of the knowledgable folks here might be able to offer more
practical advice. I'd be very interested in hearing from people who've conducted
these very fast benchmarks and whether they think it's suitable for my purposes.
--
Tek
www.evilsuperbrain.com
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Tek wrote:
> I'm planning to build a new system, specifically for POV rendering. My only
> interest is in getting it to render pov scenes in the shortest time possible.
> Budget is pretty flexible but not completely ridiculous, somewhere in the
> thousands not tens of thousands of US dollars, and I'll be building the system
> myself so all the money will go on components/OS.
>
> So, what I want to know is: What hardware & OS configuration will give the
> fastest povray rendering performance? And how much work would it take to get it
> all running?
>
> I'm open to options including multi-processor, multi-machine, custom pov builds,
> etc... The only restriction is that the more work I need to do to get the thing
> running the less likely it is I'll ever find the time to do it!
>
> My ultimate aim is to improve my overall productivity in povray: I want to have
> a fast way of rendering very complex high res still images and very long low res
> animations, without needing any manual work to set the render going and retrieve
> the result (i.e. if I have a PC farm it should be entirely automated so I don't
> have to do any more than if I were rendering on a single machine).
>
> One final note, I'm really not interested unless the system will be a number of
> times faster than my current setup (Athlon XP 3000 overclocked to 2280MHz,
> running Windows XP), which ran the POV 3.6 beta benchmark in 28 minutes.
>
> [...]
AMD 64bit systems (either Athlon 64 or Opteron) are probably the fastest
single processor machines for POV-Ray at the moment. I recently posted
a link to a comparitive test of modern PC processors which included a
POV-Ray test in p.off-topic. This was running the official (32bit)
version of POV-Ray - note that a 64bit version does not necessarily need
to be faster. I would not really trust the benchmark results Mike
posted the link to because they are not verified to be correct in any way.
For multiprocessor machines and clusters you have a large number of
possible solutions but a fast multiprocessor system will usually be
quite expensive in comparison to a set of several inexpensive single
processor computers.
--
Christoph Hormann
http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/
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Mike Williams <nos### [at] econymdemoncouk> wrote:
> The figures there are for the POV 3.5 benchmark and go as low as
> 11 mins 7 for a single CPU and 1 minute 12 for 128 CPUs in parallel.
How reliable those results are? What measures, if any, do the maintainers
of the site take to verify that the results are genuine?
For example, I find it difficult to believe that a 1GHz Itanium2 is
almost twice faster than a 3GHz P4, a 2.8GHz Xeon or a 2.5GHz Athlon XP
(specially considering that it's the *only* entry using an itanium, so
we don't have comparable times with other itanium systems).
If the result is genuine, I would certainly like to know how it is
possible.
There are many other entries which are difficult to believe as well.
For example a 1.8GHz Opteron being faster than a 2.5GHz Athlon XP.
The results might be genuine in that they show real rendering times,
but how can we be sure that they really used the proper rendering
settings when running the benchmark? If you render for example
without antialiasing you will get, surprise surprise, an enormously
faster time.
--
#macro M(A,N,D,L)plane{-z,-9pigment{mandel L*9translate N color_map{[0rgb x]
[1rgb 9]}scale<D,D*3D>*1e3}rotate y*A*8}#end M(-3<1.206434.28623>70,7)M(
-1<.7438.1795>1,20)M(1<.77595.13699>30,20)M(3<.75923.07145>80,99)// - Warp -
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> My ultimate aim is to improve my overall productivity in povray: I want to have
> a fast way of rendering very complex high res still images and very long low res
> animations, without needing any manual work to set the render going and retrieve
> the result (i.e. if I have a PC farm it should be entirely automated so I don't
> have to do any more than if I were rendering on a single machine).
Keep in mind that if you want to render radiosity scenes on multiple
machines (or multiple processors meaning multiple instances of POV)
you'll have to do a first pass render to get the radiosity render which
will be used for the final trace. This additional work is not necessary
with a single CPU and might be a reason to choose the latter one if this
"entirely automated" workflow has such a high priority for you. Keep
also in mind that a multiple-CPU/PC-environment *almost* always means
more work, both in setting it up and keeping it running (even with
automated software installation scripts etc.).
OTOH, a dual-CPU system could be used for single CPU traces on the one
CPU and developing scenes on the second CPU, so in that case it would
improve your workflow.
My choice would be to get one dual-cpu and one single-cpu PC. The dual
one for developing and optimising the scenes, the single one to run the
finals (while you can go on and develop etc. on the dual one).
Of course the CPU is not the only thing that'll make your system fast.
Raid systems for disc access, good RAM, etc. will be important, too, but
I guess you know that already :)
HTH,
Florian
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Tek wrote:
> Because at the moment I want to render a 7800x5200 resolution image that
> runs at around 15 pixels per second on my current PC. That's gonna take
> about a month!
>
> The problem isn't tying up my main machine, the problem is the length of
> time from the beginning to the end of a high quality render.
<neo>Deja vu</neo>
--
Rick
Kitty5 NewMedia http://Kitty5.com
POV-Ray News & Resources http://Povray.co.uk
TEL : (+44) 0845 1083740 - ICQ : 15776037
PGP Public Key : http://pgp.kitty5.com
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Christoph Hormann wrote:
> For multiprocessor machines and clusters you have a large number of
> possible solutions but a fast multiprocessor system will usually be
> quite expensive in comparison to a set of several inexpensive single
> processor computers.
For dual CPU boxen, aside from the cost of the extra CPU and a little more
on the motherboard its not as bad as you would think. Significantly cheaper
than 2 computers!
Once you go over 2 CPU's then your into server land and prices do get very
silly very quickly.
--
Rick
Kitty5 NewMedia http://Kitty5.com
POV-Ray News & Resources http://Povray.co.uk
TEL : (+44) 0845 1083740 - ICQ : 15776037
PGP Public Key : http://pgp.kitty5.com
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