All posts relating to Maxwell Render 1.x
User avatar
By deadalvs
#222275
on my macbook pro, the difference is ~ 13% as i remember correctly.

a great difference, but there's still development going on, not ?

anyway: a great result !
User avatar
By ivox3
#222277
....dual octa-cores sounds sweet! :)
User avatar
By b-kandor
#222278
I'm curious: how much is a dual quad xeon box with 4gb of ram approx?
User avatar
By deadalvs
#222279
money ?

mac: ~ 4900 $

pc: if not custom built and self-made: much more expensive... ~7000$
Last edited by deadalvs on Mon Apr 23, 2007 9:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
By ivox3
#222280
For a 2.66 - 3.0, ... I'm gonna say it's still hovering around $4-5K (build it yourself) and most likely more for something from Boxxtech or similar.

I'm guessing ......
By dilbert
#222281
For me it's great that the Windows based PC is currently ahead as all my software is for Windows, and that accounts for a much larger investment than the actual hardware. Also, I can't say enough about the customer service with BOXX! It's so nice to call a customer service line and speak directly with a human being in the USA who knows the system inside and out. (By the way I paid $5900 for the dual-quad core X5355 2.66 Ghz)
User avatar
By b-kandor
#222284
Ok, good to know. Sounds like having all 8 cores in one box is the way to go. I can't help but do the math:

I have 2 dual core e6400 boxes with 4gb's of ram. They are both overclocked to 3.2 ghz (from 2.1 - 50%). They cost me 1500$ cdn each. One of my boxes is on the speedtest at 1:02 - so 3 would do the test in approx. 22-25 minutes somewhere in there.

3 boxes are worth about 4100$ us. So basically your much better off with a dual quad even if it cost 1800$ more because there is 3x the power consumption (roughly) - 3 times as many components to break - more heat, more noise etc. (dual quads weren't around last fall when I bought these).
User avatar
By deadalvs
#222286
realistic calculation.

also relying on licenses, admin work, ...

it's really the only way to go.
[
actually i'd go for an octo-node cluster rack (if i had the money, hehe) but i have no idea how much admin work that would be running linux...
]

yay, buy some ! 8)
By dilbert
#222287
You also have to take into account what you're getting in your configuration. With my BOXX I got a NVIDIA Quadro FX 1500, and a 250 Gig harddrive included in the $5900. If you already had a decent video card, and available harddrives, that's going to the lower the cost even more. The Quadro FX 1500 is about $600 on it's own.
User avatar
By b-kandor
#222295
Yes, all good points.
One small liscensing advantage is that with a plus-one I could run 4 dual core boxes which theoretically would beat a dual quad time wise (but in no other way)

Speaking of which I have an old fx1400 pci-e lying around if you know anyone who's interested. (I also have an fx1500 hooked up to a 30" dell :) and a 19" spare)

Kandor
User avatar
By ivox3
#222324
Also with an 8 core, .... doing hyper fast material tests is standard.

Typical flow:

Open MXED > click off [Stay on Top] > move it to second monitor

Open Test Scene > apply material > render 1000 x 1000(whatever resolution) for a few seconds.

Stop render > adjust material > Render > adjust material > render etc..

It's all brilliantly fast and you can use a more complex test scene to produce a more accurate material function/visibility.

I quit using the preview engine months ago .....

Actually, using this method (for me) proves to be way more efficient than waiting on the preview engine. 8 cores will usually give you a pretty clean material in seconds.

Maybe the new MXED is quicker, dunno ...but I like having a larger preview scene.

* Even on other platforms (dual dual's / Opteron's / Conroe's etc..) -- I think this is a quicker method for more serious material building.
User avatar
By b-kandor
#222355
I'm thoroughly convinced and lusting after one of these machines. :)
User avatar
By Fernando Tella
#222357
Reading between the lines from the latest announcement:
Pricing has been maintained but we have radically changed the licensing policy to embrace current and future hardware trends.
If they want to embrace future trends I guess they are going to set the limit with a number of machines instead of number of cores so probably those octo-beasts won't eat two licenses but maybe just a quarter of license... :roll:
User avatar
By aitraaz
#222380
MacPro Octa (8 cores)

CPU: 2 3.0GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Cores: 8
Ram: 4 GB
OS: Windows Xp 64
Time: 0h:19m:48s
Bench: 333,99
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