Hi All,
I apologize up front as I’m sure this topic has been beat to death with Intergraph vs SGI debates etc. but I can’t seem to find any info (beyond gaming specs) regarding more affordable systems (or should I say consumer oriented 
).
I have seen claims of $2000-$2500 high-performance systems capable of doing high-end 3D animation. Where does one find one of these mythical $2000-$2500 systems?
I am in the market for a new system and I have been considering Abit’s BP6 dual Celeron offering with Dual 500’s or an Asus K7M motherboard with a 600 MHz Athlon. Any comments regarding these two setups (with 256MB sdram and 10GB HD) in conjuntion with an Oxygen VX-1 video card? I would like to build this system with the possibility of running Maya on it someday … hopefully sooner than later. I have ruled out the GeForce as it sounds like it has compatibility issues with Maya, mainly artisan and the lack of hardware overlay.
Any stability or reliablility issues of either of the afore mentioned systems, particularly under Windows NT4 and/or Linux?
Any help and/or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
Glen
i would go for a dual P3 600E(coppermine 100mhz fsb 256kbL2)
i don
well actually the celeron is just a pentium 2 core but with full speed 128 kb of onchip cache, what this means is that a celeron 500 is as fast (if not faster because of the faster 128kb cache ) as a pentium 2 at the same clock speed at rendering tasks, it doesnt have SSE instructions, but i dont think its heavily used while rendering (havent notice at all that on my p3 renders…
So if youre looking for a cheap yet powerfull system i wouldnt heasitate buying the Abit dual board with 2 mendocino 500
And for the graphic card question,well, what can i say, forget the “permedia 3” Vx1 and GO for the Gforce!! it rocks with Maya!!
I would go for a dual pIII set up such as dual pIII-550’s to save money and stock up on ram since this will help you more (512) MayaIII will like this. A VX-1 card is inexpensive and proven. I would get a vx1 and upgrade in a year when the new Geforces are out.
.
“I put my faith in the power of my own mind.”
ICQ#58898276
“I put my faith in the power of my own mind.”
ICQ#58898276
fullspeed 256mhz and sse on the 600E,i would not go with
a celeron for a professional workstation,and when you have
sse instructions on the graphcard it will boost the performance!!
just a note,
for maya, a sigle fast cpu is much better
than dual slower cpu’s.
Because the program is NOT multithreaded, only
the batch renderer is. So 85% of the time, you’ll
only be using 1 of those cpu’s anyways!
also, another note 2500 will get you alot!
but chances are, you should either buy ram RIGHT NOW,
or wait a while,
because something is going on in taiwan, and prices
are skyrocketing, (up 30dollars in the passed 2 days)
-Tad
LHPtomi@hotmail.com
icq: 24416123
-Tad
LHPtomi@hotmail.com
icq: 24416123
yes,i agree with tad, its a shame that maya wasntmade at the beginning with multithreat in mind…
as for the workstation machine, of course ill go for the fastest dual PIII or athlon,but again that is REALLY expensive .Ive tried a dual celeron (hate that name,love that chip 
) machine and for ipr renders (maya 2.5) and normal renders its as fast as a hell , and you can buy a celeron 500 for as low as 100$
and the abit bp6 dual celeron 150$
so a mobo+2celeron500 you could get for less than 400$ !! now thats a really bargain for the render power you get!!
take look at this great site (thx lucas )its got render benchmarks of dual celeron ,athlon and pentium3 on maya!
http://www.lucas3d.com/bench3d/html/mes-te…-maya25-in.html
as for the VX1… well i wouldnt recommend it at all, specially when you can get a G-force for the same money.
I would agree with most of the posts, for med-high 3d work, a full p3 is better- also as a bonus your VX1 has the new power threads drivers which use the SSEs in you p3 to accelerate it.
i think it works for the 3dNOW in the athlons
if you want a single proc- i would suggest the athlons (they’re cheap and damnably fast, but no multiproc, but as maya is not multiproc, then…), provided there are no clashes wtih software and hardware (i am unaware of any, but i could be very wrong)
the athlons’s incredible FP performance has seen a single athlon 650 beat two p3s 500 in a render. and this was in a multithreaded proggy (MAX), so i was quite impressed.
as for card, i suggest teh vx1- its proven basically, and it works with everything. the geforces have problems on certain things (AA lines for one) the overlay issue, and on some benchmarking tests and therefore presumably on some operations in the real world, teh present drivers just wont’ work (www.anandtech.com -look in their video card section)
hope this in some small way helps
(i just wnet thru all this and so dug up so muxh stuff. still can’t decide on card myself
Harlequin
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