New Cybersonics Computer

[vadyr]

Hey all! Just so you know, this isn't a bragging post. You will see where this is going at the end of the post. But anyway, Cybersonics (Team 103) just had a new computer donated to us. It's a dell Precision 690 and the specs are as follows:

-PROCESSOR Dual Core Intel® Xeon® Processor 5060 3.20GHz, 2 X 2MB L2,1066
-2ND PROCESSOR Dual Core Intel® Xeon® Processor 5060 3.20GHz, 2 X 2MB L2,1066
-OPERATING SYSTEM Genuine Windows® XP Professional, SP2 with Media
-GRAPHICS CARD 512MB PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro FX 4500, Dual DVI or Dual VGA or DVI + VGA
-MEMORY 4GB, DDR2 SDRAM FBD Memory, 533MHz, ECC (8 DIMMS)
-OPTICAL DRIVE 48XCDRW AND 16XDVD+/-RW, w/Cyberlink PowerDVD™ and Roxio Creator™
-RAID CONFIGURATION C8 All SAS drives, Non-RAID, 3 drive total configuration
-HARD DRIVE 146GB SAS Hard Drive, 1 inch (15,000 rpm)
-HARD DRIVE INTERNAL CONTROLLER SATA/SAS Integrated Card - For Connecting Internal Hard Drives
-2ND HARD DRIVE 146GB SAS Hard Drive, 1 inch (15,000 rpm)
-3RD HARD DRIVE 146GB SAS Hard Drive, 1 inch (15,000 rpm)
-INTEL HYPER-THREADING Hyper-Threading feature preset to ON. Can be disabled/enabled in BIOS.
-MONITOR Dell 20 inch UltraSharp™ 2007FP Flat Panel, adjustable stand, VGA/DVI


This sucker renders anything. We rendered a scene with over 20 million faces and about 20,000 particles and it did it in a little while.

Anyway, I don't mean to brag, but the point is that we are considering offering to help teams render their animations. We all know that rendering can be one of the most problematic steps to creating an animation, and we want to help others with this. Basically we could then use better supersampling settings and use mental ray for a great render. THIS IS NOT DEFINITE! I don't want to get everyone excited, because if we are planning on creating a monster of an animation, we may not be able to render other animations, but hopefully we will. FIRST is all about helping eachother and team work, isn't it? So anyway. Good luck to everyone! I'll be keeping you updated!

[chris31]

Nice rig, I wish I had one! Its very nice of you to offer to render other peoples work.

[yongkimleng]

Wow thats really cool.. maybe you can post a photo of the internals?

Seriously thats an approximately USD$2.5k donation with -the- highest end c2d core.

[Chris Marra]

Originally Posted by yongkimleng

Wow thats really cool.. maybe you can post a photo of the internals?

Seriously thats an approximately USD$2.5k donation with -the- highest end c2d core.

Heh, more like a $6000 donation once you add in the second processor, monitor, RAM, graphics card, and all of the hard drives.

I must say, that's a really nice computer. How large is your animation team, and what do the rest of them use? All of our school computers are Celeron D's, with integrated graphics, and very few with even 512 MB of RAM, which our CAD and Animation teams have to deal with amongst the 10 or so of them. But, our Mad Cadder manages by multi-processing...

[EHaskins]

[drool] I want that computer!

I'm just curious who would donate that much, and if you know how I can contact them.

[Gdeaver]

That's a nice system, but expensive. For other teams that don't have allot of cash, N'vidia has a driver download on their web site that allows some rendering software to use the massive floating power in today's video cards. I don't know if it supports the work station cards or just the direct X gaming cards. Check their web site out for the details. Ati may have released something similar by now. Check out Newegg. The n'vidia 7600gt has dropped to the 150$. This could be a good way for teams to speed up their rendering without spending thousands.

I just saw this news clip - http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20061107PR204.html

[vadyr]

Originally Posted by Chris Marra

Heh, more like a $6000 donation once you add in the second processor, monitor, RAM, graphics card, and all of the hard drives.

I must say, that's a really nice computer. How large is your animation team, and what do the rest of them use? All of our school computers are Celeron D's, with integrated graphics, and very few with even 512 MB of RAM, which our CAD and Animation teams have to deal with amongst the 10 or so of them. But, our Mad Cadder manages by multi-processing...

Haha...nice Mad Cadder pic...I think I saw that last year and I still laugh my butt off at it. But anyway, our animation team is about 10 people and each of them uses a DualCore P4 computer with one or two gigs of RAM and 256mb video cards. Our school just purchased roughly 125 new computers...and we have access to about 50 of them after school, so between our team computers (which are about the same as the new school ones), the school labs we have access to in the art room and CAD lab, and the new DualXeon Box...we have quite the render farm...and we are hoping to use all of it...mwhahahah!!!

[BuddyB309]

its a shame that 3ds does not run on macs. I have about 25 G5s to use when i please.

I haven't checked render share does anyone know the link for it?

[eshteyn]

Wow your lucky, i had to connect 6 computers together and run rendering on all 6 at the same time, you can just use your one

[AV_guy007]

Originally Posted by BuddyB309

its a shame that 3ds does not run on macs. I have about 25 G5s to use when i please.

I always think the same thing. we have 16 dual 2ghz g5s and a g4 render farm that our video classes use.

[FourPenguins]

This is the part where I laugh maniacly and tell you our CAD and 3D teams were using PCs with 512 RAM and 1.8gHz single core processors. (I don't remember exact stats, but they would make any Inventor users in here cry.)
However, those days are over (as are the 10 inventor copies on those computers that are now lost to the trash heap. stupid IT guys...) The new CAD lab is...amazingly sexy.

[Psychoflood]

Originally Posted by 11Ed71

This is the part where I laugh maniacly and tell you our CAD and 3D teams were using PCs with 512 RAM and 1.8gHz single core processors. (I don't remember exact stats, but they would make any Inventor users in here cry.)
However, those days are over (as are the 10 inventor copies on those computers that are now lost to the trash heap. stupid IT guys...) The new CAD lab is...amazingly sexy.

Haha i just looked up the specs on the computers we're running in the new CAD lab Ed, and they actually are so much better than last year. (Note to everyone: last year the computers took 10 minutes or so just to boot Autodesk11, much less do anything in it. Any action took a minute or two to process. and forget about rendering!)
the link to the stats is here
and it's pretty nice. its looking like we have at the least 2.8gHz.. i like it!

[RoboJedi75]

Uh, I don't want to imagine the amount of heat that thing must create. I hope it's got good fans. *shudders*

I remember when we had 10 computers going full out last year, it was an oven in February!

[Ryo Chiba]

An efficient animation and good planning always solved my rendering issues.

The ten laptops the advisors brought in on the deadline date had nothing to do with it, I swear.