Mac G4 render farm

[David55]

I was looking on ebay when I found this .

I was just wondering if one would be able to make a fully functioning maya render farm out of these.
If yes, how will this render farm perform? (after all they are 400MHz CPU's).
How would this perform compared to the new Mac Pro 3.0ghz?

Thanks
David

(If you were wondering I am not seriously considering buying this. Only the shipping to Israel would be around 12,000$ )

[6600gt]

Originally Posted by David55

I was looking on ebay when I found this .

I was just wondering if one would be able to make a fully functioning maya render farm out of these.
If yes, how will this render farm perform? (after all they are 400MHz CPU's).
How would this perform compared to the new Mac Pro 3.0ghz?

Thanks
David

(If you were wondering I am not seriously considering buying this. Only the shipping to Israel would be around 12,000$ )

One quad Xeon Mac Pro with 2 gigs of ram will easily beat that farm of 36 G4s.
Intel really outdid itself with those Core 2 Duos...who would have thought that Intel would pull it off?

[Kyle Fenton]

Actually what will probably hinder them the most would be the RAM, and not yield (clock speed). If these machines had 1gig or more of RAM, and gigE cards it wouldn't be that bad. That is assuming though that you have high end switches & cables.

[Cody Carey]

Mac rendering farm:

400mhz= 400 million instructions per second.

400mhz X 36 = 14400 (total megahetz)

14400mhz=14.4 billion instructions per second.


Mac single computer:

3.0ghz = 3000mhz
3000mhz= 3 billion instructions per second.


Answer:
14.4 billion > 3 billion



Just my thoughts...

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by Cody C

400mhz X 36 = 1440 (total megahetz)

I think you left off a zero. 14400 is what you mean.

[David55]

I think you might have made a wrong calculation...

The new Mac Pro's have 2 processors, each dual core with each core running at a clock speed of 3 ghz. Therefore, the calculation should be 4x3 ghz=12 ghz= 12 billion instructions per second.

A quad 3.0 Mac with 2 gigs of memory is around the price of that lot of G4's. If you take only the CPU clock speed into consideration, then the lot of G4's might perform a little better. But when you calculate performance, you have to consider the memory, graphics card and processor specs (cache,frontside buses) and all the other components I do not know much about. Also, I think that the G4's performance might go down a little because of the many network connections that would be needed in such a render farm.

[AdamHeard]

Also take account of indirect cost.

36 will use a lot of power, costing a lot of money compared to one. Also, who has room for 36 G4's?

[6600gt]

Originally Posted by Cody C

Mac rendering farm:

400mhz= 400 million instructions per second.

400mhz X 36 = 14400 (total megahetz)

14400mhz=14.4 billion instructions per second.


Mac single computer:

3.0ghz = 3000mhz
3000mhz= 3 billion instructions per second.


Answer:
14.4 billion > 3 billion



Just my thoughts...

Clock does not determin performance. That is why AMD beat Intel until now. the new Xeons are far more advanced and do more per clock than those G4s ever could. The Xeons can do more instructions per clock than those G4s ever could.
The old 3GHz P4s could do 10,000 MIPS.
Clock speed tells nothing about its MIPS or the performance of the processor

[Chris Marra]

This would only be advantageous to a Maya or Cinema 4d setup where animation is involved. Each machine out of the 36 can each independently set up the entire scene, and work on a seperate frame, and then send it back to the master machine which compiles them together. So even if it takes a Mac Pro 2 seconds to do 1 frame, and one of these 20 seconds, it is still faster because in 20 seconds, you actually get 36 frames out of it, not just 10. As long as a Mac Pro is less than 18 times faster per core, these are technically faster.

However, under load a Mac Pro consumes about 200W-250W , vs about at least 50W per G4, which adds up to at least about 1800 Watts, but most likely not more than 3600W. With about 10 times the power consumption, you're paying a significant amount just to run a full farm of these, and I doubt that they would be significantly faster than Mac Pro's enough that getting a few extras wouldn't be enough to settle any potential gap.

[David55]

So now the real question is, how fast would a farm of 36 mac pro quads perform?

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by David55

So now the real question is, how fast would a farm of 36 mac pro quads perform?

Not nearly fast enough for nearly half a million dollars (if they all had every top of the line option) and not as fast as an $80,000 car (cost of 36 bottom of the line Mac Pros).

[David55]

First, the number of CPUs on a render farm impacts performance more than the combined clock speed of the CPUs. Nine 1-GHz machines chained together will render much faster than three 3-GHz systems, so don't rule out a find on the basis of its wimpy-sounding processor speed

Taken from this article .

[lukevanoort]

I did a little New Egg browsing and noticed that one could build a system with an AMD Athlon 64 3000+, 1 gig of ram, an Geforce 7300LE 128MB for ~$340. I wonder if 10 would outperform those 36 G4s? (Note: the $340 dollar figure is in fact $341.95, this doesn't include an OS, or a CD/DVD drive, the assumption being that one could borrow a CD drive from another computer to do software installs)

[6600gt]

Originally Posted by Chris Marra

This would only be advantageous to a Maya or Cinema 4d setup where animation is involved. Each machine out of the 36 can each independently set up the entire scene, and work on a seperate frame, and then send it back to the master machine which compiles them together. So even if it takes a Mac Pro 2 seconds to do 1 frame, and one of these 20 seconds, it is still faster because in 20 seconds, you actually get 36 frames out of it, not just 10. As long as a Mac Pro is less than 18 times faster per core, these are technically faster.

I don't know for sure but I would say a brand new 3 GHz quad core is probably way more than 10 times faster than a 400 MHz(old) single core. It only has to be 9 times faster per core(possible based on the clock speed + newer core). You also have to look at RAM bandwith and bus and a lot of other things.

Remember there is more to a lot more to a processor than just clock speed now a days.

[addictedMax]

Originally Posted by 6600gt

I don't know for sure but I would say a brand new 3 GHz quad core is probably way more than 10 times faster than a 400 MHz(old) single core. It only has to be 9 times faster per core(possible based on the clock speed + newer core). You also have to look at RAM bandwith and bus and a lot of other things.

Remember there is more to a lot more to a processor than just clock speed now a days.

and intels are good at things like rendering