Xeons are actually quite inferior to the Athlon MP in animation…
we have 50 comps networked in the school district in our tech center (sucky ping though) and there P3 1.0 with 128 mb ram, but we have two independant comps that are AMD 1800+xp’s (i think thats 1.62 Mgz) with 512 ddr ram, dvd-rw (the one great thing about the comps) and a geforce 2 at 64 mb (that sucks) the funny part is that if i network render, is that it is just as quick to do it on the two that are faster and not connected. then to do it on 25 of the ones that are cause of the ping, which has to be sent to the administrations building and back.
It still sucks though, but the school district bought me a geforce 3 64 mb, I’m hoping for a Geforce 4 128mb this year (never know)
I’m building a new system for myself which I will be using on our animation team. 2x AMD Athlon MP 2000, 1024MB ECC DDR RAM, Geforce 4 TI4600, 80GB HD, Aluminum case with 3 blue windows(meh! :P), 2 12" neon lights, 40x12x48 burner, 16x DVD
[/brag]
awesome machine, matt. I just got your email and ill give that list to mr Hall tomorrow.
hehe, Ive got a Dual Athlon MP 1600 system i built just before kickoff last year. I just recently upgraded it to a gig of ddr 2100, so its fun! hehe, my next task for it is to dual boot it with another 2k OS for just max, think of the sweetness…
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Select Operating System:
1.) Regular old AIM, Internet, Homework, Music, Etc.
2.) 3ds max
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The benefit of that will be i wont have any services running that i dont NEED to boot and render. That’ll be a trip thru admin tools>services, heh
The specs of the machine are:
(2) AMD Athlon MP 1600’s (1.4 ghz but quantispeed architecture)
(1) Gig of DDR PC 2100 Crucial ram
- Radeon 7500 64 MB DDR
- Plextor 16x burner with burnproof (when ur doing those last minute credits renderings while burning the competiton disk
) - Tyan S2460 Mobo MP chipset
- Antec SX 1030b Case (Because everyone knows that renderings always go faster in a prettier case…hehe)
Has anyone seen the Radeon 9700? It looked pretty cool, with its new processing unit and all. I was wondering if anyone’s seen it in max compared to the 7500…if its worth upgrading to… ::shurgs::.
Then of course I get to play with our new lab. Here in south florida we have magnets, and I’m at the tech magnet…SOOoooo we’re building a brand new building just for the techies, and the policy our coordinator adopted was “New building, new comps” so in theory, i should get a lab of 25 brand new dells to play with, network rendering will be pretty…BUT NO WHERE NEAR AS PRETTY AS 20 XEONS, i mean SHEEESH man! If i had 20 xeons anywhere in my school, they’d been network rendering a scene WHILE i was asking the teacher if i was allowed to do it… hehe, talk ta yall later! Auf Wiedersehn!
GO Team 6C
(That’s HEX for 108!!)
*Originally posted by Specialagentjim *
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Has anyone seen the Radeon 9700? It looked pretty cool, with its new processing unit and all. I was wondering if anyone’s seen it in max compared to the 7500…if its worth upgrading to… ::shurgs::.
**
Thought they are made for an 8x AGP bus, the 9700’s have reached the best 3D consumer card slot according to the benchmarks from themadonion.com If you are serious 3D Animator, you should get the demo version of 3D Mark and test out your system, compare to others that are like yours. Because of it I have tweaked mine to such a degree that I can actually out perform better graphics cards.
wow…i can’t belive i forgot about MadOnion…lol, Thanks a bunch Sunny!
Only used as the standard for the best comptuter magazine ever, MaximumPC…heh
well… This wat we are planning to get from our
2 of these and 4 laptops i think…
P4 2.53
512 ddr
Geforce 4 4600 or ATI 9700 pro
19" monitor
Thats it and decent p4 laptops
AMX
our school just bought a bunch (like 30) new dells which we use in the cad lab. But… because our school is all dumb, i wouldn’t be able to net render on them.
(It’s time for… everyone bring in their computer to the auto shop and lets network them together for a day. 
)-Wires running EVERYWHERE!!!
If you can’t get your sponsor to fork out the do-ray-me’s for a FEW new systems, you need to do some legwork your selves. This will be my 3rd year as a Animation/Web Mentor for our team- Though I go by the title of Engineer - Because FIRST doesn’t see us and we need to be classified as something- but thats a subject from last season so I’m off it!
TRY TO RAISE MONEY AND BUY NEW- most computer giveaways are junk, but better than nothing and can be used in a render farm. But working on updated computers is key.
I’ve been in this industry since 94 and have seen some incredable technology changes in software and hardware, new has always beat old. (see System Notes below- if you want a profesional look)
Computer Power Progress on our team
My first year, our Robotics Computer lab could barely load the Max software, letalone any models and textures- Forget rendering. So I went to a few local companies and asked for a donation towards 2-computers. What I raised was enough to purchase one upper level computer at the time- Intel 866. So that became the main modeler and we used the other one for individual modeling jobs that were imported into other scenes on the other computer. (Note: that was my first year, but our teams second year as an animation entry- so we only had 2-seats of MAX and couldnt afford to buy others)
Last year (my second year) The School put in a new “Cisco Lab” where they taught networking and actually qualified students to be certified Cisco Networkers. This lab had about 20 900Mhz computers. Now we had three seats of software. So we had the software loaded on the comps and got to work. SIDE NOTE: Last years version change ment that all the final scenes were done on one computer and models were made and imported on the on the two older versions of MAX. So a version change again this year will put a damper on the work flow- Gotta see what upgrades cost and raise the money!
We did network render our finals over 4-5 computers. This ment that all the renders were completed by the next morning and we burned them onto CD and edited on another system.
System Notes:
A dual-system is great and I prefer it to a single processor system any day, It will only effect programs that are “multi-threaded” to use the dual technology. I am running Video compressions and my 1.8Ghz runs at more than twice the speed as a dual 1Ghz. Probably because of the Buss Speed. The bus increases again in the 2Ghz range and above. (the compression software is multi-threaded.) The dual system allows you to run multiple single-threaded programs with out effecting performance (atleast up to 2-fully maxed processors worth (you gan load multiple Max Scenes up to ram limits w/o slowing you down too much). This is similar to running two computers at one desk. However, to need to compute workflow. Back in the late 90’s SoftImage and what eventually became Maya were selling for 50-80k depending on the hardware and software configs. Even at these prices most major production houses had there own programers writing code to enhance and customize the render engines. Today those programs can be had for much less and doo much more. But what we found- not working in the arena with these other guys, if we had 5 or 10 seats of Lightwave or 3D-Studio it was cheaper and more productive than if we sank all our money into on big “box” (as we call them) As a team, if you have 3 or 4 or 10 people able and willing to work on the anim, it will be a waist you only have one good computer. Sp spread the wealth and build up the quality of 2 or 3 computers at a time. Dont forget about the posiblity of upgrading. If you have an ATX computer case already, you can fit current motherboard into it. So look for a good price on a Motherboard, Processor, and Ram Combo- You will mostlikly need to buy new ram. If you have alot os good ram, find out what the highest upgrade path is you can achieve and still use this ram. Hard drives are dirt cheap so you can add that to anything youve got. Look as a team at the long range potential and see what money you can spend and plan for the most productive options based on your needs. Send me a message if you get stuck, but I can’t do the work for you. Most of you know a ton about computer, money is the only limit. Use those brains and figure out how to get more in your corner and your all set.
My post was a bit too short so I wanted to add to it- Yeah Right!
To clearify-
Its better to have multiple peolpe able work at the same time, so spend your money accordingly, you can also do shifts so if you have 2-3 good computers you can have 6 animators all contribute successfully. Always have a Key Student that stay ontop of progress. Not everyone needs to touch the animation to contribute. We had students collecting textures and modeling background objects while others worked on the main scenes, the texture collection (web seaches and actual photos or digital stills) could be found,scanned,prepped on any other computer in the room or at home or where ever. Also, major 3D Production houses have jobs asigned to people, One may Model, One may texture, one will animate, one will marry all those together (ie the animation could take place with a lowres model and the modelors and texturers can work with out holding up the process. In our case, we had a student that modeled the robot and stayed on top of changes faster than the actual engineers could build it in reality.) So production and workflow are major contributors to the systems that you need and want. Good luck this year. I’m loking forward to a great series of improments in all our work.