Does Itanium worth the price?

[GregHess]

You can't afford itanium. So that pretty much answers that question. (Unless you happen to be representative of a company that can waste a whole lot of money)

(An 800 megahertz cpu costs almost 8,000 USD JUST for the CPU)

A quad itanium system used to go for around 150k-200k USD. (Not sure on current prices for a quad)

This of course doesn't mention any incompatibility issues you'll encounter due to problems of the 64 bit architecture. (You'll need a new OS, a 64 bit version of your cg program, and a 64 bit version of mental ray).

You'll also need around 2-4 gigs of ram just for a functional box. (64 bit processors require quite a bit more ram then 32 bit ones do)

Did I mention that intel isn't even supposed to be selling itanium chips right now? They stole key technology elements from a company and currently have a bar on production, sales, or distribution until the appeal is resolved.

Look for a Dual Athlon, or Intel's new Xeon's when they become available.

[beaker]

>>You'll also need around 2-4 gigs of ram just for a functional box. (64 bit processors require quite a bit more ram then 32 bit ones do)

Is this a new intel "feature"? Every other 64 bit processor I have run(MIPS, Alpha, Ultra Spark and PA-RISC) will run on as little as 16 meg of ram(8-10 years ago :) ). Even the newest ones can run on as little as 64-128 meg of ram. 64 bit in every other world does not mean you need more ram to run. 64 bit irix and solaris runs on 64 meg of ram with a minimal config(without alot of daemons running for web services, etc...).

[GregHess]

Beaker,

I'll go dig up the articles and quotes to verify what I said. I'm not entirely sure, but thats whats sticking in my head from one of the developer meetings.

Alot less ram bandwidth required, but larger ram amounts to meet the same requirements as before.

Give me a few hours to dig.

[GregHess]

Hey Beaker!

Here's the info....

"On average you should double everything since
you're using double the space per unit. A 64 integer isn't 4
bytes but 8 bytes, so storing like a million of those will take
twice as much space, both on disk as well as RAM. So far our
findings have been that 2GB is an 'acceptable minimum' with
4-6 GB being in the 'decent' range and 8GB and more being in
the "ok, that's coming along nicely and spiffy" range."

This is with Itanium and Itanium2 machines.

I just went and asked some of my clients who are actually using them :).

[beaker]

Im just going by my experiences. Maya and shake use the same amount of ram on a 64 bit sgi box as a 32 bit linux intel box.

[GregHess]

I can get an explanation for that too :). Will be a day or so, have to talk to the SGI guys and see about some hardware implentation.

[Sieb]

I think Itanium is kind of a waste, not many people are taking to it. If I were you, your probably better off getting a couple Render Boxes (forgot their specific name, they are in all the CG mags) if you are thinking of spending the money on an Itanium setup. Can maya even run 64bit? I've never had to think about it. Itaniums are pure 64bit with a 64bit version of win2k or HPUX (unix). Normal 32bit apps won't work on it. Unless you are already running a 64bit environment, little to nothing you have will run on it, I don't think they even emulate 32bit (I remember that being the negative thing with the first batch). Itanium only shines when its in a Mainframe or databasing environment with more than two processors. Or, if you are visualizing scientific/engineering type stuff in real-time. I could be off a little, I don't keep up with it since we're already planning for Hammers.

If I were you, I would either look into dual Xeons or Dual MPs. Or wait for the Hammers like the rest of us.. :)

[beaker]

>>I don't think they even emulate 32bit

They do, but it is horribly slow. Not even worth bothering with.

>>I don't keep up with it since we're already planning for Hammers.

You do know the hammer is going to be around US$1,000-2,000? It isn't exactly going to be cheap.

[GregHess]

Clawhammer workstation prices were slated in the 2-4k range depending on configuration. (AMD Rep, Siggraph 2002)

Of course if your talking opeteron (or however the heck you spell it) then you looking at the more expensive chip solutions. (As beaker mentioned...although I think it might fall more in the 500-1000 dollar range...but I can't confirm that.)

[sepehr]

Thank you very much for the information.
So it seems I'd better go for Athlon mp processors for now
and then buy Hammers when it comes and there's no bug...
(2 month are remained ,or more?)
Are Tyan motherboards best for dual athlon setups?
Regards
Sepehr
:)

[zuraq]

Anybody know about cinema 4d, i need a grafics card if posible matching c4ds needs, using wersion 8.2, and the price must not exeed 300 $. My mission is to kill rendertime and i dont care so mutch about wheather it is an nvidia or ati or whatewer brand.

[mustique]

Thank you very much for the information.
So it seems I'd better go for Athlon mp processors for now
and then buy Hammers when it comes and there's no bug...
(2 month are remained ,or more?)
Are Tyan motherboards best for dual athlon setups?
Regards
Sepehr
:)

IMO your best bet would be getting a dual - dual core AMD Opteron setup, resulting in a quad cpu system which would give you quite a boost during rendering at a very very good price. That's what I'd buy if I'd have the cash right now.

[Vertizor]

Psst, mustique, this thread is 2-3 years old.


Anybody know about cinema 4d, i need a grafics card if posible matching c4ds needs, using wersion 8.2, and the price must not exeed 300 $. My mission is to kill rendertime and i dont care so mutch about wheather it is an nvidia or ati or whatewer brand.
Graphics cards do not help in final rendering. Different renderers such as in Maya do support hardware (GPU) accelerated rendering but require a video card much more than your $300 limit. To the best of my knowledge, C4D's renderer is all about the CPU.

[mustique]

HUA HAAAAA! I was smartassly able to predict the future!
:scream:

[gordon7up]

on the itanium part, sgi are shipping their PRISM workstations with Itanium2 cpu's, and SGI's site quotes these at starting in less than $8K? would be very interesting to see how well these boys churn out renders as they are aimed at seismic interpretation and forcasting the weather!!gotta be fast I expect?? on the other hand you could get a very nice boxx system for a good bit less....decisions decisions....

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.