CGTalk - Hardware question.

Nichod

04-08-2007, 03:50 PM

Is anyone using or has used an AMD 2500+ processor for rendering in Messiah? I think I recall Wegg had an older machine, just curious how bad rendering speed will be. Just need an inexpensive desktop to run messiah temporarily, until I can upgrade the board.

Found the following for $300:

AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton 1.833GHz Socket A Processor
-ASUS A7V8X-X Socket A (Socket 462) VIA KT400A ATX AMD Motherboard
-1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR400 (PC 3200) Corsair
-CHAINTECH SA5500T2 GeForce FX5500 256MB DDR AGP 4X/8X Video Card
-WD Caviar SE WD1200JB 120GB 7200 RPM IDA Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive
-NEC 18X DVD+/-R DVD Burner with 12X DVD-RAM Write EIDE
-HP L1702 17" 25ms LCD Monitor

Also, curious how well that graphics card will perform with messiah, since many have complained about nvidia drivers lately.

MoodyB

04-09-2007, 04:36 AM

If you're comfortable with overclocking, almost all Barton 2500+'s can easily run at 2.2ghz without much of a voltage increase, it at all. Xp cpus are hardly any slower than A64 cpus at the same clock speed. If you want a Pentium comparison, the 2500+ is roughly 10-15% slower at rendering than a P4 @ 2.66ghz afaik.

As for the gfx card, if you can use older drivers with the 5500 and Messiah you should be ok. I used to have a FX5900, and I recall using v49.** or v54.** of Forceware with it. Check www.guru3d.com for downloading the drivers. The number of downloads is normally a good indication of a decent driver.

CGTalk Moderation

04-09-2007, 04:36 AM

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.