Hardware : Max Specific System Discussion

[Pim4]

Good idea, this thread!

I'm with you, also looking for a new w.s., but I AM considering Pentiums, i've set my minds on dual xeon, because of the hyperthreading. seems to work great in conjuction with dual systems. I might get a dual opteron or AMD 64 (or they the same), not sure yet. so the same question for me here. I have some AMD's and some P III's and PIV's in my renderfarm, but i like the Pentiums most. that's because of the SSE code that you can use in max, and the overall idea is that Max is a very strong wintel program. Last thing (correct me if i'm wrong) is heating. i get the idea that my pentiums are not having so much troubles as the AMD have with stowing away their heat

about dual proc's: for a workstaions it's great especially if you're as nervous as i am, and constantly doning several things at aonce. the system is a lot more responsive. For renderslaves i think you'd better buy single proc machines, because max only uses dual procs when rendering, not when prepering scens. it's a lot cheaper to buy single procs (doh)

Aaron, I don't think 64 bit is usefull when the application is still 32 bit code, or am i wrong ? Thow i've read the amd 64 will be optimised run 32 bit code fast.

Concerning HDD i think it's scsi for me. cost somewhat more, but because all of my mappings are useally on the workstation, and my renderstations all get their maps from that. When pc's are accessing IDE drives on my ws, i notice slowdown, with scsi i overcome that problem (since scsi has it's own I/O processor) I could use a server for the mappings of course, but i like the fact that they are fysically on my workstation, because it's faster. Also the scsi drivers have 15.000 rpm, for video compositing an advantage. You could use ide raid, thow, it's still fairly affordable

fast ram is always welcome of course. to be honest i think nowadays 1gig is minimum. I'm using 2 gig since a year of two and a half, but - to be honest - only use itwhen using the ram player in max.

nvidia cards would be fine, but in benchmarks the ati radeon's aren't bad at all. dunno how the max drivers work with it, thow. with nowadyas power i agree that you don't need an over expensive proffesional graphics card

my 0.02 $

[deli]

hi
can you compare p4 3ghz HT to any dual processor systems.
and what would you say about RAID ?

[Pim4]

no, although HT is not comparable to 2 procs. from what i've read (can't recall exact, but that was the conclusion, is that Hyperthreading really begins to shine in combination with two processors. It was a -rahter intreresting- dutch article, i believe it was in PC maganzine, else in computer!totaal.

Raid is avaible in severall tastes, you can combine disks, so that they're larger, or mirror them, so that they are faster, of for example, use two disks for data and one third for revovery data if one of them fails. there has been written a lot about this.

[Aaron Moore]

Pim4, heres my POV

First, SCSI is dead. By this coming september, if you get a Raid IDE system (especialy if its SATA) it will run circles around any scsi disks. Also, if the scsi controller is not built into the motherboard, the transfer speeds get limited by the PCI bus. And if you running I/O to a firewire card or something, it was my understanding that it would chew up b-width for the other pci cards... So I'm gonna stick with IDE... if speed is that important, get a 40 or even 20 gig 10000 rpm IDE... they will run just as fast as scsi2, wide scsi, and others... Plus you don't need to hassle with scsi ids, and you don't run into mounting issues due to bad scsi connectors, which as i rember was a major pain in the ass.

Dual vs single... I think you may have made a typo.... but it makes more sense to have a dual as render slave because all you want the slave to do is process frames as fast as possible. And because the improvement in the workspace is minior the only time a dual setup might help is if you are running multipal apps at the same time... IE PS, MAX, Combustion, etc

Also the only time I ran into a memory issue was with photo shop and making a 3'x8' poster/print and thats cuz I was running out of scrach.... I do however like having gobs of ram... but max never eats up more then a gig... I'm thinking gig or gig and a half (unless i can get a good deal on two 1 gig chips) cuz I only need enough to usually run PS and max at the same time... even then the bottle neck is usually the processor or g-card.

amd64 is different the opturon.. the op is professional and it has more bandwidth and pipelines plus support for multi processor systems. I'm hoping to get a dual processor mb but if limited, amd 64 would be a good alternative...

I know max is optimized for p4 so thats my only concern...

input anyone?

[Pim4]

My point is, aaron, that two processors processor don't give you 200 % extra speed. i've heard of 130 % compared to one proc, but even if it's more, i still think it's more economical to buy a fast pc in the shop around the corner for less money. i do not have hard evidence, thow, it's just a feeling.

Does raid have it's own I/O processor or does it still relay on the main proc ? if it doesn't thave any cpu utilization i might go IDE. Still i'm charmed with SCSI, i'm using SCSI 160 now, and it will be SCSI 320.... And of course i'm using a scsi controller direct on the mainboard.

gotta go now, promisses to be an interesting thread thow. :)

[Vajra]

The one small issue I have heard about 1 or 2 cpus is that shadow calculations in max, render faster on a single processor due to maxs setup it is incapable of taking advantage of 2 processors in that respect. At least something to look into if your gonna be doing alot of shadow calculatoins.

[visualboo]

I'm just wondering how long it will be untill 64 bit procs actually make sence to drop money into.

[thomaspecht]

instead of putting the latest hardware into my machine, i'd always try to buy the most reliable stuff. you'll work so much faster when you don't have to work around crashes.

i'd therefore go for P4, a nice nVidia card (don't know if those quadro's are worth it though) and 1 - 2 GB of RAM.
SCSI-disks are probably a good idea but those are expensive and tend to get very hot (we're talking 10 000 rpm drives here, no?) but for a workstation fast IDE disks also make sense although you won't get the real-world-performance that SCSI offers.
the most important decision seems to be the choice of the right motherboard. just check their upgrade-path and lurk in hardware-forums to look for reports of instability.
reading discreet's support-forums also might give some hints on if the newest wizbang-hardware will cause you headaches.

[Aaron Moore]

We actually ran several tests concerning scsi vs ide, and the differences are soooo small that you could almost get 2x the storage with ide for the price diff.

Even then, a properly raided ide can be faster then a single scsi.

I'll try to get the data when i get back to the US.

Also as far as processor is concerned.... here my take

The cost of one machine is cheap... the cost of a dual is a little more, but significantly less then buying a second comp... so if the cost of dual proc is less then cost of 2 systems * .75 (to factor for the fact that 2 proc isn't 2x the speed) the dual proc system is actually cheaper...

One way to get more out of a dual proc is to get max to run on individual cpus... thus each cpu runs one instance of the software. (is this possible with max?)

However code that is optimized for dual processors can be VERY efficient at task balancing, and because rendering is pure number crunching, it is a highly optimized task. Thus u actually save money, space, and other costs buy having more processors in one comp.

Thats my take.

Also I think 64bit will be part of the next release of max. Max is 64bit ready for the IA-64 platform cuz i know i had to install IA64 support to compile plugins with visual c++

So anyhow, I think at worst, efficient algorythms will make 32bit apps run faster on 64 bit... especially if they can configure it and use efficient resource allocation.

Next generation macs due out this year using IBM's PPC processor is 64bit so apple will be there.... M$ will release 64bit windows this year and so I think ppl will be forced to switch over sooner than later...

Just my though

L8r guys
-Aaron

[Pim4]

sounds all reasonable about 64 bit, i'm not afraid of it. I'll wait till there's more clearness (is this english?) about that. you think max6 will be 64 bit ? i know i'm gonna see it in october. /me is anxious!

also i'm rethinking my thoughts about dual procs as render slave. you might have got a point there.

but about scsi vs ide : i'm still not convinced. I know scsi is a lot more expensive. On the other hand, i work all day and night with my workstation. All day and all night i'm swapping data over and forth. lots of data. this when still working on my ws. I believe that you can get same speeds both with IDE and SCSI. but how about loss of performance when doing so with ide ? when, say 6 machines are constantly pulling data of my ws ? i've never noticed any slowdown from that. try that with IDE...

btw, You can disable max for one cpu, and start antoher one on the other. (with task manager by hand) I don't know if that's possible when network rendering. guess not, bacause the network app controls startup and shutdown of max. But why would you do that ? that way the've gotta share 1 bulk of ram the way i see it (depends on the architecture thow, i know) and you would be better of using two single proc pc's.

GI joe, I see you point, you're right. I only seem to get troubles when i buy the newest of the newest, so i learned not doing so.

[sam]

be careful about 64 bit processors, the speed and stability might not be there until the technology matures. wait and make sure your critical applications perform stablely with the 64 bit processor and dont be the guinea pig

if your box is not going to double as a video workstation, then you will be 100% fine with an AMD and a IDE solution. If it is going to be doing some video editing then you need to be REAL picky about all of your components and should buy strictly based on a list of recommended components given out by the video software system. I recommend doing a direct copy of a turnkey box built by a quality vendor (like Boxx or Xi) so you can benefit from their component testing. Copy everything from the mobo to the case to the ram to the cooling components. And with serious video editing you need to look hard at a Xeon solution and likely a SCSI solution as well.

I highly recommend getting a dual system (Xeon or AMD). They run with a great deal more stability and you can squeeze more life out of them in the long run. People don't realize that they run with a lot more stability but just imagine that almost whenever you hang a process and lock up your box in a single processor system, in a dual processor system typically one of your processors is still free and you can usually quickly rectify the situation with little slowdown in your workflow.

Going with a dual AMD or a dual Xeon is a matter of price comparison. If they are relatively close in price (say a difference of 100 - 200 usd) then go with the Xeon since software and hardware vendors do privilige their quality assurance with Intel in mind and that money will go to a more generally compatible box than the comparably priced AMD solution.

Try to have enough money to play with when you do your system building as its generally not good to cut corners in components. If you want to save money build your own box out of quality components, but dont introduce any crappiness into the components, and make sure you can do a quality installation, especially with cooling. Max is finicky about components and with cooling. Keeping your box cool goes a long way toward keeping max totally stable.

[sireel]

Man this is a heaven sent thread!!!! I am actually looking into buying a new workstation right at this moment :)

Regarding HD's SCSI in my opinion is just not worth it. As it was said before the only thing SCSI had over IDE was very very slight speed increases and the ability to set up a raid set (Stripe or mirror). I'm more concerned with SATA (serial ATA) of which I heard was fantastic and runs rings around SCSI.... only problem is its first gen and I don't want to buy into technology that will be improved upon within a few months... what do you guys think about this.

[Pim4]

I will look for those ix systems. thanx! I know Boxx, could be an option (i will do video editing on mine), i prefer self building thow.
I guess buying a good pc only hurts once (when paying) but you have to (I do, at least) gotta spend lot of hours with it. it better be productive ones. If i'm working on a large model, i can make money if the pc is still responsive. If i have to wait severall seconds after each click, that's very annoying.

[Cyberdigitus]

keep in mind that max is optimised for p4's and performs well with HT, so i wouldnt go with the AMD route. maybe wait for prescot or go with dual xeon if you can afford it. also mind that pci express and even ddr2 is imminent... for hard disks i would recommend the raptor by western digital, a 10,000 rpm Sata 36 GB drive as system disk and a bigger one, or possibly raid for data. get 8 mb cache disks

i'm currently building my new system right now:

p4 / 2.8 ghz / 800 mhz bus / HT enabled
zalman CNPS7000-AlCu fan
Abit IC7-G motherboard / 875 p - ICH5r chipset
2 x 512 MB corsair twinx ddr 400
WD raptor / 36 gb / 10,000 rpm / 8MB cache / sata
WD caviar / 120 gb / 7,200 rpm / 8MB cache / pata

i'l get a geforce FX 5900 when they get more available/cheaper too.

still installing, but i'm sure it will rock!

[AshodT]

i use max really smoothly at my place,even when animating multiple models in the same scene.

i have two systems,ones a p3,only use it as my internet server.
my real system:

AMD 2500+ (BARTON) working as a 2800+ at 36 degrees. the heating problems are over with amd since ages now (since it passed on 13micron).
i have an SLK800(thermalright) with an S4 ventilator on it.

so:

amd 2800+
1gig ram 333mhz at 390mhz (samsung)
80 gig seagate hdd
geforce4TI 64mb
noname tower without any fans.

[sireel]

Hey Ash :)

Tower without any fans? Man that system must run really quiet but hot! My current machine runs so loud its like running a lawn-mower in my study.

Another thought I had when specing out my system was is HT really worth it since there are times I max out my CPU anyhow leaveing very little for the HT (like during rendering)?
I would much rather get dual CPUs but in that case if I get dual CPU's with HT enabled then I would have to go for an OS that supports more than 2 procs (to still do HT) like Win2k server or Win2k3 server. The real question there then is how does Max perform on server OS's more specifically Win2k3?

[AshodT]

hey Eel. ;)

did you read what i wrote? lol:p

i never get past 38 degrees,even at summer (its 30 degrees right now as i write).

without overcloaking,its actually colder then the ambiet temperature outside. :)

so,quite,not hot, and not that expansive.its a cool rig for people not having lots of money to spend on this stuff.

[Signal2Noise]

Originally posted by AshodT
[Blah, blah, blah...]

...without overcloaking...

[...blah, blah, blah.]


Hmmm...I gotta get me some of that Klingon technology as well!;)

[Aaron Moore]

How much of a spped incrase is there from the P4 optimization?

As for cutting coners, I definatly agree that it is a bad idea. If you do so, you'll end up hady-capping your whole system!

In general, good MB are: Asus, MSI, and sometimes abit.

Don't buy generic ram as it can cause tons of system problems

I still don't see the advantage of SCSI over a ide. If you have 2 gig of ram and a 7200 rpm new IDE, you should have no problems with any video editing. If you are dealing with analog video, you might need to get raided IDEs so that you can get it faster, but scsi is in many ways slower than ide, especially in response time.

SATA is still a newbie... the technology is at 150 MB/s right now, but it will be 300 and even 600 MB/s in the future.

Anyhow, I've been running a dual P3 866 system but recently i dropped one of my procs into a spare comp and made it two single proc p3's... its been running almost the same for me...

What kind of stability were u getting with a dual proc?

Also how much better is a xeon? in terms of workflow and rendering?

I have a limited buget and so a new comp for me is gonna consist of a new MB, cpu, ram, HD and all the components from my current computer (ie, case, cd, kb, mouse, etc)

I wanna get a machine that'll be decent for the next 2 year at least... which is partially why i'm waiting for 64 bit.

[tonygib]

Hi all,

For what its worth, here is my 2c :)

I have hada Dual Athlon MP 1.2 GHz with IDE raid, etc for over a year and a half now. Prior to that I had only ever used single proc systems. Since using a Dual system, I wouldn't want to go back. It is just that much more responsive and if you get quality hardware and resists the urge to install every bit of "junk" software then its as stable as anything.

On a few side notes, while Max does make good use of the dual CPU's, it can depend on what you are rendering at the time. For example, normal scanline stuff tends to use them pretty much 100%, while it seams that raytraced render doesn't use anywhere as much. As for SSE, well on my Athlons, it doesn't make any differance. How every, I do think that max 5 with the P4 SSE2 does run faster.

A good place to see what CPU's can render at is this site: http://www.3dluvr.com/content/maxbench.php

you can even get the benchmark details and test your own system.

[Aaron Moore]

that bench mark is pretty old... i'm hoping to setup a new one but i've bee too busy.

What im most interested in is getting the max peformance for my $$$.

I can get the best of the best sytem, but if its only 20% faster then a system that's half the cost, its not worth it to me...

If i have 1-2, maybe even 3 grand to drop on a system, I'd want to get one that isn't overpriced, but will provide ample power.

IDE for me forever!!!

Also in terms of P4... didn't the discreet website claim over 40% speed enchancements with the P4 optimization patch???

If so and if a 3ghz p4 runs 40% faster than a 4ghz amd, i'd be willing to wait for the next gen 64bit p5 or whatever...

[tonygib]

Yes, that benchmark is a little old, but then its been the same al this time, so you can see a progression of how the new hardware effects performance.

As for getting max performance, well that is going to depend on what you do most and how the app is optermised for that processing.

For example, P4 SSE2 code will only speed up somethings, tho I don't know exactly which ones they are, but if you spend your time doing stuff that doesn't get that speed advantage, then it is possible that you wasted your money.

In the end a well balanced system is better then anything, and for the most part picking a CPU will decide alot of the other options, like main board, ram, etc.

A few things to think about in the case of the "new" 64bit CPU's. Intels 64bit chips are designed for 64bit apps, ie they run 32 bit app in emulation (much slower). The AMD 64bit CPU's run both 64 and 32 bit as native code, so the 32 bit app will run much faster, however that still assumes that you can get a simular speed CPU as say a current top P4 or XP. I think that the new Opterons are at a slower clock and can't match a P4 or XP. But then you can go to 64 bit apps when they are available while still getting good performance from 32 bit in the mean time, but you will pay for this.

Another thing about the 64bit CPU, is what OS are you going to run, as far as I know, the only Windows 64 bit OS is a server release, and besides, 3d max 5 is only 32 bit, any idea when or even if it will go to 64bit code.

A note on being able to upgrade a system. By the time you want or need to upgrade, main boards, CPU's and RAM will be totally different. Right now I can add a bit more RAM to my system or maybe track down some oldish Athlon 1900 MP's to replace my current CPU's, but other then the RAM, which is DDR 266, there isn't much point in doing anything else. There even isn't much point in getting a new graphics card, since the CPU still has an effect on grahics performance, it would be a waste of money for very little increase.

The basic up shot, other then small add-ons, like bigger hard drive, a DVD burner etc, the main system gets replaced or move down to a backup/render node, every 2-3 years.

I guess what I am saying is get yourself a system that you can afford that will do the job for the next 6-12 months and don't kid yourself into thinking that in 12-18 months time, that you can just drop in the lastest CPU and be state of the art again. This was possible once, but now with Intel and AMD fighting it out, technology is just moving too fast.

I hoep some of the above helps.

[sireel]

Ok so for those of you who are planning to get a new mahcine fairly soon what kind of spec are you thinking about?

What kind of video cards would you guys recommend?

Right now I'm trying to figure out if I should build my own machine like I always do or if I should save myself some headache and get a Boxx, Alienware or Dell machine (my company gets good deals on dells)
Any thoughts on this?

[gaggle]

Ah nice thread indeed. I'm in complete agreement on the use of IDE over SCSI thing, though I'm more open to arguments for and against the use of dual-CPU machines. Maybe I've forgotten how life is like with a single-CPU setup, but nowadays I feel much more dependant on my 2nd monitor, than a 2nd CPU. If I were to buy a new 'puter today on a budget, I'd give up the 2nd CPU far faster than the monitor.

In any event, I just wanted to chime in with the thought of maintenance, I haven't heard too much of that in this thread so far. I built my own computer a little over a year ago, and yeah it was fun and nice, the tech-geeky side of me was all over it, but it did end up costing me some time. I had motherboard-issues (never.. buy.. Tyan..), and my graphicscard didn't perform nicely, and the soundcard ended up being lame, and just.. idunno.. I think time can be better spent.
Oh, for the record these weren't crummy hardware either, I went what I considered all out on the thing. Specifically the components mentioned in the previous paragraph consisted of a (supposedly) solid Tyan dual-AMD mobo, a (supposedly) kickass GeForce 3 card, and a Soundblaster Audigy. I'm not saying building your own machine means you have to have issues for weeks or months or whatever, just that it can happen. I'm strongly swaying towards just buying my next computer from Alienware to get away from all of that next time around.

Also, the idea of spending time on computer-maintenance becomes perhaps more relevant when we're talking dual-CPU machine vs. two single-CPU machines. My workstation-incident might just've been an enormous case of bad luck, but surely with multiple machines, even provided they can be put together without too much hassle, we're still talking having to spend time setting up the 2nd computer, keeping drivers upgraded, etc., in parallel with your workstation? I don't know about everyone else, but I'm tired of messing with technicalities instead of just using the goddamn programs. I know the IT department where I work is kept quite damn busy making sure our renderfarm and workstations are functioning. I don't want that job at home.

Maybe someone who has a renderfarm-ish environment at home would care to enlighten me as to how many hours a week/month/whatever they feel they're spending keeping everything working?

[sireel]

I was thinking the same thing with the whole time saving aspect.
Alienware has some awesome cases *drool*.... but I don't think I will be ordering from them considering the bad reports I've heard of there customer service.
Boxx workstations are just plain ugly but they seem to be rock solid systems....
I'm just so torn.....

[Equinoxx]

I ordered my new system last saturday and expect to pick it up saturday 28th. when i got it i will let you all know how it performs

- p4 2.8 800Mhz, s-478, 512kb
- Asus P4C800 [S478, i865PE, Sata, Audio, GLAN, dualchannel 4xDDR]
- Kingston 2048Mb DDR SDram PC2700 333Mhz
- Asus GeforceFX5900
- Maxtor 160Gb 8Mb chache SATA disc

all housed in a Chieftec Dragon Case :)

cheers

- Qui
:D

[gaggle]

Good lord. That's not a machine, that's a monster..

The reporting-back thing sounds extremly pleasent. Once the chronomatic apparatus on my desk has a post-Saturday date on it, you will be required to fill out detailed descriptions of the tinest thing relevant to your experience :).

[Equinoxx]

hehe I will, I will . . . just gimme some time to install some stuff
on it and do some testruns ;)

[Aaron Moore]

Well, you might accidently zap your ram installing it, fry the MB with a bad powersupply, toast your processor due to bad cooling, damange the HD due to poor installation and problems due to shipping, and everything else may be dealyed by a strike and UPS or FedEX

So theres plenty that can go wrong :) good luck m8

Sounds like a really cool comp...

btw let me know how that gfx card goes cuz its the one i'm thinking about getting. (side note... gfx = geforce fx, but also graphics... i wonder if its a coinkydink or if their pr/marketing ppl made the name up)

l8r guys

[Equinoxx]

Originally posted by Aaron Moore
Well, you might accidently zap your ram installing it, fry the MB with a bad powersupply, toast your processor due to bad cooling, damange the HD due to poor installation and problems due to shipping

i'm not the one who's putting it all together, so if anything goes wrong, it won't cost me anything :cool:

[visualboo]

Nice one EQ. I wanna know how that card handles, so keep me up.

[tonygib]

gaggle: That interesting to hear, it sounds like we have much the same system, is yours a Tyan Tiger MP or MPX or did you get the Thunder. Mines the first Tiger MP, I just updated the BIOS to 1.05 and I too have other quality components, like an ASUS GF3 card, etc. Funny thing is I haven't had any problems with the system, it has been stable as a rock.

On a side note of where best to spend the money. After some 15 years of building and using my own computers, I think I can say that the best money I ever spent was on a monitor. It wasn't cheap, but the screen looks great and lets face it, over the next 5-7 years, and 2-3 major computer upgrades, I will still have the same monitor, so its one hell of a long term investment:)

[opus13]

ok, i dont mean to jump on anyone's case here, but when it comes to storage... so please forgive me if this seems brash, but i just dont want people led astray from spurious comments, offered by the uninformed. here goes:

someone who suggests that IDE drives are an excellent alternative to SCSI has obviously not done any real research into the matter.

1. why do IDE drives have a standard 1 year warranty when scsi is minimum 3, if not 5 years? maybe because the ide drives are manufactured at a lower level of quality. find one serious server or workstation that uses IDE drives from a respected manufacturer.

2. find ONE benchmark that can compare an IDE drive to a SCSI drive in anything besides maximum sustained read. (IDE can only match in laboratory conditions when the sun and planets are aligned)

3. to think that serial ata is actually going to give you 150MB/s, much less 300 or even 600MB/s when the physical drive itself cant handle 75MB/s (yes, even the raptor's) is simply ill-informed.

4. the IDE specification lacks in more areas than can even be touched on as compared to SCSI or fibre channel. (think packetization, quick arbitration/selection, command queueing, etc)

this is just off the top of my head. there are many, many, many reasons why serial or parallel ATA/IDE is not even close to SCSI , and still has an incredible way to go.

heres a quick sum of the differences:

SCSI: higher standards of quality, faster reads, faster writes, lower CPU usage, more flexible configurations, better customer service, better longevity, and better I/O handling.

IDE: massive amounts of storage for cheap.

if anyone is seriously interested in investigating the differences between storage devices, RAID, alternate topologies, backup, redundancy, etc then i must suggest visiting the 2cpu.com or storagereview.com forums. both sites are abound with top notch information, and people that are more than willing to answer all sorts of questions ranging from newbie to terminably advanced.


my 2 cents.

* once again, if it came across too harsh, then i apologize. i just cant stand advice given by those who really should not.

[opus13]

ok, i didnt think that i would do this.. but its unbearable

First, SCSI is dead.
heres the comment that is kicking this off. scsi is not dead, it is actually alive and well, and doing excellent business for the manufactuerers of these devices.

By this coming september, if you get a Raid IDE system (especialy if its SATA) it will run circles around any scsi disks.
please see the above post about this. this is just beyond comprehension. i really do not think you know enough about RAID and its many possible configurations.

Also, if the scsi controller is not built into the motherboard, the transfer speeds get limited by the PCI bus.
any workstation class motherboard has either 64bit/66mhz slots or PCI-X slots that are assigned to their own bus. there is no bus contention, PCI-X is a 64bit/133mhz stabndard that is available on motherboads from a variety of manufacturers.

if speed is that important, get a 40 or even 20 gig 10000 rpm IDE... they will run just as fast as scsi2, wide scsi, and others...
well, thats great. considering there (a) is not such thing as a 20gb or 40gb 10,000rpm hard drive (b) you are comparing these theoretical disks of yours with scsi standards that were superceded up to a decade ago.

Plus you don't need to hassle with scsi ids, and you don't run into mounting issues due to bad scsi connectors, which as i rember was a major pain in the ass.
go to google and do a search on 'scsi faq' and see how many hits you get. its pretty easy to figure out. there are fifteen devices on a chain. your controller is one of them. make sure the other drives/devices are different numbers. add the proper terminator for the type of controller you have (u2w/u160/u320/etc). you are done. if you have any questions beyond what is found in .12 seconds through google, check with the sites i mentioned in my previous post. if you have problems with your connectors, dont buy the cheapest thing off the shelf from compusa.

[sireel]

opus13 - Yes all of what you said is true and I don't think anyone here has said the IDE is on par with SCSI's performance. If I were spec-ing out a server for a corporate environment what you said would all come into play, but I think the point here is that we are not talking about high powered production servers but personal workstations where the difference would really be nominal when considering the cost.

"i just cant stand advice given by those who really should not."
Calm down man were all just giving our opinions and sharing our experiences.

[gaggle]

Aye, the reason I'm all over IDE drives as well is because of the bang/buck ratio. I'm overwhelmed at how expensive SCSI can be if you're going all out, where on the other hand you can get the finest 2 or even 4 way RAID IDE controller and the harddrives required and still have money left. I realise I'm not mentioning any specific numbers here, I'm hoping I can get by without having to dig those up :). If things have changed and I'm blatently wrong on this do feel free to yell and bite a bit.

I'm sorry if I too were one of those that seemingly claimed SCSI dead, though I stand by my suggestion of going the IDE way based on the type of computer this thread started with (namely a homebased workstation within a reasonable budget).

Originally posted by tonygib
gaggle: That interesting to hear, it sounds like we have much the same system, is yours a Tyan Tiger MP or MPX or didAh nice, funny coincidence. Pretty cool you didn't have problems with your 'puter, I guess I was just unlucky or something. I have the experience in computer-building to feel I can safely rule out me ****ing something up, but ah, who knows what really happened back then.

I don't have the Tyan board anymore though. After the weeks and weeks of problems and testing the friendly company I bought it from was convinced to swap it to an Asus board that had just arrived on the market. Good lord that helped. If nothing else the Tyan board took ages to power up, just getting rid of that made me happy. We have Tyan MPX boards at work though, and they seem to be behaving very nicely outside of the "taking ages to power up" thing.
Anyway, I had the first iteration Tyan boards back then, the MP. It worked nicely as long as I didn't use the machine in any particular way. Sound or graphics and the likes. Bah.

And interestingly I too bought a Geforce 3 from ASUS, I guess I was just unlucky with my stuff? I ended up throwing it the hell out (well sold it is more accurate), bought a GeForce 2 MX-400 and used that up until the GeForce 4 series arrived. The Audigy was thrown aside and replacd by a Live! card. After going through all of that crap I too have attained stability. That was a stressful month or so of my life :/. It's almost therapeutic to finally talk about it though :rolleyes:.

[tonygib]

gaggle: yeah, it really sounds like you lucked out, since other then the fact I started with a sound blaster live card, it looks like we had so much the same system that its not funny. Price ppl pay for being an early adopter I guess. Tho it could be that you got the very very first version of the Tiger MP boards, I think mines like an "a" or something, had a few bugs worked out form the initial ones. Don't suppose the GF3 was the v8200 Deluxe, as that would be just too freaky :eek:

The start-up time sounds a little funny, after a small tweak in my BIOS, I got from pushing the power button to login prompt for win 2k in under a minute, tho I don't do a full RAM check and have the ECC ram turned off.


As for the SCSI vs IDE debate, I don't disagree with opus13, other then the 10000 rpm IDE drive. WD are now shipping an 10000rppm SATA IDE drive at 30 something GB.

I think were it really all comes from is that in the old days, even if you just wanted a graphics workstation, you needed to look at SCSI, since those old IDE drives, where slow, ie none at 7200, had bad seek times, etc and just didn't really cut it. However, today, modern IDE drives, with the ata133 interface now have the speed and even more so the size vs price ratio to prettu much say that SCSI is dead (for the desktop).

Sure if it was a server, well thats a different matter, a server gets many different IO requests, both read/write and all this uses CPU time. For this SCSI is still king and due to the problems of the IDE interface is likely to stay that way. But a signle persons workstation doesn't need that, they just do one thing at a time, like read in a texture file, start up an application or write out a video.

Yes, SCSI would do all that faster, but it will just cost you so much more to get the same storage that you need and the gain will not make that big a differance. Nothing like putting the same money in say RAM, faster CPU's annd graphics card, for 3D/2D workstation work, that will have a far great effect then SCSI HDD over IDE ones.

Please fell free to shot me down if i'm wrong :)

[gaggle]

Yeh tonygib, if anything I would've had the first version of the Tyan available, it was hot off the press when I laid my hands on it. And I do infact believe the long (long!) powerup phase is caused by ECC checking. Kinda cool how you've just walked along a path that took you out of harms way, whereas I chose slightly differently and ended up mamed and mangled :D.

Oh and I'll try and look up what card I got back then, I think it might've been that very one. Mmnot sure.. though that Deluxe part puts up a little light somewhere.. ah, whatever.

[dvornik]

Just to add some notes from a couple of years of personal experience as a support guy for Dell and Boxx Quadro-based workstations bought specifically for 3ds max. I don't work there anymore so here's my summary:

Single-processor P4, dual PIII and dual Athlon MP workstations seem to have overall an equal number of issues, such as crashes, sudden quits, viewport artifacts and so on. On all machines it took an effort to find a configuration that had a minimum amount of issues.

When max on an AMD machine crashes users tend to attribute it to the fact that max is optimised for pentium. When a pentium crashes they just shut up and live with it.

Maxtreme (always the latest version) was extremely unreliable in max 5 on all our machines. Maxtreme is absolutely crucial to viewport performance. If your quadro (or softquadroed geforce) based workstation can't run Maxtreme - you need to get a workstation that can. Benchmarks show a tremendous (several hundred percent) difference in viewport performance on all tests. A cheap 1900+/Quadro4 workstation I've built outperforms all our systems that don't use Maxtreme by several hundred % based on the specAPC and the benchmarks from the second CD of max.

Tyan dual Athlon boards (S2468 k7x) in our Boxx workstations were very problematic (Bios problems not related to max) and the issue was not resolved by the time I quit despite some significant efforts from Boxx.

Rendering times are consistent with Greg's test on 3dluvr.

Boxx is better than Dell but not perfect.

SCSI is nonsence for personal 3d workstations unless you know you have some very specific issues that have to be addressed. 8MB cache ide drives are "fast enough" and newer ide drives are more than 2 times faster than SCSI from 3 years ago. My 160 GB maxtor 8mb ($80, heh-heh) shows 47906/27556 average read/write (Max read 65369, min 29201). Older Dell SCSI at work are like 17000 read average. I don't output analog video or anything like that so I don't even use onboard raid.

Bottom line - buying a dream machine that will last you for years doesn't make sense. Buy a reasonably-priced machine with quality components and a professional video card (unless you think you'll softquadro your card for the rest of your machine's life). Keep in mind that it still may not work for max - so leave yourself some extra cash for adjustments. There's no guarantee that any "perfect" hardware will work well in max, no matter if you build it yourself or buy it from a respectable manufacturer. If you pay too much (whatever it means for you) you may regret it.

And remember: 90% more money buys 10% more performance (if you're lucky).

[hugodog]

Wow... things heat up a bit here.....

Nice thread tho..

Here's my 2c:

We have been building machines for decade now..
I think (I hope) I should have a bit of experience
to tell...

I think far too many people take benchmark result
without looking closer. Say product A has benchmark
numbers like 15233. Product B has 15111. Than
most people will say A is da Best. Buy them.
I'd said wait a minute. If A is only 1% faster.
but 100% more expensive (like SCSI drives) then
the hell with it. Plus many benchmark are not
the same thing as in real life performance. Depends
a lot of how you use the thing.

Bottom line is, that when you do your homework
and check the review on the things
you're planning to buy, you'd going to get great
machines and save a lot of money a long the way.

We have both P4 and AMD on our arsenal. Both are solid
great machines. The different is that P4s are quieter,
Athlons are faster and a lot cheaper. Take your pick.
We do find that Athlon machines are cooler now
(the Thoroughbred species with .13 micron) so,
we tend to use Athlon more nowadays. Of the dozens
machines we have with Athlons and P4s, not ONE
single processor have died (no special cooling or
anything like that). Both are very solid. In term of
problems like max crashing, I can't see any differences
between P4 or Athlons.. no compatibility issue whatsoever
with Athlons.

Only use SCSI if you are *definitely* have to go
with the fastest storage (say *ver busy* Server).
For your workstations, (sorry Optus13) SCSI is dead.
The price and the hassle are just not worth it.
You'd be better of spending the dollar on other
stuff like more RAM, a quadro or better car... I can't imagine
why 3dsMax workstation have to have the fastest
SCSI drives anyway, 7200rpm (or more) IDE will
be just fine, get the 8mb buffer.

If you have the dollar to go with dual processors,
than go with it. You'd get more responsive machines.
But for the render farms, dual m/b plus dual proc are
more expensive than buying two machines.
So go with dual proc m/b for your own workstation, but
go with two (or more) single proc for the render farms.

If you're planning to buy a new system, get a latest
chipsets m/b with dual channel DDR, SATA raid and
NVidia card. For P4 m/b go with intel875 chipset.
For Athlons, surprisingly SIS chipsets are very good.
Buy the highest processor you can afford, usually
not necessarily have to be the latest one (purely for
price/performance consideration).

Also check out Softquadro with your Geforce4
cards, it really works. ATI may be a bit faster (or so
they said, haven't tested myself with Max), but I find
Nvidia has more stable OpenGL driver... (I don't know
if you opt to use Direct3D with Max... anyone care
to comment?). Get a real quadro if you have the money.

Back the old days, we used to buy latest model branded
systems which we kind of regreted now. Not that they are
not great. It's just that in 1 or 2 years these machines
would be obsolete & overpriced machines. They also shares
the same problems with stability. Building machines
yourself could be a lot better.. just choose your components
carefully.

Hope someone will find any use with this..
Don't shoot me....

A tip. I was surprised that some of my colleages was not
using ServicePack3 for their Windows2000. I find that
win2k is running very well nowadays with sp3. So get
it if you haven't.

Regards,

[dvornik]

I agree with most of the hugodog's comments. Except I have no experience with SIS chipsets and I disagree with the dual-processor renderfarm remarks. [edit] And OGL performance in max 5 is total crap without Maxtreme, quadros are just as bad as geforces.

[edit]
I assume now you don't buy brand name machines. How do you handle warranty and support issues from the management point of view?

[edit some more] Our dual athlon Boxx machines did not produce any excessive noise or heat compared to all other machines, including macs. It's 13 boxes in a room. My own single athlon is very quiet as well (80 mm adjustable fans, you know).

[final edit] I guess I only agree with some of the hugodog's comments :)

[dvornik]

And about benchmarks... Here's the simplest one. Make two copies of the "Apollo" model from sample files and spin them around in shaded wireframe (arc-rotate selected). If there's no lag - you're all set. If the lag is minimal - you have an acceptable level pro system. If it lags a lot but still usable - your setup is a bit slow but still good for modelling. Otherwise you need to upgrade, especially if it doesn't resemble an interactive viewport anymore.

[Aaron Moore]

I'm still standing on believing that SCSI is dead. Buts this issue seems to have been beaten down to the bone already so... ya

As for maxtreme, I run a geforce 4 ti 4200 and I was wondering if its worth installing softquadro and matreme? If so, how! I've never had luck with it :P

As for the price peformance issues, I'd definately say get the best for your money, but don't waste it on extravagent stuff. Its better to save that money for your next system which probably be 4x faster any way!

Ive been using an old school P3 900 for the longest time and when i upgrade now, I'll be running in the 2-3 Ghz range... talk about noticable changes!

I'd like to hear more opinions for the upcomming 64bits and what people think about them.... I myself am definately waiting.

See ya
Aaron

[gaggle]

Oh I'm waiting for those 64bits as well. And I'll keep on waiting 'till they've been on the market for quite some time :).

This (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=63877&highlight=maxtreme) thread mentions this (http://www.guru3d.com/rivatuner/softquadro/) link as a place to go for all your SoftQuadro needs.

I'm using what I believe is a card possibly capable of softquadrofication, but I've always just and gone "meeh" whenever I've heard about it. I've figured MAX is fast enough as it is, and I wouldn't like to jeopardize the stability of my machine, and, besides, how much faster can this hack possibly make things.. and other such knee-jerk reactions. But then people come into this thread saying it's practically like day and night, once Maxtreme drivers are functioning it's an entirely new level of performance and whatnot.. and.. well.. shoot, like Aaron asks, please anyone feel free to teach all of us lazy ol' bastards why and how to get this MAXtreme thing on the road.

now that I reread that article it does sound like an operation of limited complexity.. hhmm.. still, please bring on the experience-sharing, would be nice to hear how others feel about it. Unless someone ends up deeming it too offtopic

[jyrgen]

I sincerely suggest to read this (http://www.nvworld.ru/docs/sq4e.html) page for theory, practice and tests on softquadrification of GF4 cards.

[mora]

get a 3d BOXX (http://www.boxxtech.com/)

[Cyberdigitus]

Can you softQuadro a geforce 3 card? Will there be a geforce FX softquadro patch?

some other thing... are there any benchmark lists for 3dsmax, using the official benchmark scenes?

[dvornik]

To use the official benchmarks all you need to do is play the scenes from the second CD and note the FPS. The more detailed description is on discreet support site under "tested video cards". Unfortunately the scenes are not available for download in case you've misplaced your second CD.
http://www.discreet.com/support/max/

To display FPS "Edit the .3dsmax.ini file from the 3ds max directory (Default: C:/3dsmax5) by opening the .INI file in a text editor, such as Microsoft Wordpad .Below the [Performance], add the following: ShowFPS=1"
http://www.discreet.com/support/max/faq/answer.php3?prod=dddstudio&id=1308

Results page (http://www.discreet.com/support/max/videocards/r4.php3). Note the difference between OpenGL and Custom (meaning Maxtreme in Nvidia's case) performance. It's 282.6 percent on the first scene for 900XGL for instance. And that's in max 4. In max 5 the situation is even more drastic.

The benchmarks from the second CD are commonly referred to as Maxbench. Here are the detailed results of Quadro4 900XGL (http://www.discreet.com/support/max/videocards/42000_detail.php3?ID=13) for quick comparison for those of you with Ti4600.

Geforce3 chipset is identical to Quadro DCC so softquadro will turn it into a 100% quadro (which is not the case with GF4).

BTW, if Maxtreme doesn't work on your Boxx they'll tell you to call PNY. PNY will tell you it's Nvidia's screwup and may let you fill out a bug report if you really insist.

[dvornik]

Another decent viewport benchmark is Specapc, it's free to download:
http://www.specbench.org/gpc/apc.static/max42info.html

[Cyberdigitus]

Originally posted by dvornik
Geforce3 chipset is identical to Quadro DCC so softquadro will turn it into a 100% quadro (which is not the case with GF4).


yeah, but do i need to use the softquadro 2 or 4 patches? i can't find any specific for 3.

thanks for pointing out the use of the benchmark scenes. is there also a page for the rendertest scenes?

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