Gearing up - Does a monster render rig really make a big di

[hoddie]

Hey folks, for a long time I've been doing static renders in Poser and Daz but as well as Vue, C4D and Bryce, LuxRender and now most importantly Octane !; thing is tho my heart is in animation, even if it’s very brief ident anims about 1 min long, I long to get my scenes moving, especially to soundtracked music (I compose too)

ok cut to the chase...

My current spec is pretty weak

8Gb memory
Corei5 750 running at 2.67Ghz
Nvidia GeForce GT320

[strong]a lousy 4 threads....and barely any GPU memory with 72 cuda cores[/strong]

A decent render for me can take about 2-4 hours, I do multiple passes, SSS, IDL, etc and while I get good results, 4 hours just is too long for 1 image

So been saving for a long time and looking to get a custom built Rig, here’s the rough

128Gb Memory
Intel Xeon E5-2690, 8 Core, 2.9GHz, 20MB Cache X 2
2GB NVIDIA Quadro 4000 (for display)
Nividia GeForce GTX 690 (for GPU rendering - Lux assisted GPU and Octane)

I can max out at 32 threads..woot..
(it’s a custom job from 3XS built to order)

Question is Any of you out there with similar rigs or would have an idea just HOW fast a rig like this would perform for engines such as

Firefly
3delight
Vue
Luxrender
and....Octane!


Based on calculations 4 threads at a 40 min smaller 720dpi render (for HD video) I am potentially speeding my renders by 8 times - 5 mins per render..that’s potentially worth the 6K GBP I will blow on this system and naturally with GPU assisted render engines I'm looking at a much higher turnaround time (esp. with 3000 cuda cores in a GTX690)

Anyone care to pitch in their 2 cents or give any advice ?

[Refracty]

It really depends what you want to render.

For Octane 128G of RAM is unnecessary. 12G of RAM should be sufficiant.
But you are looking for an ultimate solution for GPU rendering as well as biased rendering and 3D workstation in one box.
I would suggest to tune your current weak setup with a new motherboard (that has 2-4 pcie 16x slots) and put in 2 - 4 GTX 580s (3GB) in.
Additionally you could set up a dual cpu motherboard with 24 GB RAM or more if you really need it. Do you really need a Quadro FX? For many 3D apps they are very good, but in some cases a GTX is fine.

Just some thoughts.

[hoddie]

Thanks a thought I had initially; Been down the route of motherboard replacement and for 2 Nvidias a PSU of 1000w or more is required, im stuck with a 800w. By time I rip out motherboard, PSU, put back together with cards I'm hitting a high budget, not to mention the headache of possible foulups when setting it all up. Like you said I'm looking for a general all rounder, the dual Xeons would be great for my CPU based render engines which i currently rely on the most, but here in Japan..even a mother board that supports dual Xeons is in excess of 600,000 not to mention the chip cost on top...whereas I can take advantage of the high yen VS GBP and get a "saving" on exchange rate.

Still, food for thought and thanks for suggesting, mebbe I could pop in the GTX 690 BEFORE goign ahead with the big rig and see how octane performs.

[GeoPappas]

128Gb Memory

[FooZe]

Hi Hoddie,

Just a note that a 690 will need the kepler test build of octane and currently doesn't perform as good as a 590 would.
Also the 4GB that is on a 690 is shared between the 2 GPU's on board. It's got 2GB per GPU so the memory available to octane is only 2GB.
The current "best" card in our opinion is still the 3GB 580. However if you want to lower power usage and want more VRAM then i believe you can get 4GB 670's and 680's.
It's just that the kepler cards are currently only performing about 60-70% as fast as their fermi equivalents (ie: 580 vs 680, 590 vs 690 etc).
We can't say for sure how much optimization for these cards will help so this speed difference is probably what you should take into account for your decision.

Out of interest; for octanerender standalone CPU speed means little and the amount of ram you need can be based around the peak that happens during scene voxelization. 16GB should do fine as Refracty says.
The CPU is used during scene load, but is relatively idle during render.

Cheers
Chris.

[gabrielefx]

@hoddie

if you need a single multi purpose workstation go for a dual Xeon with 4 slots for pci-x 3x cards. Intel produces a very professional motherboard with these features.
Then you will need 24GB and 2 raid 1 ssd disks. For the backup and textures 4 or more ssd in raid 5.
Start with one gtx590 because it has the same gtx580 performance but with two gpus and half the vram.
With Octane for Max 3.0 you can use instances and your medium complex scene will fit in the vram.

http://www.isycorp.com/i/mkg/skp.asp?id_prod=194115

Tomoroww you will throw away you gtx590 and you will buy the new Kepler cards. They will outperform the gtx580-590-680-690.

Don't buy the new Quadro K5000.

[hoddie]

Thanks all for the replies; seems alot of people advise against the 690 as it seems to be a bit of a non starter; so I guess I could go for 590 and wait till the architcture on keplers gets to a more stable condition. Tons of people have said 128GB is too much but it wont impact "performance" its just "excessive" - plus maxing out the memory on the package I'm goign for is the difference in price of mebbe 40 bucks.

As suggested going for a 480Gb SSD and have my own existing Raid setup which I will be slotting into the box. Its wierd how 590's outperform 690's on Octane at the moment but whats to say that wont change in a few release cycles time ?

Thanks for the advice folks, appreciated.

[glimpse]

probably the only reason I would go for as much RAM would be taking ~100gb & making a RAM disk.. =)
depending on the sticks You're using You could get about 5000mb/s read speeds out of it..& that is about 10x better than SSDscould offer =).. some say, that storage is the biggest bottle-neck of modern systems, so solving this issue for some applications You might see huge improvement. but as always..it depends on You're own needs =).. if You're not using any specific task that requires so much of throughtput..there's no need to waste money. it would be like giving mom 6core procesor for 1k$ just to compose word files..she would't notice any different from simple dual core..

[hoddie]

I went ahead and got the big rig few months ago. CPU based renders are about 2-4 mins, gpu's in about 5 mins. Ram was excessive but was cut rate price so no biggy.

My computer can beat your dad in a fight.
=p