Thoughts on building Octane specific rendernodes

[PeterCGS]

I thought about putting together a Octane renderfarm..

What do you consider to be the best performance setup to get maximum performance for as little money as possible.

As I see it 7 x Nvidias GTX 560 2GB cards, and a SI Big Bang Marshal B3 motherboard would be the best option, or do you have any other thoughts/recommendations?

/Regards Peter K

[t_3]

I thought about putting together a Octane renderfarm..

What do you consider to be the best performance setup to get maximum performance for as little money as possible.

As I see it 7 x Nvidias GTX 560 2GB cards, and a SI Big Bang Marshal B3 motherboard would be the best option, or do you have any other thoughts/recommendations?

/Regards Peter K

this (http://refractivesoftware.com/forum/vie ... f=9&t=7383) is a already a few months old, but based on price/performance some gtx 570 are imo also to consider. you would need 5 of them to have the same performance than 7 gtx 560, but it'll make the whole setup a little less complex. even tough putting 5 or 7 cards together could be still a though project

another consideration may be, to build 2 pcs with 2 gtx 570 each. way lot easier to accomplish, cheaper single components and would in the end cost not more (or even less) than a 7-card monster. in result you won't have all the power for a single render, but sometimes it is also useful to have 2 images rendering in parallel.

my personal opinion would be, if targeting for a 7/8 card number cruncher, given all the problems in building such a thing, then it should also use the most powerful cards around, so the work on such a machine really pays off. or you may get one of my octowers, if they ever make its way into reality btw. also based on the big bang marshal: http://www.refractivesoftware.com/forum ... f=6&t=8215

ps: there were some discussions about pci extensions and cases, you may find useful:
http://www.refractivesoftware.com/forum ... =11&t=7466
http://www.refractivesoftware.com/forum ... =23&t=9010

[PeterCGS]

Thanks for the input! I however not afraid to build a setup with 7 cards. The most important factor is price for me. I already have 12 computers, so the CPU+RAM is there. I only need to swap mobo + add GPUs. And since the lifespan is considered short, Im not going to build it with more expensive parts than necessary. However, Im wondering if 560 is the sweet spot money wise? It hard to judge benchmarks vs price, since the benchmarks I've looked at differs quite alot.. Didn't someone make a poll/benchmark questionary during the summer. I never saw the result from that one though...

I got plenty of PSU:s and my own chilled room. So I got no problem with heat or power. The question is only money hahaha.. Once the Keplers are out, I want to swap out all cards, so I only thought of building as many systems that are needed until Nvidia got their action going.

You case was very nice! I hope you will make it into a reality!

/Regards

[t_3]

Thanks for the input! I however not afraid to build a setup with 7 cards. The most important factor is price for me. I already have 12 computers, so the CPU+RAM is there. I only need to swap mobo + add GPUs. And since the lifespan is considered short, Im not going to build it with more expensive parts than necessary. However, Im wondering if 560 is the sweet spot money wise? It hard to judge benchmarks vs price, since the benchmarks I've looked at differs quite alot.. Didn't someone make a poll/benchmark questionary during the summer. I never saw the result from that one though...

I got plenty of PSU:s and my own chilled room. So I got no problem with heat or power. The question is only money hahaha.. Once the Keplers are out, I want to swap out all cards, so I only thought of building as many systems that are needed until Nvidia got their action going.

You case was very nice! I hope you will make it into a reality!

/Regards

12
the twelve (render)monkeys

from what i measured (the first link above), the 560 non-ti is has the best price/performance ratio, at least for octane...

[PeterCGS]

Ah, sorry I didn't see you link until now haha.. Ok, great! This helps ALOT! I can input my own prices there and see what conclusion I come up with considering new PSUs etc etc that are needed.

/Regards Peter K