P4 or G5 - what is best for rendering?

[Mantat]

First of all, dont trust too much benchmarks. The reason is that they never test a proper G5 and always take a fully optimized PC. You will get better performance and a better computer if you take a dual 1.8G5 with raided Raptor drives. And if you have the cash, increase the ram as much as you can (as in over 2gig). This would give you a top of the line 3D workstation.

Personnaly, the thing I dont like about AMD is how hot their CPU runs. I had one about 3 years ago and the heat was a serious problem. But maybe its less of a problem now, dont know...

Anyways, if you can wait a few week, wait for the expo, but if you want it right now, get a dual 1.8 with twin raptors.

Finaly, your PC seller is telling you crap. There is no way on earth that a single P4 can beat a dual proc on rendering. Rendering is the kind of process that benefit a lot from dual processor and a lot of ram.

 

[Counterfit]

I would think (or like to at least) that barefeats.com makes the tests as close as possible. Hence the usage of dual 2 GHz setups of both systems, G5 and Opteron.

 

[topicolo]

If you do go with pc duals (not that i'm suggesting it), don't go with intel p4s or xeons. The fsb bandwidth and memory bandwidth on those chips are terrible compared to the G5 or AMD's 64bit chips. Multiprocessing is where the hypertransport of the G5 and AMD chips really shine.

 

[PyroTurtle]

it's amazing, i just went through this same thing at my friends start up...
and we pretty much have one dual 2Ghz G5 machine as the MAIN machine...then went and got like 10 really cheap single proc athalons....

so, what we found out was that lightwave kicks on that G5. we got our 2 hour movie done on it along in like 4 hours. it took the "old" dual opteron machine 6 hours...it has now become the linux server for all of us, as it has like 2TB of hard drive space now...

basically, from experiance, just wait for the expo and get a nice G5. he used to hate macs, but after the headaches we had trying to get all those PC's to talk to each other right and jsut start to render...ya, the mac is waaay more worth it!

 

[manitoubalck]

Originally posted by Mantat
Personnaly, the thing I dont like about AMD is how hot their CPU runs. I had one about 3 years ago and the heat was a serious problem. But maybe its less of a problem now, dont know...

Yeah that problem was fixed shortly after when you said you had yours. I have a Athlon 1GHz from a little under 3 years ago, and heat has never been an issue (can't say the same for my GeForce2 MX which is over clocked from 175MHz to 220Mhz)

Back on topic, If you travel down the PC road (I would, with Tyan) Build your own, or get a friend to build it for you. You'll save dollars and can customise your systemhow you see fit.

 

[Powerbook G5]

I have owned two AMD processors and worked on others and in general, they do seem a whole lot cooler than Pentium 4 processors, especially the new ones. Our Dell P4 overheats so badly when our Gateway Athlon XP is really cool and stable.

 

[kettle]

?

forget the arguments of time saved, the G5 runs OS X and the P4 doesn't.

 

[wwworry]

that guy wanted to sell you an expensive case, the one thing he could get some mark-up on. Everything else was kind of a joke.