Render Station

[directive0]

Hey again.

Right now the 1.2ghz g4 rig we're using to model and render are one in the same. Its a big hassle because we're rendering alot of floorplans and it takes a loooong time. Time in which the computer could be doing other things. My employer has expressed concern, and has suggested we buy a high end prosumer rig to handle the rendering. this is what we had in mind

http://www.apple.com/powermac/specs.html

the 2.5 ghz model seems more then adequate. My question:

Is rendering more proccessor or ram intensive, by which I mean; should we be focusing on a faster computer, or a more memory robust one?

[Peter van der Elst]

I work on a dual 2,5 Ghz G5 and it works great, make sure to have lots of RAM (i have 1,5 GB) thanks to the dual processor, the image renders about 40% faster because of the 2 scanlines. I think both processor aswell as RAM help to decrease rendertimes. The G5 is capable to have 8 GB of RAM, I think it's a good investment, however, the G5 2,5 GHz has a long delivery time, so instead you couuld choose the 2,0 GHz, maybe a little bit slower, but you can hardly tell i think.

[fsung]

quote:

---

Is rendering more proccessor or ram intensive, by which I mean; should we be focusing on a faster computer, or a more memory robust one?

---

Both. Other things being equal, a faster processor will complete the render more quickly than a slower one, however, given two systems with identical processors but differing amounts of RAM, the system with more RAM will (usually) complete the render more quickly than the one with less RAM.

As Peter noted, rendering times are significantly faster on a dual processor setup because RW is multi-processor aware (at least for Final Quality, Custom, and Artistic RW; OpenGL is graphics card dependent so it doesn't get the same boost).

That being said, adding RAM will definitely reduce rendering times. I recently added 1GB to my 2,0 G5 Dual (raising it from 512 Mb to 1.5 Gb), and have seen my rendering times drop dramatically. For example, a 10 sec. Artistic RW animation that took a bit over 3:10 (3 hours, ten minutes) with 512Mb RAM installed took just over 36 min. after adding the additional Gb. (I've noticed that since adding the extra RAM my page outs have dropped to almost nothing, so my guess is that having more RAM available reduces the need for VW/RW to use Virtual Memory.)