CompuServe Thread

#Amiga out of Market?

2 messages in this thread
#75636From: Tim JonesFeb 27, 1994 11:33 AM
Greg It would seem to me a render farm is a professionals dream. If your one of your SGI's goes down how much production do you lose ? If one of many networked toaster goes down you only lose a fraction of the production. Sometimes many cheaper units are better. Tim
#75643From: GREG TEEGARDENFeb 27, 1994 1:03 PM
That's true to a point, but I'll you I'd rather have 3 Screamers than 80 2000s all networked together. The biggest problem with huge render farms is the enormous cost of RAM for all the machines. It costs around $50 to $60K to populate all those machines with 32 meg apiece! That's alot of money, even for a professional environment. That's also not to mention the cost of all the peripheral cards requiered (i.e., Ethernet cards, Toaster cards, etc.) plus a large server. You also need some proprietary software to run the whole thing. The savings made from purchasing a few more powerful machines more than makes up for the potential that something could go wrong with one of them. Hell, the money saved could be used to have spares in case something like that happened! Professionals would rather have a few high power machines networked in a streamlined fashion than a whole slew of less powerful machines, from a practicle as well as economic standpoint. GT