#486 upgrades
12 messages in this thread
I NEED MORE SPEED!!!
I am ready to upgrade to a 486 from a 386/33 w/weitek, but I am not sure
what the most cost effective path is. My dealer says 486/50(dx2) will give
me similar performance to a 486/50DX for rendering and will be much
cheaper. What about a 486/66(DX2). Would that be better than a 486/50DX?
Are there any available yet? Are there any 50's which will accept a speed
doubler. I have also been told that a 486/50DX bus doesn't run any faster
than a 486/33DX. Is this true?
Any info on prices or brands would be appreciated as well.
Thx
Tom
Atlanta Multigraphics, Inc.
>>I have also been told that a 486/50DX bus doesn't run any faster than
>>a 486/33DX. Is this true?
~Buss speed is independant of the processor speed (mostly), for the reason
that many hardware option boards will not work at higher speeds.
–PhilD…
Tom,
have you considered upgrading your motherboard? You could probably get
a 486/50dx motherboard to fit your case size and scavenge all your
components. Here's some typical local prices in L.A.,CA (May 25th):
Brand OPTI
486/33dx 256k cache $580
486/50dx2 256k cache $780
486/50dx 256k cache $890
US brands, like Micronics/Mylex/AMI add $200-$400
I don't think the 486/66dx2 is out yet so, but it might be worth waiting.
As far as rendering speed difference between the 486/50 dx and dx2, I don't
know and the price at least at the motherboard level) is not that great.
Check your local computer papers or Computer Shopper for prices. Things to
look for are, IMHO, memory expandability to at least 64mb and standard
SIMM's acceptance (like 1mb x 9, 4mb x 9, 8mb x 9 etc), especially if
you're going to take your old memory from the 386/33 to the 486.
Personally, I would go for the 486/50 dx right now or, if I could wait, I'd
get the 486/66dx2 when it comes out. Good luck.
Martin
PS If you don't like playing with motherboards you could always get a base
system (m/board, case, floppy, 1mb memory – add $170 to each price).
Not that this is totally relevant to your discussion, but it seems like an
interesting place to mention this. Having just purchased a 486/50 for our
3DS station, we thought it would be fun to load our 3.61 Topas onto it and
benchtest a couple of models against our regular Topas RRS system, with
Truevisions Horizon I860 board. On models which did not have a lot of
geometry, the 486/50 was actually faster! Models which were
geometry-intensive rendered only 15-20% faster on the Horizon platform:
interesting when you consider the $10K pricetag for the accelerator. Those
486/50's sure warp out!
Ken Loss-Cutler
Wow Ken,
That's interesting stuff. I feel even better now about having
chosen the PC platform and 3ds2. I had felt silly for a while paying $1200
for the weitek 4167/33 to get a mere 33% speed improvement in my 486/33….
Martin
Well well well… I had a feeling that the 486/50 would put the Horizon
board to shame. Unfortunately, without "vectorizing" the rendering code,
the i860 just isn't that fast. And since there are no vectorizing C
compilers available, it's basically impossible to get the promised
performance out of that chip. So… it sounds like you're not going to be
"bothering me" about porting 3DS over to the Horizon board anymore…
right?
It sounds like with big models, 3DSr2 is actually faster on a 486/50 than
the Topas RRS system on an i860. Interesting.
– G
Ah, Gary: I thought you might want to jump to that conclusion: "3DSr2 is
actually faster on a 486/50 than the Topas RRS system on an i860".
Unfortunately, I have not yet performed tests which could tell me that. I
could DXF a file between the platforms and render, but not knowing what is
"coming over" and what isn't in the translator might make the data
so-generated of only limited use in reaching such a conclusion. My
comparison is strictly Topas 486/50 v Topas RRS. I would be very
interested in running a Topas RRS v 32DSr2 486/50 test. Let's get some
feedback from Forum members on the most valid way to design such an
experiment. That way, everyone will really believe it when they hear it
<grin>. Ken
We've done our own tests here regarding timing between 3DSr2 and Topas 3.x,
and with large architectural models using multiple texture maps we're
already 2-3 times faster than Topas on a 486. Given your Topas-to-Topas
numbers, it's a simple extrapolation to deterimine that we're also faster
than the RRS system. However, a formal benchmark done by you would also be
enlightening.
– G
It might be fun for you to send me the same file you used in your trials
and let me run it in both of my environments to check the times against. It
would certainly add to the credibility of whatever claims you and/or I end
up asserting <grin>. Ken
I've been thinking alot about this, because I need to get another machine.
Since 3DS is so floating point intensive when you're rendering, my guess is
that a 486DX2/50 will be very very nearly as fast as a 486DX/50. Certain
operations won't be as fast, such as disk io (for swapping), and redraws
for very large models. However, if your primary interest is in maximum
rendering speed for the money, the DX2/50 sounds like a great bargain.
Once the 486DX2/66 comes out (who knows when), my bet is that it actually
will render faster than the DX/50, but it might even be a touch slower for
certain i/o-related operations than the 50 is (shouldn't be enough to worry
about). Now _that_ would be a screaming machine for the bucks.
But the REAL KILLER is going to be the 486DX2/100. For the price of a
486/50, the rendering speed will be almost 2X that. Hopefully this year.
– G
Tom:
Bus speed is not an issue. Get a 486/50DX with 64 MB RAM.
Evan
We agree with Evan! Get enough RAM to insure that your harddrive is not
accessed during rendering. That is the most cost-effective way to maximize
your speed.
Ken Loss-Cutler