#Hot 3D P5 Motherboard?
40 messages in this thread
Is anyone aware of how well the ASUS PCI/I P55TP4XE motherboard performs on 3D
and animation? I am consideering purchasing this board. Is there a more ideal
solution? 3D does seem to be steering toward WIN NT. However I can't afford a
multiple processor board at this time.
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Timothy <Pixel Pusher>
NVision Inc. &
Digibotics
" However I can't afford a multiple processor board at this time."
I haven't heard of the ASUS PCI motherboard you mentioned. But I thought that
3D Studio MAX is being written in such a way as to take advantage of multiple
processors. My computer has a slot for a second Pentium chip, except it's
empty right now! That second slot, filled, might make 3DS run better on my
machine than the faster one you're talking about.
Hi Nik,
Thanks for the help. Yes, I believe that you are correct. Now just to find a
good Dual Pentium Mobo. By the time I decide the next generation will be out!
Timothy <Pixel Pusher>
NVision Inc. &
Digibotics
I heard it straight from G. Yost – Yes, 3dS MAX will be multi-threaded and take
full advantage of multiple processors!
>Is anyone aware of how well the ASUS PCI/I P55TP4XE motherboard performs on 3D
and animation? I am consideering purchasing this board. Is there a more ideal
solution? 3D does seem to be steering toward WIN NT. However I can't afford a
multiple processor board at this time.<
I'm looking to get an ASUS board also. I have seen single CPU boards for around
$350. You can get a dual SMP ASUS board for around $475. For another $125 you
have the option of adding another CPU when you need it. If you go with
90/100MHz chips by the time 3DS MAX ships you will be able to pop in another
CPU for around $200. That's a 60% performance improvement.
I don't know how a dual SMP 90/100 compares to a single 120/133, but I think
you can use dual 120/133 in the ASUS board as soon as Intel releases the SMP
120/133.
Tim,
For what it's worth, here is the performance report that Cameron sent me on my
system when he finished assembly and tested it out.
Using NT HELL Benchmark against a single processor Pentium 100 (I have a dual
100). Running 10 threads, the dual came in at 400,000 drystone compared to the
single at 220,000.
Terry
PS: I don't have a CLUE what that means
>For what it's worth, here is the performance report that Cameron sent me on my
system when he finished assembly and tested it out.<
I've been talking to him about getting a ASUS dual SMP board.
>Using NT HELL Benchmark against a single processor Pentium 100 (I have a dual
100). Running 10 threads, the dual came in at 400,000 drystone compared to the
single at 220,000.<
The performance will be nice to have with 3DS MAX. Did you have to run your
CPU's at 90 so the Perception would work? I'm going to get a similar setup as
you. I've got a Dell XPS 100 w/PAR and I am going to upgrade it all.
Tim,
>> Did you have to run your CPU's at 90 so the Perception would work?<<
I have talked to Murphy about that, and he assures me that will work. However,
he also assures me that the "fix" is going to be out in about 30 to 45 days to
make that unnecessary. I have only had my system for two and a half weeks, so
I'm still pretty busy with just finding my way around 3DS. So, I'm going to try
and wait em out before I go jumping things around. BTW, I believe he was saying
that it was the "bus" speed you slow down instead of the CPU. Anyway, I've got
enough to keep me busy for awhile with the different IPAS routines I have. I'm
really, right now, more afraid of Animator Studio than I am the PVR. I'm not
sure what all is wrong with it, but it sounds pretty horrible.
Sounds like you have the makings of a little render farm there. My wife will
soon be getting a system just like mine (if the stock market ever comes back to
the surface OR Cameron would take credit cards <g>). That will give us two
duals and a couple of 486's to throw at rendering.
Yeh, sounds like MAX is going to be alright. GREAT! I get to start learning all
over again in about 6 months. <g> Biped is what I'm looking forward to. You
ain't SEEN a fight until you see me with IK and Bones pro. <g> I can truly make
some bizzare looking meshes (or messes) with that.
Glad to hear you're talking with Cameron, I was very pleased with the service I
got.
Terry
>BTW, I believe he was saying that it was the "bus" speed you slow down instead
of the CPU.<
The bus and cpu speed are both taken from the same clock. If you run a 30MHz
clock the Pentium runs at 60MHz, since you have the P54C it runs at 90MHz. The
P54C chips are clocked internally at 1.5X the external speed, so 60MHz * 1.5 =
90MHz. The P100 machine is a 33MHz bus so it runs 66MHz external which equals a
100MHz Pentium (99.xMHz actually). The new P120 and P133 chips use a 2X
internal clock, the 120 is a 2X 60 and the 133 is a 2X 66. The P150MHz is a
2.5X clocked P60.
Tim,
That's what I thought. <g>
Terry
Terry,
Where did you get the NT HELL benchmark? Is it on CIS somewhere? (I looked,
but didn't find it.)
JNJ
John,
Cameron is the one who had it and did the testing. I quote, "I ran it on NT
HELL benchmark by Windows magazine". Maybe you could look in one of the Windows
forums?
Terry
> NT HELL benchmark by Windows magazine". Maybe you could look in one of the
Windows forums? <
Couldn't find it in the Windows Mag forum.. strange.
JNJ
John,
Hmmmm, I reread the mail I got from Cameron, and that's what he said, "by
Windows magazine". I'll drop Cameron a line and see if I can find out what the
deal is and let you know.
Terry
Thanks Terry
JNJ
John,
Cameron said you may can find the benchmark we were discussing earlier in the
Windows Shareware forum, NT section.
Hope this is a little better help.
Terry
Terry,
thanks, I'll look for it, and try to post something.
JNJ
>Cameron said you may can find the benchmark we were discussing earlier in the
Windows Shareware forum, NT section.<
didn't find it.. strange. oh well.
JNJ
Hi Tim,
Thanks for the info! From what I had read in other threads I thought that
you had already purchased a mobo. So please disregard my previous questions.
There I go thinking again!
>I'm looking to get an ASUS board also. I have seen single CPU boards for
around $350. You can get a dual SMP ASUS board for around $475. For another
$125 you have the option of adding another CPU when you need it. If you go with
90/100MHz chips by the time 3DS MAX ships you will be able to pop in another
CPU for around $200. That's a 60% performance improvement.
Yes, I do see the logic in this. Why did you choose ASUS? I haven't been
researching dual PP's. Do they have socket 7 for full upgradeability? How about
Pipelined Caching? What sort of RAM do you like? If anyone else has any insight
into the ideal computer for 3DS Max and Win NT I sure would like to hear about
it.
Timothy <Pixel Pusher>
NVision Inc. &
Digibotics
> If anyone else has any insight into the ideal computer for 3DS Max and Win NT
I sure would like to hear about it.<
Check my other message about dual Pentiums.. but the IDEAL NT/MAX system would
be based on a Dec Alpha 300 (21164?) It costs an arm and a leg, but much
faster than any intel chip on the market. (or any other chip for that matter)
Just gotta wait for software to use on it.. (not sure if MAX is announced to
support them yet..but I don't doubt that it's only a matter of time.. <g>)
JNJ
>Check my other message about dual Pentiums.. but the IDEAL NT/MAX system
would be based on a Dec Alpha 300 (21164?)<
If 3DS MAX were shipping today for the Alpha it would be ideal. The P6 should
be shipping around the time 3DS MAX does and there is more NT software for the
x86 then the Alpha. Don't know how the P6 will compare to the Alpha that would
be shipping at that time, but the P6 machines should be cheaper.
>If 3DS MAX were shipping today for the Alpha it would be ideal. The P6 should
be shipping around the time 3DS MAX does and there is more NT software for the
x86 then the Alpha. Don't know how the P6 will compare to the Alpha that would
be shipping at that time, but the P6 machines should be cheaper.<
Yes, I agree. I stated the Alpha because it's the fastest and it does not rely
on multiple processing for the speed. (Dec sells multiple processor Alpha's
too.. <$$> Personally, I bought a dual pentium ready system for compatibility
today. I believe P6's will be slower than Alpha processors (newest vs. newest,
etc.) but will be cheaper (as you mentioned) It'll be interesting. As programs
go towards NT, the Alpha will become even more viable as a single workstation.
(assuming they keep their lead in $/performance)
JNJ
John:
FWIW, you'll be happy to note that the DEC Alpha boxes were all over the place
at SIGGRAPH. The Raptor in particular caught my eye but several configurations
were in use. I saw very little presence of the SUN workstations and not much
in the way of HP Mips stuff. MAC had about the same amount of stuff as last
year with most boxes on display being PowerMACs. SGI dominated the show but an
incredible amount of NT activity made me feel quite good about putting my money
on a platform which would support it.
– Bob Ritger
>SGI dominated the show but an incredible amount of NT activity made me feel
quite good about putting my money on a platform which would support it.<
This year was just a foreshadowing of the future. MS' purchase of SI, and
SGI's purchase of both Wavefront and Alias certainly are pointers to the
potential of NT graphics workstations. 🙂 Hey, my TD even looks like an
Indy.. just not purple, and lots more card slots.
I sure wish After Effects and Pandemonium would port to NT. Mabe someday. 🙂
JNJ
>I sure wish After Effects and Pandemonium would port to NT.<
Me too. I hope Adobe gets off their butt and starts moving more stuff to NT.
HSC needs to do that also. Those guys need to see the Mac is on a steady
decline.
>Me too. I hope Adobe gets off their butt and starts moving more stuff to NT.
HSC needs to do that also. Those guys need to see the Mac is on a steady
decline.<
It's amazing people don't see the obvious! <g> I think the Mac will stick it
out for a good while.. especially for graphics, but multiplatform is really the
way to go.
(but don't let Ana see your comments! <g>)
I called HSC, and they didn't (couldnt?) say anything about Bryce for NT.. but
now that Digimation's lanscaping program is out, I don't want Bryce as much.
<g>
JNJ
Tim,
>I sure wish After Effects and Pandemonium would port to NT.<
>Me too. I hope Adobe gets off their butt and starts moving more stuff to NT.
HSC needs to do that also. Those guys need to see the Mac is on a steady
decline.<
You can add Debabelizer to that list; I'd love to have it for the PC.
— Jon
>You can add Debabelizer to that list; I'd love to have it for the PC.<
I have wanted Debabelizer for a long time. In my Amiga days I had ArtDept and
you could use AREXX to batch process images. The only software for the PC that
can do that is 3DS Video Post.
>> You can add Debabelizer to that list; I'd love to have it for the PC. <<
Coming RSN, according to the Equilibruim guys at SIGGRAPH. 6-8 months.
– Dan / n-Space, Inc.
Hi John,
I saw a Quad P6 board running at an Intel ee demo.
it runs at 1100 Mips, and destroys a alpha.
by the way, a dual p133 board will outperform an alpha on most things.
the exception is rendering with heavy FP.
the alpha is actualy very poor at interger operations.
if you look at the spec int for the 275 alpha , and then for the p133
you will see that the alpha is running at 2 times the mhz but does not
have 2 times the spec int.
the pentium is a very efficient cpu more so than alpha or Mips.
the p133 outperforms the mips 4400 175 in specint
despite running at 42mhz slower.
mhz for mhz , the pentium is very fast .
most do not test it with 32 bit software in NT though. it must be to realize
full benefit
we have several cross platform Nt benchmarks we beta , and the tests bear this
out.
the p6 is 2 times as efficient
the pentium running at the alpha's 275+ mhz would score incredibly high spec
numbers.
the 200 mhz P6 will break records 350 spec+
it will have 512k of L1 cache internal !!
Cameron
CYBERIMAGE
You're correct, Cameron. Because the Alpha is a risc processor, it must use
many more cycles (per instruction) than the Pentium does. Cycle for Cycle,
this does make the 300mhz Alpha slower than a dual P5/150 for many operations.
However, for floating point ops, and for ops that may fit entire into the Alpha
cache, you could see a performance boost over the P5.
– G
And you say you're not into hardware….<g>
Dave
I'm NOT. I promise. I'm _really_ NOT! I HATE HARDWARE.
But in the war against the machines, knowledge is power.
– G
>> However, for floating point ops… <<
My feeling is that 3DS does _heavy_ floating point and very little integer
math. Am I right?
– ej
3DS/DOS is very float intensive, since there's not much zippy stuff going on in
the interactive UI (and most of the math is happening in the scanline
renderer). But 3DS/MAX uses both int and float math extensively, so a fast
int-based system is important (as well as fast floats).
– G
Cameron,
what do you think of the Alphaservers? Specifically I was thinking that a 4 CPU
(300mhz) alphaserver with 4mb cache per cpu and 1gb RAM would make a very
reasonable render server for around $120k – 140k. That's kinda comparing it to
an SGI ChallengeXL with 8 r4400 200mhz with 1gb RAM for $500k. I figure the
Alpha would be 80% faster for 25% of the cost.
BTW, we need lots of RAM because we create large scenes and sometimes do film
rez animations.
yeah the alpha server sounds powerful and more economical
than the sgi, but if speed and price is an issue,
the ALR Q SMP revolution is around $25,000
has 4 Pentiums-133's each with 2 meg cpu cache, dedicated cpu to memory paths
for each, and up to 1 gig EDC (error detection + correction ) memory
and up to 20 Gigs internal hot swapable storage.
this thing really moves in NT.
and then there are the quad P-6 machines available in Dec.
for under $30,000 1200 + Mips !!
best
Cameron
CYBERIMAGE
Cameron,
>> the ALR Q SMP revolution is around $25,000
has 4 Pentiums-133's each with 2 meg cpu cache, dedicated cpu to memory paths
for each, and up to 1 gig EDC (error detection + correction ) <<
sounds interesting, but not really fast enough.
>> then there are the quad P-6 machines available in Dec.
for under $30,000 1200 + Mips !! <<
how does 1200+ MIP's compare to an alphaserver 4 cpu (21164 300mhz)?
I know it's 25% of the price, but what percentage of the performance?
Hopefully, I'll be able to trade in some of my Pentium 100's and RAM when the
time comes <g>.
Martin
>> the 200 mhz P6 will break records 350 spec+ it will have 512k of L1 cache
internal !! <<
I also hear that the P6 will be optimized for NT. W/ this in mind anyone who
buys a system just for 3DSM now may be sorry in 4 -6 months when it actually
ships.
– ej
the dual 133 smp processors are out. I just ordered from micron and they said
it will be upgradeable to the 150 and 166 mhz cpu's. Also it uses the 72 pin
dram's so I can use all of my other ram chips instead of the edo. Sam Coor