#Hardware questions
6 messages in this thread
Hi,
I've been following the threads for 2 months now just trying to
understand what's what and everything. We've just started a company that
will do architectural stills and animations, mainly… (we hope). I'm
speaking with a local dealer about supplying and setting me up a couple of
machines. The dealer seems to be very knowledgeable with windows NT but
thats about it when it comes to computer animations and 3D-Studio
requirements.
I wanted to run the configuration by you ( and everyone else )
to see if I'm on track. The situation is as follows:
Weve got 2 machines that started out as hobby 386s but now have been
upgraded to the best of our financial abilities before becoming a company
with a investor.
1) 486Dx2-80Mhz, IDE 480Mb Hdd, 2x CD-ROM, 32Mb ram, Trident 2mb Video,
Sb-16 sound. 14 monitor.
2) 486Dx4-100Mhz, EIDE 1050Mb Hdd, 32Mb ram, Cirrus 2mb Video, Roland SCC-1
sound. 14 monitor.
Now we are looking at buying 2 pentium class machines and networking them
with our 486s under Windows NT :
One machine would be the hi-power with the best video card, a 19" screen (
not yet chosen), the PVR, all SCSI drives and interface, for rendering and
video-post, ( software not yet chosen ).
The second would be the least expensive 3D-Studio work station we can find,
P-100.
– Do we need a dedicated server or can the hi-power machine be used as the
server/workstation?
– Do you know for sure that 3ds MAX will take advantage and use the second
chip in a dual pentium under NT?
– Does the machine with the PVR have to be the master renderer in a render
farm to render through the PVR on its dedicated drives or can the PVR be on
any PCI/SCSI machine on the farm?
– Can both 486s help in the render farm or are they too slow to even
bother?
– When a machine is slave rendering under 3dsr4 in a DOS session in windows
NT can another 3ds session be opened to work on other projects
simultaneously?
– Is the ELSA Gloria ( or other Glint ) card worth looking into right now or
only when 3ds Max comes out because it will only be advantageous when drive
by HDI? Or would a cheaper good working solution be Open GL?
– Would the video-post station have to be the one with the PVR?
– Can I base my decision on choosing between Adobe Premiere 4.0a, Speed
Razor Mach 3, and Animator Studio ( did I miss any ) on budget, ( sort of
all on par, you get what you pay for )?
The final product will be a choice between Photos and video cassettes,
inputs will be drawings and interior decorator samples (scanned in house)
Outputs would be drafted on an Epson Stylus and printed on a Fargo for
stills and videos would be s-vhs.
. Do I need a ( permanent ) NTSC monitor to calibrate colors to tape (
hooked to the PVR ) ?
Am I missing anything besides RAM ?
And now for the subject relevant portion of my message, it's been suggested
that with a second chip you get 60% speed increase ( ahem… let's try time
reduction,<g>) at say 100$ for the board and 200$ for the chip, later when MAX
is out. How much SPEED INCREASE do you get from P-100 to P-133?
Thanks in advance,
Bob Kohl
Gidille inc.
-Bob Kohl
Bob:
Lots of questions! And all in one message! Here's a few answers:
>> Do we need a dedicated server or can the hi-power machine be
>> used as the server/workstation?
I'd just take one of your 486's and make it a dedicated NT server.
>> Do you know for sure that 3ds MAX will take advantage and use
>> the second chip in a dual pentium under NT?
Autodesk has stated this in the past, and they were using this at the Siggraph
demonstrations, so I'd say this was a safe bet.
>> Can both 486's help in the render farm or are they too slow
>> to even bother?
Depends on the types of animation you do. If you end up doing a lot of
compositing like we do, there would be many uses for the machines.
>> When a machine is slave rendering under 3dsr4 in a DOS session
>> in windows NT …
3DS4 doesn't run well under NT at all, and definitely not in the background.
Greg Pyros
Greg,
Thanks for the answers,
<<Lots of questions! And all in one message!>>
I'm sorry, my "pen" slipped and well a piece of ceiling fell on the keyboard
and uploaded everything, no really I was going to feed my questions gently 1 by
1 into the forum and hopefully go un-noticed,<g>
Unfortunately you've forced me into asking another, may I?
<<3DS4 doesn't run well under NT at all, and definitely not in the
background.>>
So how do you operate a render farm without a network?
Bob Kohl
Cedille inc.
-Bob Kohl
Bob:
>> >> 3DS4 doesn't run well under NT at all, and definitely not
>> >> in the background.
>>
>> So how do you operate a render farm without a network?
NT, SchmenTee, it doesn't matter what is running on your file server! :^) We
run UNIX based Sun SparcStations as servers here, just try to get 3DS running
on one of those babies! <bg>
NT also works fine as a server, you just can't _run_ 3DS4 on that machine!
Greg Pyros
Greg,
Then how about using WFW 3.11 with the dos patches to run 3ds4 on dos and
WFW as a network (if you can call it that, or is it just a windows
interlink,<bg>). We will only have 4 machines until MAX comes out. Has it been
tried and proven?
Bob Kohl
Cedille inc.
-Bob Kohl
Bob:
>> Then how about using WFW 3.11 with the dos patches to run 3ds4
>> on dos and WFW as a network (if you can call it that, or is it
>> just a windows interlink,<bg>). We will only have 4 machines
>> until MAX comes out.
If you have to have a dedicated server running WfWg like this, why not just get
NT Workstation, it would do the same thing, faster, and allow you to get
familiar with NT prior to MAX. There is a learning curve here, one major
change at a time for me!
Greg Pyros