old computers?

  • Thread starter Thread starter destron
  • Start date Start date
a render farm is basically a huge set of computers (usually 5+, doesn't
really matter how old or what specifications) who's raw computer power
is used to render the top-quality images and animations used in todays
CG films (Shrek, The Incredibles, etc.). although i am no professional
(ha! what does professional mean? ;-) ) , i enjoy 3d stuff and it
takes hours for me to render 5 second animations. maybe it's just my
old computer, but i don't think it would be much better on a better
one, seriously.
Click to expand...

It would definitely be faster on a better system. 5 x
450MHz systems are not going to be any better than 2 x 2GHz
systems for most tasks and will use a lot more power, heat,
maintenance, etc. Main benefit to old systems is they're
cheap, but then you might find a $20 1GHz P3 you could
upgrade some of those 450MHz systems with, depending on the
specific motherboard. Depending on the application, things
like SSE2 support might help also.
 
Here is a list of pc hardware that I have.
All of it was used by me at some point during
the past several years. As I upgraded, I saved
all my old parts.

2 486 motherboards
1 Soundblaster 16 card
2 Soundblaster 16 CD ROM drives

2 5 1/4" floppy drives
1 8-bit generic sound card (soundblaster compatible)
1 8-bit Zoom 14.4 fax modem
1 8-bit modem. unknown speed.
1 8-bit 2400 baud modem. Rockwell chipset.
1 8-bit Gateway 2000 modem/soundcard combo
1 8-bit modem from Diamond Multimedia
1 8-bit modem. unknown speed. Rockwell chipset.

2 16-bit Linksys ethernet combo cards
1 16-bit Trident TVGA8900D video card
1 16-bit IDE controller w/ 2 serial ports, 1 game port, 1 parallel
port.
1 16-bit Winbond IDE Controller card w/ 2 serial ports.

1 32-bit VLB Hercules Stingray Pro video card
1 32-bit VLB S3 805 video card
1 32-bit VLB SIIG IDE Controller card w/ 2 serial ports
 
CBFalconer said:
You are probably feasible for me, from Maine. My reply-to address
works.
Click to expand...

And I can't think of a more deserving person. CB had been very generous with
his knowledge and time on usenet. :-)
 
kony wrote:
<It would definitely be faster on a better system. 5 x
450MHz systems are not going to be any better than 2 x 2GHz
systems for most tasks and will use a lot more power, heat,
maintenance, etc. Main benefit to old systems is they're
cheap, but then you might find a $20 1GHz P3 you could
upgrade some of those 450MHz systems with, depending on the
specific motherboard. Depending on the application, things
like SSE2 support might help also. >

actually, this is probably not true. even though the 5x450s are slower
on a large scale basis, each one has it's own processer core and other
stuff, as well as it's own RAM, while the 2x1 ghz setup has only two
cores, it is actually slower.
 
kony wrote:
<It would definitely be faster on a better system. 5 x
450MHz systems are not going to be any better than 2 x 2GHz
systems for most tasks and will use a lot more power, heat,
maintenance, etc. Main benefit to old systems is they're
cheap, but then you might find a $20 1GHz P3 you could
upgrade some of those 450MHz systems with, depending on the
specific motherboard. Depending on the application, things
like SSE2 support might help also. >

actually, this is probably not true. even though the 5x450s are slower
on a large scale basis, each one has it's own processer core and other
stuff, as well as it's own RAM, while the 2x1 ghz setup has only two
cores, it is actually slower.
Click to expand...


Own processor core and ram doesn't matter. The simple truth
is that each individual core, on it's own, will be less than
40% as fast, they are the common bottleneck. Until that
bottleneck is releaved, separate memory busses won't matter
much. This is only in general, some uses stress memory bus
more than others but on the other hand, the 450MHz systems
each have only 100MHz SDR memory bus so just moving to a
DDR400 memory bus in itself is enough to offset that.

Moreso than the things you'd mentioned, you'd have to look
at the ability to multithread the workload and segment it.
Even then, it might still run faster on a pair of 2+GHz
hyperthreaded or dual cores.
 
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