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Workstations For Poor 3D-artists
Peter writes: "Ace's hardware has written an 'article for the creative people, who are searching to build or buy an affordable number cruncher to run their favorite workstation application. Maybe you already have an Athlon Thunderbird/XP and you are wondering if a dual Thunderbird/Athlon XP workstation might make sense for you. Or you might be interested in an affordable dual Athlon MP 1800+ workstation.' Included are benchmarks based on almost all available 3D-animation packages."
Cheap box for 3D artists?
What about cheap software for 3D artists?
(BTW - IANA3DA, but I'm pretty sure that all 3D software for modelling and such is mucho dinero)
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Out of all of the 3D Animation packages they got their hands on, they forgot 2 of the most important ones out there.
Softimage|3D and Softimage|XSI.
Those two give Lightwave, Maya, and 3D Studio MAX a run for their money, considering they're the modeling environment used by most all major CG Effects studios out there (coupled with either Mental Ray or RenderMan).
I'm not sure about you guys, but I noticed a really subtle pro-AMD bias in this article. For instance, the banner ad on the top of the page was for the new Athlon XPs and linked to AMD's page. And the author gave Intel a few token references, and then completely ignored them in the benchmarks.
The author performed benchmarks in a number of major 3D applications, and in all the AMD chips absolutely rocked: If you have a problem with the methodology, or feel that it isn't telling the whole story, then post your own site (that's the beauty of the net). I think it's fairly obvious that putting an ad for a Xeon chip on an article where it was pummeled probably doesn't make an awful lot of sense.
Well, as a very satisfied Pentium 4 owner and a somewhat satisfied Athlon owner, I can tell you that if you're serious about getting work done (not just overclocking your Unreal box), you'd be best off going with a P4
Let me get this straight: You refute an article that is packed full of actual metrics by saying that it's biased, and then you say that people should get a Pentium 4 if they're not going to "overclock their unreal box" (again an absolutely absurd supposition given that we're talking about an article where the AMD trounced the Intel chips in something much more serious than "overclocking their unreal box").
My Athlon had some heat and manufacturing issues (this is my second chip because the first one was DOA), and really isn't any faster in the real world than my P4.
The absolute definition of FUD. "Uh, sure the AMDs are faster, but they have heat and manufacturing issues!". Whatever. Metrics are all that matter, and the metrics in the industry say that the power consumption of upper end Intel's and AMDs are very similar (hence similar heat), and that major manufacturers have roughly equal DOA rates with both chips. The metrics also say time and time again that the "real world performance" of the AMDs are often faster than the Intels.
In fact, having rebuilt my kernel with the new Intel compiler, the P4 just screams and leaves the Athlon in the dust.
I see. Again please tell us when you've put up a site and posted some benchmarks with your platform and methodologies, because as it sits it sure sounds like a bunch of bullshit.
I'm going to shoot in the dark here and make a wild guess: You ran out and bought yourself a fancy new Pentium 4, spending top dollar to be the top dog in the tech arena (of course not doing any research), but now that you have your new purchase you're a little more sensitive whenever you see performance benchmarks, and everytime you see another review that shows the Athlon dominating it just burns at you, so here you are with your "real world" experience. Bullshit. I highly doubt you have an Athlon whatsoever.
I am not biased whatsoever, and if Intel comes out with something that is competitive with the XPs at a similar price then damnit, I'll be there. But I owe nothing to Intel, nor do I owe anything to AMD, so I lack "brand loyalty" and simply go for what is proven the best at the best $. If only more consumers were that way.
Well, these "metrics" you claim to trust so much also indicate that the IBM 75GXP drives have a "normal" failure rate. And we all know the truth about that, don't we?
You see this really is humorous: You see a Slashdot story with a couple of people saying that their 75GXP failed, and you're sold (obviously just like the AMD issue). I actually HAVE a 75GXP that hasn't failed, and I am prone to believing IBM that the failure rate is normal. Let me put it another way: I know lots of people who are sure that Honda cars are the biggest POS out there because they had a lemon that had 27 faults, but the industry statistics say that they're the exception, not the rule. If there was more than anecdotal evidence (or biased polling) that the IBM drives were unreliable then I would be extremely happy to listen and take action based on it.
which, by the way, you haven't even tried out
I remember back in the BBS days asking a sysop to remove a "CPU Speed Up" program that promised to "convert your 386 to a 486/66!". The Sysop refused claiming that lots of people claimed that it really did vastly improve the speed of their systems. It's called the placebo effect, and it's one of the biggest truisms about people: People are extremely unreliable metrics of anything, because most people go into an evaluation with preconceived notions. As such, I'll be a little more trustworthy of site after site after site after site giving methodologies and performance metrics that show the Athlon XP winning. Again when Intel comes out with a cost effective (meaning cost effective all around: Memory, MB, etc.) high performing chip then I'm there, but as it stands there is a clear winner.
It was nothing to do with affordable, cheap 3D workstations. It was about the latest and greatest x86 CPUs - and the latest and greatest, high-end software.
/. is a pretty sad statement about what has become of this once useful and interesting site.
There are better machines out there - SGI Indigo2s and Octanes with OpenGL (and more!) in the hardware, many decent Macs - all of which are more affordable 2nd hand than the wunderboxen on display here.
And if you're looking for a career in 3D animation/design, are you going to use some x86 toy, or would experience with what the rest of the industry uses be a bit more helpful in your career?
A vanishingly small amount of 3D work requires a fast CPU - it's about shoving large amounts of data around. It doesn't matter how many mhz your bus does - it's still a data bus, and it's inherently unsuited to this type of work.
Look at the Octane's Crossbar. Look at the O2s UMA architecture.
Apple continue to make the same mistake, and are going to cripple their G5 machines. Lovely fast processor, crap bus to the gfx, memory and disk.
And I just loved the way this compares the Shake results to a 4 year old Octane. Nice. I notice we don't see any playback information at high resolution - what's the point of fast render speeds if you can't *view* what you've just created?
Never mind that 4 year old Octane can be bought for a fraction of the price of the systems under discussion.
This was a truly laughable article that, while demostrating an understanding of consumer x86 toys, showed a clear lack of clue about 3D graphics needs.
That this article ever showed up on
I'm surprised we haven't see the Linux kiddies moaning about how the tests were run on Windows 2k.