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Best Platform for Running Maya?
Kieckerjan asks: "A friend of mine, who's an architect, has been appointed a research position at a small university. Along with the job he's been assigned
a budget to spend on whatever he thinks is necessary to get the job done. One of the things he needs is a fast machine to run Maya.
As he is fed up with Wintel systems, he's been looking into alternatives. His eye fell on SGI's Fuel workstation, which costs about 15.000 EURO. For that kind of money you can buy a seriously bad-assed pentium-based system, and run Linux on it. His question to me was: is it worthwhile to shell out the extra money for a SGI system? Since I have no experience with modern SGI's, I am in no position to judge about performance differences, but maybe
someone on this forum does."
Uses Maya on Intel boxes...they are currently one of the many graphics houses in Hollywood that are switching over to Linux...
...and all told, the advantages of using Linux just far outweighs the advantages of using SGI hardware.
They are using high-end nVidia cards
Get a dual 1.25Ghz Mac. Cheaper than the IRIX box. More friendly than Linux. Better build quality than most PeeCees.
Oh, and cheaper than the IRIX box.
-psy
What are you going to be doing with the system other than running Maya?
The Fuel system is certainly a nice system, but it looks like the two things it really offers are one thing that is hard to get on Wintel sytems and one thing that isn't offered. The hard to get one is a ph4t professional graphics card, and the other is a huge data bus. (oh yeah, and Unix)
You can buy the ph4t professional graphics card for a PC. The data bus will still be small. Will there be any other work done that involves pushing large data sets around quickly, or will this system spend most of its time being used for other purposes? It seems silly to spend 15,000 of his research budget just to run Maya.
Keep in mind, too, that Linux may not fit his needs. Especially when we're talking 3D modelling. Linux's 3D acceleration support is totally krappo. DRI has come a long way, but I still keep a Windows partition around so I can reboot if I plan to be doing a lot of blendering. Lots of drivers are buggy, no support for professional 3D cards, and Mesa isn't perfect, either.
Maya in Mac OS X is a nice solution. Get the fastest available Powermac G4 and max out the RAM. Result: You have a very nice setup for using Maya.
Your experience is not typical. In the absence of a serious hardware fault, IRIX never crashes. And the only way you can "screw something over so bad that you'd need to reinstall the OS" is by doing something incredibly dumb. My personal favorite happened once when I was trying to change the ownership of an entire directory of files. I typed "sudo chown foo.foo ." The only thing is, the period and the slash keys are, like, right next to each other. So I ended up typing "sudo chown foo.foo /". By the time I slammed control-C, it had already made it through /bin and was working on /dev. I could have fixed it, but it was just easier to boot miniroot and reinstall the base OS pieces to reset the permissions and ownerships.
Contrary to your opinion, IRIX is one of the most stable and friendly OSs out there. Oh, and it's not "UNIX-based." It's UNIX. SGI has licensed the UNIX trademark from The Open Group for IRIX, so it's a full-fledged UNIX operating system.
I write in my journal
The right answer here depends on a lot of stuff that you (the submitter, that's right, I'm talking to you) didn't tell us.
;-)
What's your friend's level of comfort with UNIX? IRIX is a very well documented OS, but there are few places you can go for help if you get stuck. You have to be prepared to sit down and read the manuals (techpubs.sgi.com).
Does your friend want to do anything else with the computer? Like, say, surf the web or read email? If so, he'll be happier with either a Windows XP machine (and you said he's "fed up") or a Mac. Doing basic stuff on an IRIX box-- like word processing or email-- is like chewing on tin foil. Most people I know keep a PC or a Mac next to their SGI system for doing everything other than what they use their SGI system for.
Is a new machine the right answer for this guy? You can get used Octanes pretty reasonably. Fuel comes with V12 graphics (I think V10 is also an option, but I'm not positive), and that's pretty serious stuff, but you can probably get your hands on an MXE or similar system for considerably less than a new Fuel. Consider contacting SGI's remanufacturing division; they sell older systems at a substantially reduced cost. Although I don't know if they sell to overseas customers. Might be US-only.
All in all, I think the best choice is probably going to be a top-o-the-line Power Mac G4 with the fastest graphics card available. Right now, I think that's the GeForce 4 Titanium, for about $400. It's no V12, but it'll do the job. The dual processors are a nice bonus, letting you work at full speed while doing test renders in the background (I use that feature all the time on my dual 1 GHz "Speed Holes" model.) And because OS X is UNIX in all but name, you get all the advantages of running UNIX on your desktop while still being able to run stuff like Microsoft Office should you need it.
I guess what I'm saying is that you should think about the questions I asked, carefully weigh all the factors, and then buy a Mac.
I write in my journal
Has it occurred to you to ask the manufacturer (Alias|Wavefront) rather than asking a bunch of high school and college kids on Slashdot? You're going to spend tons of money on the software, but then ask a bunch of beginners and web typists for advice on the hardware? Please.
I suppose a dual P4, 1GB RAM and an ATI Radeon 9700 based graphics card and Windows 2000 Professional will do very well and it will be cheap enough.
but...
There is that cost premium with them. And support. Neither of which are cheap. And at this stage in the game, I don't know how worthwhile it is.
Our studio switched from an SGI only house to some blend of Linux/IRIX. We are moving towards Linux only on the desktop, but it is possible for us to get some OS X boxes for compositing.
Depending on the level of work your friend is doing and how much raw power he needs, the choice can change. I assume that he would mostly be doing single frame renders. And if they are at high quality, he will need some serious horse power. Will he be using the Maya renderer or another one?
Our switch to Linux was decent since we came from a unix back ground. The users were used to the IRIX desktop and it did not take long for them to feel comfortable using gnome.
The OS X solution is extremely valid. I would have laughed at it a year ago, but having used Maya a bit on it and seeing just how well respected OS X is in the industry, I don't feel it is a bad way to go.
When there is only a few artists and not a big support staff, you have to go with a name brand system. It is unfortunate that a premium like that must be payed, but downtime is a big killer. When it can take a day or so to render and your system is down 2 days before something is needed, the preasure to get it going again is imense.
-Tim
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
I work for a used SGI reseller. You need to go SGI if you need I/O bandwidth. The bus on Intel-based machines doesn't cut it, no matter how fast the mhz. Pay for I/O performance, not fast, but mostly useless CPU speed.
-BrentNow if you x 4 all of the numbers there you will be close to what a $15 K system will be capable of in 2003.
You'd think that "the source" would be able to purchase a more impressive system, even in 2001, huh.
RADEON ALL-IN-WONDER, is that a budget concious video capture tool? Export your video to TV then 'capture' it with a VCR/TiVO?
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
OS X has a nice tool called Repair Disk Permission... it's interesting foo just the reason you described. I'm surprise that no one has as yet developed a similar tool in OSS community.
Basically is a default config for everything that comes in the install and any upgrades, etc. Doesn't touch your personal files or your custom installations. Very nice, especially when installing 3rd party software that may or may not be as professionally engineered as you'd like to believe (having payed 100s for it).
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Linux on x86 of course.
ILM uses Linux on SGI, but that's only cuz they have the boxxen allready from the Irix days that where only a year ago or so before they migrated.
x86 is the cheapest and most tested HW platform. Period.
If you're box doesn't get a hold of the renderers load you get a second one (or a third and fourth) to do it and still turn out cheaper.
If that still ain't enough you can get some Xeon workstation for the extra system bandwidth along with a rocketdrive if your models load to slow.
Anyway you look at it there's allways a cheaper and more hassle free solution on x86 below the bottom line.
Best platform for Maya: Linux on x86 - really a no brainer.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I recommend going for a second user SGI system.
An earlier poster stated that his SGI Octane workstation kept up with his dual processor P4. That's quite impressive for an out of date machine.
The thing about SGI machines is their bus bandwidth. It's all very well having several gigahertz at your disposal along with a top of the range graphcis card, but a PC just does not have the ability to connect them at a fast enough rate. An SGI octane uses the same design as the supercomputers - a crossbar switch. The XIO bus in an Octane can have multiple 1.6GB/s streams. Add in the power of multiple MIPS processors and MXE graphics and you have a powerful setup.
Octanes are available second hand from lots of places, such as SGI themselves, Ebay and others.
Steve.
A latent existence
No. O2 was dark blue, and O2+ was purple. Fuel is bright red.
And "dago" is just plain wrong. Fuels are not ugly. They're really eye-catching. Better than the sickly green of the Indigo2 or the first-generation Octane, or the now-boring blue of everything else SGI sells.
I write in my journal
One of our servers is an ancient SGI (33MHz of raw power!) who's record was well over 100 days uptime, it only got shut down for a new disk drive.
I should have mentioned this in my other post, but you just reminded me of it. I once worked with a Challenge L server with twelve R4400 processors, running IRIX 6.2. That machine never, in the slightly over three years that I worked there, went down. Not even for maintenance. (It already had all the disks and stuff that it needed, so there was simply nothing to be done to it.)
It was under a pretty heavy load, too-- over 100 users logging in interactively to edit and compile software, and it was also the ClearCase VOB-- and it simply never went down. I remember checking the uptime once and seeing that it was over 900 days. Amazing.
For all I know, that machine is still up today, with an uptime pushing 2000 days.
I write in my journal
Like I told the other guy, your experience is not typical. I've worked with many, many SGI machines, both at SGI itself and elsewhere, and these machines just don't crash unless there's a hardware problem. Certain releases of IRIX got out with bugs in them, of course, and if you're unlucky enough to happen onto one, you can run into trouble. But otherwise, the OS just runs forever.
And, speaking personally, I've never seen Netscape lock up the X server. It is definitely possible to crash your X server if you're not careful, but that hardly qualifies as a system crash. Nobody but the guy at that head notices anyway, and all he has to do is issue the vulcan death grip and log back in.
I write in my journal
That's funny. My copy of Maya 4.5 on my Mac seems to be absolutely identical to the latest release on the other platforms.
Maya for Mac used to be behind the other releases. No more.
I write in my journal
Not anymore. As of the latest version (I think it's 4.5), there's feature parity across platforms.
As a slick general purpose computing platform, MacOS X is tough to beat, and it's enormous savings over Irix.
I have an Irix workstation, and it's a really sweet box, but the OS has fallen behind in a lot of respects. I've played around a little with the Maya Personal Learning Edition on my Mac G4/450 dual processor system (a hopelessly obsolete one now) and it actually runs pretty fast.
To summarize:
LINUX:
* Few software options for general purpose stuff
* The fastest, cheapest hardware
* You might have horrible driver problems.
* No Photoshop/Illustrator/etc
* A drab user interface experience, based largely on Windows
IRIX
* Best performance with Maya
* No general purpose software at all, other than Netscape mail.
* Photoshop and Illustrator are generations old, and horribly expensive to boot.
* A carefully crafted interface I still enjoy working in, but showing its age
MACOS X
* Almost as much general purpose software as Windows
* Excellent support for all video editing and compositing software - Discreet, Final Cut Pro, etc. Thanks to FCP, this is arguably better than Windows
* A slick up to the minute interface you'll really enjoy using
I don't think system performance is going to be much of an issue, but I don't know much about the respective speeds of the platforms. But I can say you'll have the most fun on MacOS X.
Hope that helps.
D
then theres the mac, maya rund on my G4 400, slowly but i think thats more my rage 128's fault. I hear its awesome on the newer G's though. THe problem is the graphics card, there are no DCC (digital content creation)class graphics card available. sure you can get a GF4TI4600 but, it lacks the developers of a quadro card, or fire gl card. OSX has all teh apps though.
wintel/lintel boxes are cheap, run reasonably well and will rovide the best bang for the buck. I would get dual processors at least to speed up rendering and look into using xeons for the multithreading capability. you can also get DCC cards, like Quadros, wildcats and fire gls that support things like hardware overlay planes and other advanced features. unfortunately your left to decide between Windows and Linux. I dont know about linux, but we all know how windows is. you may have drivers problems in linux though, but nVidia might have a nice developer solution for that. Windows has all of the commercial software you need and linux has oss, just like the SGI.
these are your options as i see it, i hope it helps.
I want 2D games back.
So I'm gonna assume you will be using this machine for the next 3 years. So you can probably spend your money up front on an SGI machine or get 3 upgrades over that timespan.
In terms of Mac, I wouldn't recommend it. The advantage of x86 over SGI is the fact you can upgrade components easily. Upgrading Mac components can be somewhat of a challenge.
In an office with three Indigone-2's why have I had to reboot at least one of them every week?
Because you're a idiot?
How the fuck is somebody supposed to answer that question?? I haven't the foggiest clue why you keep rebooting your Indigo 2s. That's between you and your god.
I write in my journal
While your answer is insteresting in that it is the only one that mentions Sun hardware running Solaris, there is a damn good reason it is the only one. Maya doesn't run on Solaris. Ooops. I don't think you've ever been near Maya, let alone that you are in much of a position to offer advice.
:-) )that's been going down the swanny. At one point their workstations would blow away x86 in terms of hardware and construction quality, this is definitely not the case with the Sun Blade. Sun has, over the past few years steered towards commodity hardware, to keep their costs competitive, and this has certainly levelled the playing field in favour of x86 vendors like HP or even (gulp!) Dell! While technologically offering a lot of things that aren't available on x86 (in particular high bandwidth stuff), I don't think the build quality and component quality stacks up as an argument in favour of Sun anymore. I have little experience with recent SGI hardware so I don't know, but they seem to have continued much more down the high quality/high price road, where Sun has long since decided to take a shortcut.
:-)
The other thing that made me wonder was what experience you have with high-end x86 solutions... We're not talking about the x86 PCs you pick up in kit form from the local hardware shop - we're talking about well supported high end hardware. This guy earns his living using this stuff, so he's going to want support contracts and on-site replacement agreements. Your PC retailer doesn't do that. High quality workstations these day do use good quality components, and are a lot more reliable than their reputation suggests. In fact, it's Sun hardware (don't get me wrong, I'm a bit of a Sun fanboy
Of course, none of this has any bearing whatsoever on the matter in hand, since, as I said, Solaris won't help you at all in running Maya.
Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.
okay i didnt know maya didnt run on solaris.
Normally this wouldn't matter, if it were not for the fact that this whole thing was about running Maya. This akes your whole post (entitled, pretentiously, "Possibilities" - which was a shame since one of the three you mentioned was everything but a possibility...) It wasn't a UNIX box pissing contest. You could put what you wanted (OpenBSD, Linux, NetBSD) on the sparc box, but it won't run Maya.
Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.
I'm using Linux on the desktop to post this message.
Every time I open up a new Linux distro, it looks just like Windows. Yes, it can be changed, if you want to take a lot of time to figure out a lot of software. The problem is that I have work to do, and posts to write, and so on, so I don't have time to monkey with my system to that extent.
I run Enlightenment with the Irix imitation theme. I found that most of the themes that were unique looking were tiring to use because of funky fonts and a bizarre Science Fiction movie look that just doesn't feel right in an office environment.
MacOS X looks stunning right out of the box.
I was relying on the statements of others in this topic when talking about driver problems, so you could be right at this point. Likewise with application software, since I pretty much use xemacs/emacs, gcc and Mozilla/Netscape/IE/OmniWeb.
And yet, with all this mud slung at my opinions, your last paragraph makes me think that at bottom, you agree with me. From the perspective of an end user who doesn't want to spend a lot of time tinkering, MacOS X is better. The time spent trying to get Linux to look and work good would more than pay for the difference in price between a white box system running Linux and a dual 1.25ghz PowerMac G4. At least if you're at my rate.
D