Considering a Dual CPU system...help me out

[Samjham]

I may be building a new system soon which will be mostly used as a workstation for creating and rendering scenes in Maya 4.5. I'm thinking that I want to build a dual CPU system with about 1gig of RAM. The graphics card is not that important to me, I mainly want advice on which CPU and mtherboard to get. I'm leaning towards AMD CPU's but I haven't kept up on the latest technology and need advice on which direction to go.

So, should I go Athlon, or P4? Which CPU would be a good buy (I don't want the fastest CPU...I'm on a budget)?

Which motherboard?

thanks

Edit: I think that I should also add that this machine will not be overclocked much if any. Stability is the most important thing to me because I can't have a system crash in the middle of a batch render.

Is it true that the Athlon XP's need to be modded to run in a Dual setup?

[clh61]

Yep I'm pretty sure they have to be modded or just get the MP's. You might want to PM motoman.

[Samjham]

Originally posted by clh61
Yep I'm pretty sure they have to be modded or just get the MP's. You might want to PM motoman.

Yeah, except the MP's are quite a bit more expensive and IIRC all it takes is to connect some briidges to get the XP's to run in dual. I'm leaning towards an XP 2100+ right now.

Any other suggestions?

[OutKlast]

I was looking at an Iwill MPX2 dual board for doing my dually work. It allows FSB adjustments, but no multipliers but you could still raise it to 150 or so and grab a lil' more performance. I was planning on getting that and a Ati 9500 modded to FireGL. For a poor-mans rendering computer.

[talldude]

How much money do you have to spend on this? You could get a dualie 2.4Ghz Xeon system, 6 ram slots, 64bit pci for about $2000...

[Samjham]

Originally posted by talldude
How much money do you have to spend on this? You could get a dualie 2.4Ghz Xeon system, 6 ram slots, 64bit pci for about $2000...

I don't think that I have the money to build a completely new system. I just want to upgrade my current system. I don't have a lot to spend and I realize that it won't be the ideal rendering system, but it should be much better than what I currently have.

[talldude]

Ok...best bet is to go with this:

Asus A7M266D
2 XPxxxx procs (you can do a simple trick to convert them into MP's).

It'll come to about $350-400 if you go with, say xp2100's.

[jamesavery22]

Originally posted by Samjham
I may be building a new system soon which will be mostly used as a workstation for creating and rendering scenes in Maya 4.5......

So, should I go Athlon, or P4? Which CPU would be a good buy (I don't want the fastest CPU...I'm on a budget)?

I dont know anyone using Maya so I cant say. But I would DEFINITELY recommend finding people who do use that software. Just try to find someone or some people who have a P4 system and an AMD system that use the software and see which one is best. Its pretty random which programs run faster on which systems, or run at all for that matter. I forgot which mp3 encoding programs they were but some just dont run on P4 systems at all. Better safe than sorry when dishing out the cash for a dually system.

[Moridin]

I'm using a dual AXP 1800+ at home and am generally happy with it. I would say that for the use you have in mind a dual AMD system is preferable to a dual Intel system, since going Intel means using Xeons, and that raises the cost of the motherboard and processors.

I do have a couple of recommendations. Some 760 MPX motherboards required buffered RAM others do not. You should use buffered Ram even if the motherboard supports unbuffered. The 760 MPX chipset is somewhat wonky and is prone to stability problems when using unbuffered RAM.

The second thing I have is as much question as recommendation. Are you going to be doing Modeling as well as rendering on this system? My understanding is that modeling does put a lot of stress on the video card, so if you are you may want to get a good one.

[Samjham]

Originally posted by Moridin
I'm using a dual AXP 1800+ at home and am generally happy with it. I would say that for the use you have in mind a dual AMD system is preferable to a dual Intel system, since going Intel means using Xeons, and that raises the cost of the motherboard and processors.

I do have a couple of recommendations. Some 760 MPX motherboards required buffered RAM others do not. You should use buffered Ram even if the motherboard supports unbuffered. The 760 MPX chipset is somewhat wonky and is prone to stability problems when using unbuffered RAM.

The second thing I have is as much question as recommendation. Are you going to be doing Modeling as well as rendering on this system? My understanding is that modeling does put a lot of stress on the video card, so if you are you may want to get a good one.

First, in response to jamesavery22: I've rendered in Maya on the university's dual athlon MP server and it works fine, so I don't think that I should have any problems. I've also rendered on my system currently (see sig.) and it works fine...just really slow. Thanks for the advice though.

To Moridin: How much more is buffered RAM going to cost?

As far as modeling goes, yes I will be modeling, but most of my modeling is done on university comps which have Geforce 4's (not MX's, but I don't know exactly which GF4). I also do have a Radeon 8500 128MB retail not installed in my system currently and this video card will get me by just fine for now. I don't have the money to spend on any really high end cards though. I wish I did, but for now I can get by using wireframe with smooth shading on selected items in the scene.

Does anyone have a link to site that explains how to mod an XP into an MP?

Thanks for the responses

[Un4given]

To Moridin: How much more is buffered RAM going to cost?

Buffered memory isn't that much more than unbuffered. It's when you start getting ECC memory that the expense shoots up the most, but still not much.

Mwave has a 1GB PC2100 DDR ECC-Registered DIMM for $319, 512MB for $95, and 256MB for $58.

http://direct.mwave.com/mwave/ProdME...EMORY-DDR.hmx?

Yes, this stuff is sold as MWave memory, but they are just TwinMos modules, and they do make good memory.

[Samjham]

Originally posted by Un4given


Buffered memory isn't that much more than unbuffered. It's when you start getting ECC memory that the expense shoots up the most, but still not much.

Mwave has a 1GB PC2100 DDR ECC-Registered DIMM for $319, 512MB for $95, and 256MB for $58.

http://direct.mwave.com/mwave/ProdME...EMORY-DDR.hmx?

Yes, this stuff is sold as MWave memory, but they are just TwinMos modules, and they do make good memory.

Thanks a lot for the info

[Gorn]

Does anyone have a link to site that explains how to mod an XP into an MP?

www.2cpu.com These guys got all the info on duellys.

I was planning on getting that and a Ati 9500 modded to FireGL. For a poor-mans rendering computer.

That ship has sailed. You can not find a the 9500 NP that could be modded to the FireGL. I think you can still by the 9700 and mod it to the FireGL not bad $750 video card for under $300

[OutKlast]

Originally posted by Gorn


www.2cpu.com These guys got all the info on duellys.



That ship has sailed. You can not find a the 9500 NP that could be modded to the FireGL. I think you can still by the 9700 and mod it to the FireGL not bad $750 video card for under $300

Hmm, there is that BIOS hack for I think the Nvidia 4200 maybe others to convert it to Quadro.