Vray distributed render question
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Hi Guys,
Been a while since I've posted anything here but getting back in the game now! We've just got Vray for Sketchup in the office and I understand that we can use on our single licence up to 10 machines to render.
We are looking into upgrading a few of the machines here and literally binning the old ones. My question is, what is better? A couple of quad core machines linked together or several slower machines (single and dual core jobs) in terms of rendering speed. I want to get the maximum speed when producing final images for clients. It's an interesting one as you can pick up a dual core machine second hand for practically nothing or around £700 for a something with an i7 processor in. My gut is telling me that 4 cheap dual core machines will be more cost effective than a couple of i7 machines but I'm not sure what impact there will be on speed. My calculation tells me that 4 dual core machines working together will give me 8 true cores and hence, be quicker.
Can anyone give me any advice on this please?
All the best guys,
Puck
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Just to clarify,
@unknownuser said:we can use on our single licence up to 10 machines to render
means that you can install the DR Spawner on up to 10 machines, you only get to have the actual license for V-Ray on one machine at a time. You can move from machine to machine on the same local area network that your floating license server is running, but it can only be used on one computer at a time. The DR Spawner machines can all be run simultaneously. -
Hi,
Sorry, yes, just to clarify, there is one licence and it will be on one machine.
Regards,
Puck
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At work I've grabbed each old computer as things has been upgraded. I've had 6 old P4s set up 2.8GhZ - 3.6Ghz Some HT, some not. Not great - but sure helps. Recently got 5 more that I need to set up. Same specs.
But I have been tempted to suggest that we get a set of cheap quad core motherboards (motherboards with built-in graphics card and Ethernet) and just mount them on a rack. ( I saw a nice DIY where an IKEA file cabinet was used as mounting rack).
I figured that for the price of one decent desktop system one could get a very powerful set of bare bones rendering hardware.
(You can install Linux - like Ubuntu - with Wine and run the DRSpawner - saving on windows licenses.) -
Just a suggestion. I purchased 4 Dell R900's on eBay for $150 each. Each unit has 4 Quad core CPU's, so 16 cores each, with 16GB of ram each. That gives me 64 cores for my distributed rendering. These are huge beasts though, at 90lbs a piece, and freight was another $150, so I spent about $750 total to get 64 cores of processing power. So far, fast as hell, even running at 50%.
But I am running Windows 7 Ultimate on each one, giving me access to only two CPU sockets or 8 cores on each machine. I am in the process of installing Ubuntu Linux on each machine, then Virtual Box to run my Win 7. This should "fake out" windows and allow me access to all the cores. Send me an e-mail if you want to know how this all turns out!
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Be aware that Chaos Group changed the way they license the spawner nodes in 3.0
We are not affected by this in 2.0, but I would think that V-Ray for SketchUp 3.0 will be in the future.
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Meaning what? My copy is licensed for 10 nodes. What is the change? More nodes, I hope.
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There is some discussion of it here.
http://forums.cgarchitect.com/74448-vray-render-nodes-end.html
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@cmassner said:
Just a suggestion. I purchased 4 Dell R900's on eBay for $150 each. Each unit has 4 Quad core CPU's, so 16 cores each, with 16GB of ram each. That gives me 64 cores for my distributed rendering. These are huge beasts though, at 90lbs a piece, and freight was another $150, so I spent about $750 total to get 64 cores of processing power. So far, fast as hell, even running at 50%.
But I am running Windows 7 Ultimate on each one, giving me access to only two CPU sockets or 8 cores on each machine. I am in the process of installing Ubuntu Linux on each machine, then Virtual Box to run my Win 7. This should "fake out" windows and allow me access to all the cores. Send me an e-mail if you want to know how this all turns out!
Hi cmassner,
did you find the used dell D900 for $ 150 each on ebay? I can not find them so cheaply with 4 Quad core CPU's.
But it sounds very interesting.../Søren
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just a heads up, the OP posted this thread 4 years ago.
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