VRay rendering machine specs

dims · 3 Aug 2011, 03:06

I want to use two spare Q9550 machines for v-ray spawns only, do these two machines need anything other than the QuadCore and 8GB of DDR3(8GB max onboard) ? Would having a V7200/V7300 make much difference as these are only spawns ?

brodie · 5 Aug 2011, 20:58

I think by spawns you're talking about a render farm? Something you're not working on but just sending renders to? If so then the answer is no, a better graphics card will do you no good. Many people will choose a motherboard with integrated graphics for this reason, so they don't have to buy a graphics card at all.

-Brodie

dims · 10 Aug 2011, 20:41

Hi Brodie
After users all having Quad and Hex workstations instead of a farm, now come the time for a real farm as they all moaning of not able to do much while rendering.
I have a bunch of DL580 servers with the following specs:
4 x Xeon 3GHz
4GB DDR
2 x 72GB 15K

Would these be ok to start the farm ? I have 8 or 10 of these to spare, would 4GB be enough to use these as farm animals ? or I should get more RAM for them ? I just done a quick test on two of my trusted PC's with a Q9650/8GB and Q9650/4GB, there dont seem to be much difference in timing, or am I missing something ?
Thanks for your help.

brodie · 11 Aug 2011, 19:19

I would say that those should be some pretty solid machines for a farm. 4gb is on the low end of what you would want for RAM but with good scene management it's usable. If you experience crashes you may need to bump it up but I'd probably wait and see how it goes first.

A couple things for the modelers to watch for would be using too much geometry (again, if this is coming directly from SU, you'll probably be fine here) and the image resolution you're rendering (a 5000x3000 pixel image takes more ram to render than a 3000x2000). Maybe ask them to do a test using the most complex scene they have and run it at the highest resolution they'd normally run.

-Brodie