Probably a fool question but I'm a bit lost - Supported CPU's

[juang3d]

Hi there.

I looked for that info, and I found something, but I'm a bit lost and unsure.

What are the supported CPU's by Corona?

I have a renderfam where I have different CPU's, core2quad q6600, xeon 3545, xeon 5545 and amd X6 1090t.

Can I render with my farm in all this CPU's?

Just to be clear, I'm not asking about distribute render, I'm asking about Backburner render.

Cheers.

[alexander.poelmans]

Foolish questions doesn't exist...

As far as I understand and tested myself corona works on all CPU's as long they support x64 software... you operating system should also be x64 otherwise you can't use corona of MAX 2014

Backburner works fine with A5 distributed will work with A6

Alexander

[Ondra]

use installer and it will work on all of them. benchark wont work on older ones

[naikku]

.....distributed will work with A6

CANT WAIT for this one!
In my farm we have Intel 5x Qxx00-cpus and one i7-2600. At home I have i7-2600k. Has anyone tested is there any differences between AMD and Intel cpus?

[juang3d]

Awesome!!!

Thanks! to all :)

Cheers.

[juang3d]

BTW. I want to explain why I did this question, I read somewhere that SSE 4.2 supoort was needed for Corona (oviously I missunderstood it)

Why did I read that?

Is there some specific feature that needs SSE 4.2 to have full speed?

Cheers.

[Ondra]

There are actually 2 versions of corona, fullspeed and legacy. Fullspeed is faster, but needs the SSE 4 set. The installer automatically decides which version to use, that is why I asked you to use it on your machines.

[naikku]

I just formatted one of my farm-pc, installed everything and saw in a5-installer that the cpu dont have SSE4. this computer had a problem not rendering scattered trees correctly...Could it be just because of not having SSE4?

[juang3d]

Another question, is the render much more slower without SSE4?

Cheers.

[Ondra]

no, you should get exactly the same result in both, and it is not drastically slower - 20% max

[juang3d]

Great, thanks :)

[Juraj]

I have a renderfam where I have different CPU's, core2quad q6600, xeon 3545, xeon 5545 and amd X6 1090t.

Don't get me wrong, I mean it well, but all these CPUs together provide less performance combined then a single last gen i7, while I presume each hogs 300W on average during render time.

It's almost never a smart or even reasonable to keep old gen architecture computers for performance reasons (though they can serve excellelently for many other purposes, just not "render farm" ). You pay more on electricity than you get value back in performance.

[juang3d]

Well, they don't perform that bad, a q6600 it's a 25% in performance than a 2600k.

You may think that there is no reason to maintain it... but money is a good reason, I would like to unplug those and put some i7 39xxK or 4xxxK, but maintaining increasing renderfarm power has it's cost, it's not so hard in electricity, and also If I put 1 2600k and I remove those, I have the same performance, If I maintain those, I have doouble performance XD
Of course I want to quit those computers, but I have to sell them and get at least the money for a 2600k/39XXk... and that's hard...

Eventually I'll drop them. but they are also good holders for GPU's for GPU rendering :)

In general lines, I agree with you but money it's what dictates what do I do with the machines, and the yearly cost of licenses and all this things is high for a small studio, so I'm happy of being able to have a renderfarm hehehe

Cheers.

[Ondra]

It also depends on the cost of electricity in your contry. Here it is about 0.35USD/kWh

[juang3d]

In Spain 0.16€/KWh, 0.22USD/KWh

Cheers.

[Juraj]

Well, they don't perform that bad, a q6600 it's a 25% in performance than a 2600k.

I am confused by this statement, since it's not grammatically correct it could have few meanings.

If you mean that a:  Core2quad q6600 is mere 25perc. performance of 2600k i7, than you are correct. It's more about 30perc., which is really really low, since
2600k is very old and slow as well by now, I keep the last one in office but I will donate it to someone.

But you are right, I didn't say they are bad computers :- ) Even old pentium4 would still be great for most tasks, I only meant it as rendering performance per watt price which I find
very inneffective. Just the "render-farm" aspect, nothing else. I am quite happy computers nowaday have quite long moral life-span, which saves good money for its value.

If upgrading HW is hard (it shouldn't!) it's time to increase prices :- ) No honestly, people under-price so heavily, imho Archviz at the moment is almost like high-end photography, you need to spend great deal on money for HW and SW, but in return you make quite a lot money as well. It's tough balance.

Sorry for the off-topic, I can't help myself :- ) Just rambling, can be easily ignored, I won't mind

[juang3d]

I agree with you in all the points, even with the point on raising prices.

Right now we don't do nearly any arch/viz because that business in spain is more or less destroyed :P

If you want to donate your 2600K i will receive it very pleasently, even with sending charges XD

About the q6600, yes, I meant that.

In spain, anyways, raising prices is hard, when you work with agencys it's something inmoral, I will put an example here, i received a quote petition from a client, I prepared a quote around 6000€, we do everything, then a few after that I had the opportunity to see my clients quote to the final client (remember... We do everything) ... Their quote was 12000€! And we didn't get the job because it was too expensive :P

Thats the way spain works, you can charge a fair amount for your job, the intermediate clients are getting the money :P

And that if you don't think in the amount of freelancers and small studios that don't bother about licenses :P

Hard time down here...

One more time, I agree with you in all things...

Cheers.

[Juraj]

Yes, the thing about agencies is something to just live with. We also work on some projects with (well, "through" is better term) agencies instead of direct clients. Sometimes they bring interesting client you otherwise wouldn't get, because the end-client wants bigger package (like full branding) in one way so. You can't really get to you that they will make a lot of money on top of your head, it's just how bussiness works :- ) but I understand the un-easy feeling, we all have that...after all, it's money that could go DIRECTLY to us instead ;- ). But unless one runs agency (like D-Box), instead of studio (no matter how large, even Hayes-D size big) there is that overhead money that isn't going into your pocket. Bummer :- )

The "immoral" aspect is also interesting...in past there were few clients who really told me something in those lines as well. Like I "shouldn't" be charging so much. I felt quite offended...but they are all on ignore list since then (and inside spam folder).

What I find works best for us is to simply try to get 70perc. of clientelle only as direct end-clients. No agency, no "middle-men". It's easiest to charge your full quotes that way, with no compromises (and that doesn't even account for the luxury of honest communication, no barred walls...).

I see that Spain might be tough market, I am from Slovakia and would be nowhere if didn't consider global market.

Well, I wish you good luck :- ) So that you can upgrade soon ! If I won't build some httpc fun pc I'll send the i7 your way atleast.