.. how many exactly does "few 3930K rigs" mean? If you are rendering 10 hours with those to get the results you want, I might have been overly positive. Anyway I'm of the same opinion about the details, I'd love ~8000 px to be a realistic standard when rendering.. still ways to go I suppose.
Ah D800, there's another investment waiting to happen :D My old D700 is beginning to break up. I've marveled at the results people are getting with the D800, it's amazing. I think it's surprisingly affordable, keeping in mind the D3 (which I thought was a glorified D700 :P ) was still about 10k euros a couple of years ago.
I have 3 currently. But like I said, that's not to be meant in distributed fashion, but each renders separately over night, so the time is unimportant, because I am sleeping a lot :- ).
I use one, one is used by Veronika, and the third renders while we work. The i7 2600k is no longer used, so I will rebuild it into some small game machine.
I wanted to buy D800 as well ! But now I am on verge because the new sony a7r is out ! Same 36M chip, no mirrors, produces crisp detail like the D800A version, cost less, is super small and light, works with all lenses (you can use Canon Tilt-shift, not that I have money for that...ever...).
it looks like something like Xeon E5-1660 could be a way to go perhaps since I could fit two of those into one case.
Sorry, missed this. It's not possible to multi-socket E5-1xxx v1/v2 that's why they're so cheap. There is little to no advantage in getting Xeon 1xxx compared to i7 for our purposes, unless you want to use ECC rams and other small advantages of server platform, because the chip price/performance will be almost the same.
Or use supersampling 4 (internal res.)
It will render current resolution x 4 and downsample it.
1
I tried this once at 4k but the framebuffer acted same way as rendering 8k at 2 internal. Now, I don't remember if I tried 8k with internal res1..
But this stuttering and freezing threw me off a bit, as I wasn't sure if it's just framebuffer having problem updating the picture, or if the freezes correspond to render delays too.
Im curious about 6core mainstream CPU for 1150. I was ordering new pc few weeks ago and i took 4470 because of "dead" 2011 socket.
Yea, 4930 is great CPU but i hope that next year something new will arrive for 1150 too.
I am not sure if that will happen, and Broadwell is big mystery at the moment. It could end up being fully soldered, non-overclocable chip. But it could be anything.
I think haswell-e Octacore will be finally atleast some step. I find the enthusiast platform to be better deal, because if you buy a lot of ram, good gpu and overall, the price expense of 3930k/4930k is not that big imho.
Now I see, you bought the 4770k with idea of upgrading the chip next year ? I haven't even thought of that. But it's true LG2011 used so little of its potential and is already dated..
To get slightly crispier detail, you may try to set filter width of cone filter to 1.333 instead of 1.5 ;)
I actually wanted to try this, but wasn't sure if it won't produce artifacts, because I've read somewhere I shouldn't tinker much with the default :- ) Can I play with other values, like blurring too ?
Damn, I didn't know rebus could work out that expensive! Like you said, might as well buy the most high end machine for that sort of money. I'm currently running an overclocked 3930k @ 4.2ghz with 32gb Corsair 1600hmz ram + GTX 670 in a Fractal Define XLR2 case (the sound proofing definitely helps when cranking the fans). Those v2 xeons are damn pricey though, I'm not sure the price / performance ratio would be worth it tbh? (vs a watercooled 4.8ghz 4930k for example)...however I can't wait for the 8-core Haswell CPU's to drop next year!
4.8ghz long time stable with regular water cooling with 4930k is not much possible. I haven't seen anyone running such setup at overclockers, when 90perc. struggle getting stable 4.5 chip. I find 4.2 sweet spot for rendering 24/24.
And it actually is price viable. For example the "cheap" 10 core at low ghz 2660 v2 at double socket will run you slightly less then two 4930k workstations, with same performance in rendering, but rather poor non-threaded. From there on, it does get expensive, but at most extreme version, you will just pay 1-2k euros on top of quite powerfull machine with more than triple the performance of current overclocked 4930k and you will have it in single-box. The motherboards are no longer so expensive, and good WS can be almost same range as top enthusiast 2011 (like IV ROG,Evga Dark,etc..), you can put regular rams, or unbuffered ECC which cost the same, just single vga, single for all repeatable components and you only per more for chips, and in return get the luxury of single box without the need for networking and additional care/space.
As for REBUS: I never found the cloud to be so cheap as others consider it. Peter Guthrie mentioned in Venice he paid 70 euros for one picture (and rendered 20 like this). It might not be super expensive, but I have hard time justifying such one-time costs even if it's just small percentage of project budget, I would like to keep that money value.
I am really happy to see so many people running identical setup with Fractal cases :- ). They're the most sexy cases you can buy for such money. At certain times I felt like I wanted to try a bit of luxury and order Lial-Li, but then I read all the reviews how the build quality is lower these days and the alum shell is ever thinner, that Fractal seems like even bigger win-win situation.