Whats your budget ? are you talking about a professional workstation class machine, or a home, DIY computer ?
If you're a professional, I'd look at a dual opteron from <A HREF="http://www.boxxtech.com/swf/index.asp" target="_new">BOXX </A> They make damn nice machines and offer top notch support. Have a look here: <A HREF="http://www.boxxtech.com/asp/cf_step2.asp?ModelInstanceID=281" target="_new">http://www.boxxtech.com/asp/cf_step2.asp?ModelInstanceID=281</A>
Why I picked an opteron ? cause the K8 is pretty good at maya, have a look here for some Athlon FX versus P4 Maya 5 benches:<A HREF="http://www.zdnet.de/enterprise/client/0,39023248,39115916-14,00.htm" target="_new">http://www.zdnet.de/enterprise/client/0,39023248,39115916-14,00.htm</A>. Keep in mind the Athlon FX is no different than a Opteron 148. Opteron typically scales a lot better than Xeon, and current xeons are a lot slower than the P4's tested, cause they are limited to 400/533 MHz fsb (compared to the 800 MHz versions in the benchmark).
If you are looking for something far cheaper, a P4C in the 2.8 GHz range might be worth looking at. The P4C's are currently a better value than Athlon XP's, especially for rendering. For something inbetween, but still single cpu, a Athlon 64 3200+ shouldnt be far from the Athlon FX/opteron 148 in rendering speed, and is quite affordable.
Hope this helps..
= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =
Aces dont agreed with you at all show that even a P4 3.2C is very close to a Athlon FX if sometime not faster that the overclock version.Memory bandwith is not to matter on 3D rendering.On any popular 3D rendering have multitread core and many have been compile with ICC and therefore are faster on P4
edit:I have look at your link maya seen to be the exception as 3Dstudio max is faster on P4 also cinema 4D or any others.Also there a good margin between P4 EE and P4C unlike others 3D rendering might be a result of the ""In overall cache in the overall systeme```as there support SGI platform with there much bigger cache cpu.
I dont like french test<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by juin on 11/19/03 05:09 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
Learn how to read; the guy is using Maya 5. Are there any Maya benchmarks on that page ? nope. I never claimed the FX is faster using 3DS or whatever other app, but fast 3DS performance doesnt help you if you are a maya user. I'm sure you realise those software licenses can cost more than a opteron/xeon workstation.
= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =
You are about to answer a thread that has been inactive for more than 6 months. If you still wish to proceed, please ensure that your posting is original and does not duplicate or overlap any prior responses to this thread.