By Shawn Wallbridge -
Three things I can think of...
1) Memory - older machines will probably be limited in memory, which can prevent larger scenes from rendering period.
2) Some things can't be broken up and spread across all the nodes, I can think of Fluid sims being one, but I am sure their are others.
3) The big thing would be the long term costs of electricity.?
It's kind of the wimpy-cores vs brawny-cores argument that has been taking place (lots of slow procs vs a few big procs).
Of course your artists are going to complain, but when aren't they ;)
shawn
On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 2:53 PM, julian firminger <justdigitalfilm@gmail.com> wrote:
(threadjack)Might start this as a different thread but, do any of you think about using 2nd hand, just off spec gear, bought in cheap to do heavy lifting? ?Years ago, I made a living off buying one or two generation old gear from the states (was in Australia at the time) at a fraction of the cost and bulking so much of it up I could out-compete the commercial operations. ?
OK, so no support, only you're own team, lower performing, possibly (but not necessarily) higher power and heat but you have 5-6 times the number of boxes over new gear and a whole room full of spares. ?In the current world of green-recycling is this not interesting?All those DLG5's are a great example. ? They're down say 1/3 on the G7, at best, but if they come to you, warts and all, for 3-5% of the cost then what's the catch? ?Clearly Greg and Dan and some others will site specific, code optimization based, software related reasons and they're absolutely correct. ?but for the mid level operation, is there not a small revolution to be had with this kind of thing? ?<ranty/>