Hi All
I'm new to these forums, but have been playing with Terragen 0.9.43 and previous for quite a while, if you want a laugh here is my picasa page of the attempts I have made.
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/richiev4/MyTerragenPics
I have now downloaded version 2 to play with but find my current laptop a bit too slow.
I would like a new one that would make Terragen fly but am not really sure what would be that best spec. If anyone could advise me I would be very greatful. (for the time being lets pretend that money is no object, just that it must be a laptop)
Thanks in advance
Rich
Well if money was no object, I'd purchase a laptop from http://www.alienware.com.
I'd get:
Quad Core
4GB RAM
1920x1200 resolution screen
You'd be a one crazy renderin' dude...
Well that is once Terragen 2 is optimized for multicore machines.
My Dell with a 2 Ghz AMD processor, and 2 GB of RAM does fairly well but I'd suggest an even faster processor and more RAM if feasable.
these arent bad at all actually....
Quote from: moodflow on December 18, 2007, 05:21:59 PM
Well if money was no object, I'd purchase a laptop from http://www.alienware.com.
I'd get:
Quad Core
4GB RAM
1920x1200 resolution screen
You'd be a one crazy renderin' dude...
I wouldnt do that if I were you...2 reasons...
1. It is a ripoff
2. Alienware simply sucks....I have one and.....let me put it this way!....they are only meant to work untill your warranty expires...$4000 down the drain....thats right....4 GRAND for a damn laptop!
My Alienware rocks.
A friend of mine just got an alienware laptop, the huge widescreen one. It's got dual Nvidia cards in Sli. He says he has to wait for alienware to release drivers, direct from nvidia drivers crash the card. :P
Quote from: Orangebugpro on December 19, 2007, 10:12:00 PM
A friend of mine just got an alienware laptop, the huge widescreen one. It's got dual Nvidia cards in Sli. He says he has to wait for alienware to release drivers, direct from nvidia drivers crash the card. :P
A laptop with GPU's in SLI? Never heared of that before... :)
I've just replaced my AMD 3500+ with 2GB RAM with a quad-core 2,4GHz with 4GB RAM (considering to add 4 more for heavy/serious populated scenes).
Seriously, it's about at least 7 times faster with rendering. Currently I'm running an image which first took 15 hours, but is now already 65% finished within 40 minutes ;D
Ok, it's not a laptop, but compared to my last machine this machine really flies ;D
Quote from: dhavalmistry on December 18, 2007, 10:58:12 PM
these arent bad at all actually....
Quote from: moodflow on December 18, 2007, 05:21:59 PM
Well if money was no object, I'd purchase a laptop from http://www.alienware.com.
I'd get:
Quad Core
4GB RAM
1920x1200 resolution screen
You'd be a one crazy renderin' dude...
I wouldnt do that if I were you...2 reasons...
1. It is a ripoff
2. Alienware simply sucks....I have one and.....let me put it this way!....they are only meant to work untill your warranty expires...$4000 down the drain....thats right....4 GRAND for a damn laptop!
Yea I have to agree Dhaval. Thats a boat load of cash and I've heard their support is horrid. But if I had unlimited amounts of cash, I'd buy one just to test it.
Another option to make TG2 fly:
I was looking at the quad core shuttle PCs. I built one (using their online tool) for about $1200 with their top of the line quad core CPU and 4GB of RAM. It could likely be done for even cheaper if you build it yourself piece by piece.
This will work nicely when multicore is supported.
Don't be ashamed of your terragen gallery...there are some great images in there! NEVER low-rate yourself.
Well..I've been rendering and modelling on this alienware laptop.
and its freakin sweet. Havent had a single problem,other than
a heating issue...but,cmon..its got 2 processors,2 video cards.
and 2 drives,all of it stuck in a laptop. once I elevated it,using a simple
stand,then the heating issue,wasnt an issue.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on December 20, 2007, 01:04:40 PM
I've just replaced my AMD 3500+ with 2GB RAM with a quad-core 2,4GHz with 4GB RAM (considering to add 4 more for heavy/serious populated scenes).
Seriously, it's about at least 7 times faster with rendering. ...
Could you elaborate a bit? I thought multi-core systems are not yet being utilized by TG2? Unless you have access the the alpha build, maybe? Or is this performance improvement due to the faster processor and your doubling of RAM? It sounds interesting as to what kind of performance can be experienced after upgrading. Seems
very significant in your case.
Quote from: otakar on December 26, 2007, 01:41:49 PM
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on December 20, 2007, 01:04:40 PM
I've just replaced my AMD 3500+ with 2GB RAM with a quad-core 2,4GHz with 4GB RAM (considering to add 4 more for heavy/serious populated scenes).
Seriously, it's about at least 7 times faster with rendering. ...
Could you elaborate a bit? I thought multi-core systems are not yet being utilized by TG2? Unless you have access the the alpha build, maybe? Or is this performance improvement due to the faster processor and your doubling of RAM? It sounds interesting as to what kind of performance can be experienced after upgrading. Seems very significant in your case.
the deal is AMD 3500+ is not better than 2,4 GHZ from intel. So basically the solo core is better compared to his previous setup. However... the multi cores are not yet supported so he doesnt benefit from his quad much
Quote from: buchvecny on December 26, 2007, 06:18:03 PM
Quote from: otakar on December 26, 2007, 01:41:49 PM
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on December 20, 2007, 01:04:40 PM
I've just replaced my AMD 3500+ with 2GB RAM with a quad-core 2,4GHz with 4GB RAM (considering to add 4 more for heavy/serious populated scenes).
Seriously, it's about at least 7 times faster with rendering. ...
Could you elaborate a bit? I thought multi-core systems are not yet being utilized by TG2? Unless you have access the the alpha build, maybe? Or is this performance improvement due to the faster processor and your doubling of RAM? It sounds interesting as to what kind of performance can be experienced after upgrading. Seems very significant in your case.
the deal is AMD 3500+ is not better than 2,4 GHZ from intel. So basically the solo core is better compared to his previous setup. However... the multi cores are not yet supported so he doesnt benefit from his quad much
You're right about AMD 3500+ being inferior to a single 2,4 GHz core from the core 2 quad.
However, I really DO benefit from my quadcore already because I render in 4 instances of TG2 at the same time ;)
yeah ;)
I stopped checking prices quite a while ago and I almost fell out of my chair seeing something like the AMD X2 6400+ for $180 shipped. Couple that with a $120 MOBO and $100 in dual channel 2x2GB RAM sticks and you are truly flying with TG2 once released. Can we have another Christmas real soon? ;D
Honestly man, don't waste your money on anything more than 2GB ram.
I built a top of the line gaming computer (3.0 Ghz dual core, 8800 GTS 512, 4GB ram) I have 4GB of ram, and running 2 instances of Terragen and doing 2 full quality renders at the same time, Terragen only utilizes 30% of my RAM.
A better processor has a much larger effect on render time than more RAM, seeing as Terragen is only allocated a certain amount of RAM. Additionally, when you increase RAM amounts past 3GB, you have to purchase a 64 bit operating system to use it.
However once Planetside optimizes Terragen for higher amounts of RAM and multi-core processors, 4GB of RAM may be beneficial.
@Blonderator - Thanks for sharing this experience. Very helpful.
Oddly I would go the other way and say that RAM has more influence over performance than Ghz. I would however wait till the new iteration of TG comes out before committing myself. One thing that will make a difference is the complexity of your scene, for example, a highly complex nodal structure with many function nodes will benefit from a high Ghz chip, conversely a scene with many objects loaded into it will benefit from lots of extra ram. The new version of TG will support multi processors and ram over the 3 gig limit so this will change everything, if you can afford it get lots of everything!!
Richard
I agree with Blonderator. I repeatedly see TG2 max out my CPU, but only make a dent in my 2Gb of Ram.
Can I just add that Alienware laptops are based on the Clevo standard of laptops. Clevo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clevo) laptops are used by many companies that rebadge them, and add in a few extra customisations of their own. But basically most Clevos are the same. What does this mean? Alienware laptops are some of the most expensive Clevo laptops on the market. You can buy extremely similar laptops from other suppliers and save a whole lot of money.
I have a Clevo laptop that is released by Sager (http://www.sagernotebook.com/default.php). At the time I was shopping around for a new laptop, the one I am using now was about $400 more expensive at Alienware, than it was at Sager for basically the same Clevo machine.
Anyway, make sure you do your own research, but I strongly recommend that if you are after a Clevo based laptop, stay away from the overpriced Alienware label, and go for another less expensive label, which would basically be the same machine.
@njen - What about us poor souls who do not find a laptop that useful? :) Any suggestions of something that would be better than Alienware, without building my own? I built my last machine about two or three years ago.
Interesting note here, I pitted my laptop (1.7ghz Pentium M, 2G ram) against my desktop (3.2ghz P4, 2G ram). Laptop won by several seconds. It was around a five minute render, I didn't work out the exact percentage.
The Pentium M is a lot more efficient (more work for equivalent CPU frequency) than the P4, so that explains the majority of the disparity. Although that does seem a bit more than I would have expected.
- Oshyan
Hey, you DID say money was unlimited right?
http://ftp.tyan.com/html/pr06_typhoon600_ocs.html
http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/16/tyan-typhoon-600-series-reaches-256-gigflops-for-personal-super/
How's £10,000 for a Tyan Typhoon 600 series computer which can reach a maximum of 256 gigaflops?
Or maybe if you work at IBM you could sneak in, install Terragen 2 and use the IBM Blue Gene/L to render your awesome scene at 280.6 teraflops? xD
yea petium 4 sucked so much... when u bought athlon with 3GHZ you were twice speed as if u bought pentium 4 3GHZ