Whats the best CPU for Terragen at the moment

[BlueRose]

So I posted a while ago asking about best options to consider when speccing up a new box to run Terragen on (my current PC is just too damn slow to render images) and there was a lot of discussion about CPU and cores.

If I remember rightly going with a good fast dual or quad core (the best I could afford) seemed to be the recommendation. It was a bit before Intel released their new generation of CPU.

So am back to seriously looking at buying a decent box to run Terragen on - whats the best CPU option out there in the market.  Note I cannot afford the very fastest shiniest - so look at the top of the mid range and the bottom/mid of the top range as your considerations.

Also note I am in NZ so pricing is lots different to the US.  Im not fussy about AMD or Intel, either is good.

And if I cant get XP 64bit - how are people finding Vista 64bit to run Terragen on?

[firesuite]

Im running Vista 64 on a Intel i7 quad core CPU with 6gb of ram, runs very nice and fast with renders, not sure what the pricing is for them in NZ, they are still new chips so probably expensive but worth every penny

[blueland]

I am very happy with my Intel Quad 6600.

You can see at Amazone.com what people said from that now 'cheap' CPU.

[neuspadrin]

An i7 would be ideal, but as stated, this would also be the highest cost.  Seeing as i7 requires newer motherboards, ram, etc, that are all higher priced currently as most of it is brand new to the market.

Otherwise a Core2 Quad would be great, they are quire decently priced, they can use a mass range of motherboards, ram for them is generally some of the cheapest, etc.

[cyphyr]

Benchmark site mentioned here has everything you need

Richard

[Oshyan]

Core i7 rules the roost, no question. AMD's are cheaper, but not as fast. Same with older Intel Core 2 Quad CPU's - cheaper but slower. Core i7 if you can afford it.

- Oshyan

[BlueRose]

I have sent of a request for an i7 and a Q9xxx quote to compare pricing.

Next question, if I get 64bit OS - how much memory should I aim for - 4GB 8GB 12GB?

[Oshyan]

64 bit can handle as much memory as you can throw at it. It really depends on the kind of work you'll be doing. For TG2, until it is updated to be natively 64 bit, it will only take up to 4GB of memory. But of course you will also have other things taking up memory, like the OS, antivirus program, etc. so I would say even if TG2 is your main resource-intensive program, 6GB would be a good starting point. RAM is relatively inexpensive, even DDR3, so it makes sense to stock up. 8GB would probably be a good target, especially if you'll be running multiple apps at once, or other apps that are demanding on computer resources (particularly if they're native 64 bit!).

So short answer: get at least 6, 8 even better. 12 might be more than you need, but you may use it eventually when TG2 goes 64 bit.

- Oshyan

[BangelOz]

For TG2, until it is updated to be natively 64 bit, it will only take up to 4GB of memory

Didn't you mean 2 GB RAM? I think there's the end of a 32bit application?

[Cyber-Angel]

In fact there is an upper memory address space limit in 64 Bit Address Space of approximately 16 exabytes of RAM or put it another way that's 17.2 billion gigabytes or 16.8 million terabytes of RAM but I don't see home computers reaching that ceiling any time soon!

Regards to you

Cyber-Angel   

[Oshyan]

For TG2, until it is updated to be natively 64 bit, it will only take up to 4GB of memory

Didn't you mean 2 GB RAM? I think there's the end of a 32bit application?

Nope, 4GB. That's the limit of a 32 bit address space itself. In 32 bit versions of Windows only 2GB per application is allowed because the OS itself can only address up to a maximum of 4GB, much of which it reserves for other purposes. However a 32 bit application can in fact address up to 4GB of RAM and so in a 64 bit OS it is allowed to do so since the OS has much more to work with.

- Oshyan

[Walli]

just keep in mind, that when aiming for an i7 - you get optimal performance with discreet amount of RAM. I am not a hardware guy, but I think it was because of tripple buffer. So 6GB is good and I think 12GB was good and 3GB (which makes no sense for a 64bitOS). But its better to ask a tech person ;-)

[PorcupineFloyd]

If you want to go budget-wise, consider yourself Q6600 but make sure it's a 45 nm version (Penryn) or at last an old 65 nm with G0 revision.

Don't get fooled with it's 2400 MHz clock as it can be easily overclocked to 3200 MHz.

[Hetzen]

How does the i7 compare to a dual processor Quad core machine? There's a couple at the office and they are extremely fast with Terragen. A GI pass of the same scene on my machine was taking about 40mins on full cowbell (Quad core @3ghz 32bit 4gigs ram), on the dual Quad core at work (2xQuad core xeon @2.66ghz 8gigs ram 64bit), the GI pas took about 5mins. Now I know I had changed some of the quality settings and didn't take notes at the time, but they weren't that much different. I think a scientific experiment is in order with the benchmark scene. It would be good to compare that with an i7.

I'm in two minds about upgrading at the moment as I'm tempted to wait for the i7 Xeons to come out.

[Oshyan]

Generally speaking TG2 does not scale well beyond 4 threads/cores, so it's a bit surprising a dual quad core with a lower clock speed would actually perform better than a faster single quad. I would verify that with *identical* settings. In theory the dual quad core should be faster of course - twice as many cores, even though they're slightly slower each. But taking full advantage of that will have to wait for further optimization in TG2, meaning right now a single quad is generally faster.

- Oshyan