Dual-Core for XSI 2005-06-21 - By Andy Jones
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Yes and no. In concept and often in practice, it would definitely be
beneficial. That's why most professional workstations have been
dual-cpu for quite a while. The biggest benefit is in rendering, as
Mental Ray can max out both cpus, and any additional cpus you give it.
XSI's interface usually won't max out both cpus, but from what I
understand, some aspects of the application are multi-threaded and will
also benefit some, but not nearly as much, as the bulk of the computing
has to be done in sequence. The other big benefit is that you can run
XSI and something else and both applications will remain responsive even
if they're doing lots of computations. Hyperthreading also helps with
the responsiveness of multiple applications, but you're sort of giving
up some cpu cycles, depending on the application.
In practice, the unfortunate reality is that there aren't dual-core
counterparts for all the fastest single-core components available. So,
instead of dual-core being a complete no-brainer, there's a bit of a
trade-off. You have to decide whether it's most important to you to
have the fastest possible execution of a single thread or the fastest
possible computation of multiple threads. I imagine if we did a
benchmark of the fastest dual-core Pentium D (@(protected) I think) against
one of the 3.8GHz Pentium 4's, the single core chip would win in
non-multi-threaded tests. It would win by a smaller margin, however,
than the margin by which the dual core would win in multi-threaded
tests. (I should note I haven't done these benchmarks or actually
researched it, so don't take what I'm saying for granted.) So again it
totally depends on the application. If you're strictly animating, you
might want the 3.8GHz, and if you're doing a mix of lighting/rendering
and animating, you might be better off with the dual core, since you'll
shave more total time off the rendering wait time than the animating
wait time (the tradeoff with playback framerate is a little more
subjective...).
I don't think there's an Intel setup that allows it yet, but if you go
the Opteron route, you can get dual (or quad) dual-core setups. The
result would be a true whopper of a machine. That sort of setup will
become increasingly attractive once XSI goes 64-bit, as you'll be able
to throw very large amounts of memory into a single machine and have it
crank out very complex renders quickly. Without multiple dual core
cpus, you'd have to buy the same amount of memory that many more times
to get the same rendering capabilities. Or you'd split the memory up
and wouldn't be able to render scenes as complex. From what I've heard,
the AMD folks have had fewer problems with getting similar clockspeeds
on their dual core chips than Intel, so we may see the AMD dual-core
chips doing a better job of keeping up with the single-core chips.
The other exciting new technology for 3D apps is SLI, enabling multiple
graphics cards to collaborate on a single image. I'm not sure if it's
making it into the next version of XSI, but for those of us that do a
lot of captures with realtime pixel shaders, SLI is actually a pretty
big deal. The equivalent of dual-core cpus has existed on graphics
hardware for awhile in the form of multiple separate vertex and pixel
pipes, but there hasn't really been an equivalent of dual or
multi-cpus. I think maybe the old VooDoo2 cards could work together
somehow... Anyway, the moral is, for 3D workstations, it's probably a
good idea to buy a motherboard that supports dual-core and SLI. If
you're buying Intel, definitely go dual core unless you need the fastest
possible results for a single thread. If you're buying AMD, maybe don't
shell out as much for the fastes cpu now and upgrade to a dual core
later, when the price falls a bit.
Lately, we've also been working on some really high tech stuff where we
actually tie two artists together, producing a quad-handed, dual-brained
digital artist. Unfortunately, the per-artist cost doesn't really
justify it at the moment, but maybe once those 25,000 new Foundation
users find their way into the market...
-Andy
walksfar@(protected) wrote:
>Hello, got a question would Intel dual core be benificial in XSI. Almost
>or close to running two xeons? I know xsi is mutithreaded and I hear that
>the only benifit you get from dual core is mutithreaded apps so a 2.8
>double is like 5.6 ghz, just courious thank you
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