Hardware for NextGen Software 2004-08-31 - By emmanuel asset
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Hi Dave,
Each new tS generation takes advantage of the new hardware.
I always waited for new tS versions releases to upgrade to a new PC, in
order to choose the components from Caligari and tSpacers recommandations
( a P166 + Matrox Mystique with tS2, a PIII 550E + Matrox G450 with tS4, and
finally a PIV 2.8 -800 Dual channel 2Gb PC3200 memory, Raid0 Serial ATA +ATI
9600 with tS6 ).
You could simply upgrade to an high performance ASUS P3 laptop with a good
DX9 graphic chip and reuse your monitor, keyboard, hard disks with external
boxes, etc... And in the next two years, upgrade to an AS workstation. A
laptop is not a a wasted investment : you will probably keep it to show your
work to your clients or work outdoors. It
Just my 2 cents :-)
Emmanuel
-- -- Original Message -- --
From: "Dave Angelini" <dpangelini@(protected)>
Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 8:47 AM
Subject: Re: Hardware for NextGen Software
> MessageRoman,
>
> Wow! A great deal to consider. Yes...I am one of those looking for the
> next generation hardware. As such, I am holding out for a PCI-Express
> system, but I don't think my 4+ year old PC will be enough to get me
through
> the next two years until multi-core parallel processors hit the market.
> Nevertheless, your arguments make sense and I can only imagine what tS9
will
> look like in 2007 on a 24 multi-core GPU processor (Care to paint us your
> wildest visions on that one??? We promise not to hold you to any of it
;-).
>
> In the PC market, I was originally planning on the following:
>
> Intel Pentium 4 Processor 560 w/ HT Technology 3.6GHz 1MB CACHE
> Asus P5AD2 Premium I925X Chipset Sckt775 DDR2/533 PCI Express w/Audio LAN
> IEEE & USB2
> 2Gb PC4200 DDR2 MEMORY
> ATI RADEON X800 XT 256MB 16X PCI EXPRESS VIDEO CARD
>
> Unfortunately, not all vendors have all these components...or at least for
> some reasonable prices (CyberPower comes close but they only offer the
> Radeon X800 Pro card which has 12 pixel pipelines rather than the 16
> pipelines offered in the XT version and they only offer 1Gb of DDR2 RAM
with
> each system).
>
> But based on your email, it appears that I should wait for AS based
systems
> in 2005. I was originally thinking of making a purchase in February 2005
> (after PCI-Express fever dies down a bit). Do you think Advanced
Switching
> systems will be on the market by then or should I wait longer? If it is
too
> much longer (say, past June) then I will just go with what I have (if I
> always wait for the next big thing, I'll never buy anything).
>
> Thanks again for the great vision.
>
> Dave Angelini
>
> -- -- Original Message -- --
> From: Roman Ormandy
> To: truespace@(protected)
> Sent: Monday, August 30, 2004 5:29 PM
> Subject: [TSML] Hardware for NextGen Software
>
>
> I noticed that a lot of you guys are buying new hardware or consider
> upgrading your current system. As you know we are working hard on next
major
> TS upgrade and while I am unable to comment on that just yet I decided to
> share here my opinions on suggestion for hardware upgrades. These are my
> personal opinions and in no way constitute any product announcements from
> Caligari.
>
> With that out of the way let me say upfront that one way not to go is to
> buy 64 bit CPU's and expect large performance increases for 3D authoring.
> While AMD CPU's are nice and while Intel spent billions of dollars on 64
bit
> CPU technology the results are already in: Intel is on the losing side and
> it is not AMD who may reap the benefits.
>
> The winner is multi-core parallel processors. That may seem like a distant
> future, but you already may be using them without even knowing it. When
> NVIDIA started to call their 3D accelerators "GPU's" (Graphics Processing
> Unit) it sounded just like another marketing gimmick. But today these
GPU's,
> running DX9 and Shader3.0 are starting to take on more and more 3D
computing
> tasks, shading pixels, calculating geometry, collisions, physics and more.
> If you look at NVIDIA 8600 or ATI X800 architectures you see that they
both
> have 16 pixel shader processors with full floating point precision and 6
> vertex shader processors for geometry which are even more powerfull.
>
>
> <SNIP>
>
> Intel does have still one dark horse in the race which might have Trojan
> powers and reverse the odds back in favor of CPU's. It is called PCI
> Express. PCIe in fact is not a bus at all and has nothing to do with PCI;
> it is a point-to-point internet in a box architecture completely scalable
> (unlike a bus) and very suitable for parallel CPU's. This will become
> clearer next year when second generation PCI Express systems called AS
> (Advanced Switching) will reach the market. AS adds a complete switching
> fabric connecting any kind of computing elements and could give 3D
Authoring
> aps parallel, Sony Cell like hardware environment (unless Intel will make
it
> impossible to use non-Intel CPU's).
>
> Let me conclude by making practical purchasing suggestions. My advice is,
no
> matter how low your budget is get a DX9 card today. They are already below
> $100, if you can live with a smaller amount of VRAM. Next, save you money
> for a PCI Express PC which will give DX9 GPU a very nice performance boost
> (of course DX9 card must have PCIe connector). Finally, if you plan 1-2
> years ahead, with arrival of PCI Express AS systems you may get a true PC
> based parallel workstation. Chances are on those kinds of PC's next
> generation of trueSpace will run rather nicely:)
>
> Roman Ormandy
> Caligari
>
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