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3D Studio MAX FAQ Added on: Tue Apr 16 2002 |
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C. Processors
What are fastest processors available for 3D Rendering currently?
| From AMD | From INTEL | | 2600+ Athlon XP (2.13 Ghz) | 2.8B Gigahertz Pentium IV | | Dual 2200+ Athlon MP (1.8 Ghz) | Dual 2.8 Gigahertz Xeon |
Didn�t you used to have a part here about how much Pentium IV�s suck?
Yes, that�s entirely correct. The Pentium IV�s have a lot against them. The Pentium IV is built around an architecture, which removes an FPU unit to allow for an increased pipeline length (20 stage pipeline). This reduces the Pentium IV's ability to perform under FPU intensive operations.
To prevent a crippling blow to their flagship processor, Intel added the SSE2 instruction set, which is meant to alleviate the poor FPU through an optimized set of instructions. These chips have gained ground recently as applications have begun integrating SSE2 more and more into their programming.
This combined with a recent large gain in clock speed (2.8 � 3.08 Gigahertz) as well as an increase in FSB (533 vs. 400) is starting to allow the Pentium IV to distance itself from its Athlon Brothers.
However�On a clock for clock basis, the Athlon still destroys the Pentium IV. On average the Pentium IV processors still require a 400-500 Megahertz speed advantage to match the performance of a similarly equipped Athlon system. (Example: a 2.8 P4 would be beaten by a 2.3 Gigahertz Athlon) These numbers are of course subject to variation and change, as Intel ramps up its new DCDDR boards.
What�s this DCDDR thing you�re talking about?
DCDDR stands for Dual Channel DDR. It�s a technology being implemented in the latest upcoming motherboards. Both Intel and AMD.
The AMD solution will be featured in Nvidia�s Nforce2 motherboards, which should be available sometime in early November. The Intel solutions come a bit later, near the halfway to end of November.
DCDDR works in a similar way to Ramous, as it takes two dims and allows them to run in parallel. (Aqua to use DCDDR on a DCDDR board, you must have two identical sticks of ram). This allows for a pretty massive increase in system bandwidth (Almost double) as well as taking into account the latency and other benefits of DDR. DCDDR will finally replace Rambus as a high-end bandwidth memory source.
I heard something about Hyperthreading. Is this some new clothing technology?
No, its not spider silk enabled underpants, if that�s what your hoping for. It�s a new technology Intel is implementing on the Pentium IV and Xeon processors. Think of hyperthreading as a mini-me for the processor (Overclockers.com for more info) basically a little guy who helps with some cycles, gets in the way of others, and usually just sits around eating and not doing anything in particular.
On applications specifically coded for hyperthreading, you�d see a max of around a 40% performance increase�on average though, it would fall around 5-20%. Hyperthreading is basically a more efficient way of dealing with secondary tasks, and idle cycles.
How much is X system faster than Y system?
A current list of system performance in 3dsmax is found at The benchmarks Page
Do you have a life? You seem to be always talking on the IRC or on other forums.
No, I do not have a life. Thanks for asking.
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