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Dual Xeon 3.4 vs AMD Athlon X2 64 2.6 unexpected results

T

TVFX

Junior Member
I have just bought a pair of second hand HP workstations(xw8200) to start my own renderfarm for Blender animation.
Now I thought that the Dual Xeon 3.4Ghz CPUs in these workstations would have been considerably faster than my existing AMD X2 64 2.6Ghz machine that I use for rendering, but NO! They are rendering at the same speed or slower using Blender 2.53.
I am using windows 7 64bit on the AMD and tried running it on the Xeons but unfortunately had issues with the Quadro video card drivers. So I have found an old copy of Windows XP X64 and installed it on the Xeons. I also turned on Hyperthreading in the bios for the Xeons as well.
Same results!!!
Can anyone explain this phenomena? The CPU monitor is showing that the CPUs are maxed out when rendering on both setups.
Any insight would be appreciated.
Thanks
 
AMD X2 64 are good performer , and actually if you use linux and recompile Blender from source you can have a good boost on performace because you are not running a standard code anymore but a CPU specific code.

For your problem just check if bios , ram speed and driver are all ok on the Xeon , but anyway I dont think that will be much faster than the X2 setup.

Also is important to know wich are the GPU on the two machine , some of the rendering can be made by the video card as GPGPU task so if your X2 machine have a better video card than Xeon this can help (but I dont know if GPGPU render is activate by default in Blender)


A good solution for rendering are renderfarm made by just mainboard and CPU , like this one
http://helmer.sfe.se/

this setup have the best performace for price
 
I would say that is about right; dual 3.4s(P4) against a dual 2.6 (AMD 64). Weren't 64's about 20% faster per clock? Should be similar.
 
Yep that system uses the P4 based Xeons (socket 604)

Should have spent your money on a basic 870 board and a 6 core AMD chip.
 
I have the same set up using a twin P4 1.8 Xeons 604 , 4 gigs FB DDR1800 memory, Its the slowest POS ive used yet, Renderwise its fine but the FSB is so slow that its like trying to feed a V8 from a swizzlestraw.
You turn HT on and it just cripples it to a point that a P3 1Ghz will pass it up.

I will probly say the same goes for the OP, The A64 data bandwidth is so much better and the P4s are choking from a slow FSB and he is using FB memory which is slow in itself from the ECC.

OC the P4 FSB and memory timings and watch it fly, OC the A64 and another large gain.
Im using W2K on mine at the shop and cant use any analyzing or OC software.

I thought you could not use 64bit OS on a non 64bit CPU?
 
Actually, this sounds right. In fact, i'm shocked your Athlons arent way faster.

A64 s939 2.2ghz = P4 3.5ghz. So....

A64 X2 2.6ghz = Pentium D 4.166ghz.

You should have consulted people here before that purchase. A cheap X6 would be worlds better and much faster than these two combined. Probably cheaper too.
 
Last edited:
K6 said:
AMD X2 64 are good performer , and actually if you use linux and recompile Blender from source you can have a good boost on performace because you are not running a standard code anymore but a CPU specific code.
Click to expand...

This sounds tempting, I just have limited time at the moment. How hard is the process of recompiling blender?

K6 said:
Also is important to know wich are the GPU on the two machine , some of the rendering can be made by the video card as GPGPU task so if your X2 machine have a better video card than Xeon this can help (but I dont know if GPGPU render is activate by default in Blender)
Click to expand...

I haven't seen anywhere that says Blender is capable of GPU rendering. I swapped over the video cards as a test and no differences where seen for rendering.

Thanks for the links. I might have a go at tweaking the X2
 
Marlin1975 said:
Yep that system uses the P4 based Xeons (socket 604)

Should have spent your money on a basic 870 board and a 6 core AMD chip.
Click to expand...
Marlin1975 the workstations only cost me $200 and they are only used as render nodes. My workstaion is an i7 based PC. I am just curious that they aren't faster and thought there may be a reason other than they are just old and slow 🙂
 
Back in the day I upgraded from a dual Xeon 3GHz machine to an X2 4200 (2.2GHz), and the AMD was a fair bit faster.
 
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