need a suggestion for a highend 3d graphic workstation...

[loosbrew]

Hey all,
a user needs some specs for a high end 3d workstation. we already confirmed that we want the wildcat II 5110 vid card in there, but are having trouble deciding wether we go dual pIII's or amd or P4 or whatever! i know the rest of the specs, all either ata100 7200 rpm ibm drives or all 10k scsi drives but we are still wondering about the cpus. the workstation will deal with mainly large files(>100MB) that will translate into 3d projections of topographical maps. IE...a large txt file with all of these coordinates will convert into a 3d map, and VRML files. also some autocad will be done on it as well.
i know i like amd but i am unsure that amd will fill this position since dual pIII's sound much better than one 1.2 tbird.

any serious suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

loosbrew

 

[Dundain]

Well, a P4 would blow for this type of application. Yes, it has a huge amount of memory bandwidth but its FPU is pretty weak compared to an AMD Thunderbird. If they came in dual, I'd say get them, but since they dont and most likely wont for a while longer, I'd say go with a good dual Pent III system. Make sure the programs multithreaded (same with the OS - Linux, WinNT/2000 all are) otherwise go with the fastest AMD Thunderbird you can. And go with alot of RAM if you can.

 

[EvilDonnyboy]

I believe a 1.5ghz P4's FPU is pretty much comparable to a 1.2ghz TB. No way is it "pretty weak". The FPU is one of P4's "highlights". Where the TB blows the P4 aways is in Integer performance, where even a P3 1ghz will outperform it sligtly. ALU and FPU are two separate things. And in 3D apps, ALU performance is un-important compared to the need for FPU performance.

Actually a P4 would outperform TB's in 3DSudio Max almost all of the time, becuase it's optimized for the P4, and it takes use of the P4's excellent FPU power.