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Hardware

Best Platform for Running Maya? 102

Posted by Cliff from the king-of-the-mayan-hill dept.
Kieckerjan asks: "A friend of mine, who's an architect, has been appointed a research position at a small university. Along with the job he's been assigned a budget to spend on whatever he thinks is necessary to get the job done. One of the things he needs is a fast machine to run Maya. As he is fed up with Wintel systems, he's been looking into alternatives. His eye fell on SGI's Fuel workstation, which costs about 15.000 EURO. For that kind of money you can buy a seriously bad-assed pentium-based system, and run Linux on it. His question to me was: is it worthwhile to shell out the extra money for a SGI system? Since I have no experience with modern SGI's, I am in no position to judge about performance differences, but maybe someone on this forum does."
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Best Platform for Running Maya? More

Best Platform for Running Maya?

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  • Case (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by dago ( 25724 )
    Ugly color. O2 where much nicer.

  • Dreamworks... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by OneFix ( 18661 ) on Tuesday November 12, 2002 @11:40AM (#4650948)
    Uses Maya [linuxjournal.com] on Intel boxes...they are currently one of the many graphics houses in Hollywood that are switching over to Linux...

    They are using high-end nVidia cards ...and all told, the advantages of using Linux just far outweighs the advantages of using SGI hardware.
    • the advantages of using Linux

      Care to elaborate?

      • Re:Dreamworks... (Score:3, Insightful)

        by OneFix ( 18661 )
        Lets see...they aren't tied to any hardware manufacturer...they can use SGI/Sun/IBM/HP systems...they can even use commodity (Intel/AMD) hardware. They can upgrade hardware much more easily...for instance whenever the GeForce 5 comes out, they don't have to take anyone's system from them...it should be nothing more than a hardware switch. And if the unthinkable were to happen and say SGI/nVidia goes under, they don't have to redesign all of their custom software...If they need more power, they can easily upgrade systems without artists having to learn a new interface (artists aren't always the most tech savvy)...

        Other advantages...laptops...not for artists, but for executives...how nice would it be to show someone a model of the main character for their new film with the same software your artists are using...

        If they move to Linux for all of their *NIX apps, they can save costs on support staff...why keep ppl around that specialize in different *NIX flavors when you can have 1 team that focuses on 1 OS for all of your needs (Web Server, Workstations, Render Farm, etc)...

        What if an artist wants to work from home...Linux would make it possible...furnishing an SGI workstation for anyone that wants to work from home would be expensive at best...

        I'm sure there are a lot more advantages that I could list, but this should give you some ideas...

    • Re:Dreamworks... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by 4of12 ( 97621 )

      using high-end nVidia cards ...and all told, the advantages of using Linux just far outweighs the advantages of using SGI hardware.

      That's my experience, too.

      The price/performance ratio of Lintel is hard to beat.

      I think it depends on your price point and tolerance and desire for reliability.

      For seriously high-end stuff, go with the SGI. But if you're budget's not unlimited and you're willing to suffer some hiccups once in a while, you owe it to yourself to see what the "low end" can offer these days. It's not too shabby and beats out a lot of the older SGI hardware.

      • I agree, but as more studios start using Linux on commodity (Intel/AMD) hardware, component manufactures will need to put more effort into Linux device drivers...

        I think you'll find that nVidia and ATI both will begin to have better Linux drivers as a result...

        And of course, I don't how much more high end you can get than CGI work for a major animated film...

        I hear from a source on "the inside" (don't ask me how) that they DO have problems with the setup, but that there is alot more support available, especially from major Linux vendors...and they still have higher production under Linux...

        • Re:Dreamworks... (Score:4, Informative)

          by Twirlip of the Mists ( 615030 ) <twirlipofthemists@yahoo.com> on Tuesday November 12, 2002 @03:07PM (#4652882)
          And of course, I don't how much more high end you can get than CGI work for a major animated film...

          Considerably.

          The thing about the big effects houses is that they typically try to spend as little on the workstations as possible, while investing big in the render farm or farms. For example, compositors at ILM use CompTime on things like O2s and cheap Linux machines. You can't do anything in real time at full resolution on those machines; you use proxies for everything, then submit the job to the render farm for full-resolution processing and go on to work on your next shot. The next day, you look at the results of your render in dailies and make changes based on it, repeating the whole process.

          That works well in what is basically a factory setting. But it's not right for everyone. If you're working by yourself, like the subject of this discussion will be, it makes more sense to have a computer that's as interactive as possible so you can get instant feedback. Instant feedback at ILM wouldn't help anybody, because you have to take your work to the VFX supe anyway for review. Making the desktop machines more interactive in that setting would just be a waste of money.

          • Re:Dreamworks... (Score:2, Interesting)

            by OneFix ( 18661 )
            Oh, but you are assuming that this guy is only able to afford 1 Linux box...

            For the price of 1 SGI box you could probably have at least 5 or 6 dual 2Ghz processor Intel/AMD boxes on a cluster...And I can guarantee you that small render farm is gonna beat out the SGI...

            As far as graphics performance...I'm sure the Quadro 900 XGL would be enough power (if it's not beating the V12 in performance) for whatever is needed...the price is a little steep though (~$1000 for a PNY card)...

            As far as raw CPU power goes...a dual 2GHz Lintel box just HAS to be beating a 600MHz MIPS...no matter how much better the MIPS processors are...

            As far as that goes...I think all you have to read is this article [pennnet.com]...where Vice President of R&D for Pixar said...."This is the platform that will replace SGI in the CG industry. There's been a lot of progress made since last year. Nobody is wondering 'if' anymore."
            • For the price of 1 SGI box you could probably have at least 5 or 6 dual 2Ghz processor Intel/AMD boxes on a cluster...

              At which point they'll have to start talking about a full-time sysadmin, and that's not cheap.

              We're talking about one guy, here, and an architect at that. Don't go designing your dream-renderfarm for him. That won't suit his needs at all.
              • How so? Once the systems are set up, there should be little to no administration required for the render farm...but the point remains, even without the extra boxen, the single Dual 2Ghz system would likely beat the SGI in performance...

                And the one person thing lends itself more to using a Lintel box...what happens if his monitor dies...well, he'd have to order one (couldn't go to the corner shop and pick one up)...

                And how easily could he find Irix support...certainly not as easily as Linux support...

                What happens when this guy's hardware decides to fail? He has to order new parts from SGI...

                Now, I'm not arguing completely against servers, but in this case, it just makes sense...

                The truth is, given the cost of the SGI and the cost of a high-end Lintel box, I'm sorry to say, the SGI just lost...

                And since we're talking about a university, I'd guess that they don't have any SGIs on campus...who knows...they might not even have any Suns/HPs...but it's at least safe to bet that they are primarily a Windoze house...and they most likely have deals with vendors for hardware...

                All told, it just seems to me that in this instance, it'ld be better to go with a good Intel/AMD box. The other thing is...my guess is (this being a university) that they probably want to give their students experience on the machines they will most likely be using in "the real whurled" (this would be for students, right?)...and if you were to budget properly, you could even buy multiple systems for the same cost as one SGI...
                • How so? Once the systems are set up, there should be little to no administration required for the render farm...

                  Heh. That's a good one. "Little to no administration." Heh. Now pull the other one.

                  what happens if his monitor dies...well, he'd have to order one (couldn't go to the corner shop and pick one up)...

                  Why not? Are they no longer making monitors that take DVI or VGA?

                  And how easily could he find Irix support...

                  1-800-800-4SGI (4744). Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

                  Listen, if you don't like the SGI idea, that's fine. But don't suggest that this guy go down the Linux path. That way lies madness. The choice is really between a Fuel and a Mac. Linux... there's just no reason to subject yourself to Linux in this situation.

                  • Re:Dreamworks... (Score:3, Insightful)

                    by OneFix ( 18661 )
                    The choice is really between a Fuel and a Mac.

                    Not really...from what I read, the choice was between a Fuel and a Lintel box...the origonal article didn't mention anything about a Mac...

                    And here's an interesting idea...the companies like Dreamworks and Pixar have their own setups for their Linux boxen...their vendors have all the specs for their systems...why couldn't he contact say Dreamworks and work with them to get a Linux box built to Dreamworks' specs...not only would that be kewl, but I somehow think that some studio is bound to be open to the idea...think about it...at the very least they have a bunch of students that think they're really kewl...at best, they get some good PR and are able to hire students that already have experience on one of their systems...so maybe they don't have the custom internal software, but they would have a system with the exact same specs, distro, etc as a major studio...
                    • Not really...from what I read, the choice was between a Fuel and a Lintel box...the origonal article didn't mention anything about a Mac...

                      I think we've established fairly thoroughly that a Linux system is inappropriate for this user. He's not a technical user, so an operating system as complex and challenging as Linux isn't for him. (Linux has the twin faults of being complex to use and poorly documented. IRIX is complex to use but richly documented. Windows and Mac OS X are easier to use, mostly-- not completely, but mostly--obviating the need for end-user documentation.) Since the submitter said that the user was "fed up" with Windows, that leaves IRIX and OS X.

                      why couldn't he contact say Dreamworks and work with them to get a Linux box built to Dreamworks' specs....

                      I don't know how Dreamworks works, but at ILM they build their own machines to their own specifications and create their own software distributions for them. This lets them tune every aspect of both hardware and software to suit their own needs. Since their top priority is a balance between quality and productivity, the way they set up their computers is a demonstrable competitive advantage in the market... and the visual effects market is kill-or-be-killed. So doing what you suggest would be, in effect, asking them to give you all their secrets. Probably would never happen.

                      Too, remember what I said upthread about how studios like ILM-- and presumably Dreamworks as well-- are essentially factories, and design their desktop computers to fit that model. The computers they use at ILM aren't million-dollar monsters; they're really cheap PC-clones or O2s, and the artists do everything with low-resolution proxies or wireframes. The real magic happens in the render farm. So even if this guy got a workstation right out of ILM or Dreamworks or wherever, he'd probably hate it because he'd have to send everything off to render overnight before he could see the results of his work.
                    • I would agree that if all you want to do is run Maya on a single system for a single user with nothing special except what comes out of the box, Windows isn't a bad choice. Running Maya with a complex set of custom plugins and other special integration pieces across a 300+ artist show *does* make Windows a bad choice. And good Linux workstations dramatically outshine IRIX workstations these days. For any scalable environment where you want to have control over your production pipeline, Linux (or some mix) is a popular answer.

                      As far as the competitive advantage of the workstation configurations at a place like Dreamworks, studios are happy to share their hardware configs with pretty much anyone - it's the customized and highly integrated software and the movies themselves that are the competitive advantage that no one can really discuss.

                      Dreamworks's current Linux workstation has been advertised in various venues, as Dreamworks has a vendor relationship with HP [hp.com]. It's the same X4000 workstation that was reviewed in Linux Journal [linuxjournal.com], with 2G of memory, two 2.4G P4 Xeon's, 18G and 36G 10K RPM U160 SCSI drives, with an NVIDIA Quadro4 XGL 900 graphics card running RedHat 7.2 and the publicly downloadable NVIDIA drivers. They aren't exactly cheap, but they're still twice as fast as an SGI that costs twice as much.

                      My views and opinions expressed herein are my own and not necessarily those of my employer.
    • Hmmm... Last I'd heard, most major render farms used linux for the final renders(because of the price/performance issue), but tended to avoid it on the workstation front beause of various shortcomings... Mostly some comercial flavor of Unix(or a rare Mac) on the desktop to do the design, but a fleet of x86 Linux boxes for the final render...
      • Well, that's what makes the current shift towards Linux workstations so impressive...
      • Working in the industry, the push for linux render farms was a few years ago. That is no longer new for a company to be switching over.

        Now the switch is in the desktop department. It is not unheard of for studios to be switching to linux desktop systems.

        Some studios have 2 linux desktops and 1 Mac for every 2 artists. Use the linux system for 3d, the Mac for 2d (photoshop and composites). It is possible that some might make the switch to macs all the way around, but that is one more platform for the big studios to custom code for. The port to the linux systems from the SGI is easier ( i believe) than it is to port to OS X.

        -Tim
  • I haven't worked with the newest SGI's, but if the circa 2001 models I have worked on are any indication, he will get a much better bang for his buck if he goes with an Intel or AMD machine and linux. The SGI has a certain prestige associated with it of course, and perhaps marginally better support, but is that worth $10k+?
    • Not to mention that IRIX is one of the worst OSes I've had the displeasure of using. It may be UNIX-based, but it's crashed so much on a SGI O2 workstation and it's pretty easy to screw something over so bad that you'd need to reinstall the OS. I say go for the Dual G4 macs with dual Apple Studio Cinema Displays. You won't be sorry.
      • YMMV, but IRIX is the solidest thing we have in our shop. One of our servers is an ancient SGI (33MHz of raw power!) who's record was well over 100 days uptime, it only got shut down for a new disk drive.

        We run SGI O2s, Octanes and Indys, as well as a variety of Wintel, Linux and Mac systems. IRIX's stability shines by comparison with the rest of them.
        • One of our servers is an ancient SGI (33MHz of raw power!) who's record was well over 100 days uptime, it only got shut down for a new disk drive.

          I should have mentioned this in my other post, but you just reminded me of it. I once worked with a Challenge L server with twelve R4400 processors, running IRIX 6.2. That machine never, in the slightly over three years that I worked there, went down. Not even for maintenance. (It already had all the disks and stuff that it needed, so there was simply nothing to be done to it.)

          It was under a pretty heavy load, too-- over 100 users logging in interactively to edit and compile software, and it was also the ClearCase VOB-- and it simply never went down. I remember checking the uptime once and seeing that it was over 900 days. Amazing.

          For all I know, that machine is still up today, with an uptime pushing 2000 days.
        • Hmm... Well, I guess it's just crappy setup. I found out last Sunday that more than half of the computers in the building where I used the SGI machines are either: Overloaded with viruses, have KaZaA on them, or filled up with so much porn. (It's an engineering building on the campus of a college I won't name.) So yup, the machines were probably poorly set up.

      • Re:I wouldn't think so (Score:4, Informative)

        by Twirlip of the Mists ( 615030 ) <twirlipofthemists@yahoo.com> on Tuesday November 12, 2002 @12:03PM (#4651173)
        Your experience is not typical. In the absence of a serious hardware fault, IRIX never crashes. And the only way you can "screw something over so bad that you'd need to reinstall the OS" is by doing something incredibly dumb. My personal favorite happened once when I was trying to change the ownership of an entire directory of files. I typed "sudo chown foo.foo ." The only thing is, the period and the slash keys are, like, right next to each other. So I ended up typing "sudo chown foo.foo /". By the time I slammed control-C, it had already made it through /bin and was working on /dev. I could have fixed it, but it was just easier to boot miniroot and reinstall the base OS pieces to reset the permissions and ownerships.

        Contrary to your opinion, IRIX is one of the most stable and friendly OSs out there. Oh, and it's not "UNIX-based." It's UNIX. SGI has licensed the UNIX trademark from The Open Group for IRIX, so it's a full-fledged UNIX operating system.
        • OS X has a nice tool called Repair Disk Permission... it's interesting foo just the reason you described. I'm surprise that no one has as yet developed a similar tool in OSS community.

          Basically is a default config for everything that comes in the install and any upgrades, etc. Doesn't touch your personal files or your custom installations. Very nice, especially when installing 3rd party software that may or may not be as professionally engineered as you'd like to believe (having payed 100s for it).
        • I cannot agree with this statement of stability on IRIX on SGI machines. I wouldn't throw it into the same category as Windows, but the machines to crash and panic. The X server is a bit of a beast and scary apps like Netscape will lock it up without effort.

          The machines are pretty rock solid, but from my experience, no more so than any other unix platform.

          • Like I told the other guy, your experience is not typical. I've worked with many, many SGI machines, both at SGI itself and elsewhere, and these machines just don't crash unless there's a hardware problem. Certain releases of IRIX got out with bugs in them, of course, and if you're unlucky enough to happen onto one, you can run into trouble. But otherwise, the OS just runs forever.

            And, speaking personally, I've never seen Netscape lock up the X server. It is definitely possible to crash your X server if you're not careful, but that hardly qualifies as a system crash. Nobody but the guy at that head notices anyway, and all he has to do is issue the vulcan death grip and log back in.
        • I apologize if I was unclear in my original post, but I questioned the choice of the SGI based purely on performace (ie- how quickly does the computer perform task X) vs cost ($$) as that was how I read the posters question.
          We are getting into what I like to call the "last 10%". Like in street racing. You can spend a moderate amount of money, and have a fairly respectable street racer. But that last 10% of performance, those last few seconds, those will cost a fortune. Probably more than the whole rest of the car cost. It is the same with High-end vs. Mid-range PC's, and it is similar here.
          Do you want to spend $5000 on intel/linux machine to run Maya and have 90% of the performance and features of the SGI which costs at least 3 times much? Or, are you willing to spend the bux for that last 10%? In the context of the poster's question, your statements about IRIX being so great are completely off-topic, regardless of the fact that they are true.

  • Macintosh! (Score:2, Troll)

    by psyconaut ( 228947 )
    Get a dual 1.25Ghz Mac. Cheaper than the IRIX box. More friendly than Linux. Better build quality than most PeeCees.

    Oh, and cheaper than the IRIX box.

    -psy
  • Don't forget, Maya runs on Mac OS X ...
  • What are you going to be doing with the system other than running Maya?

    The Fuel system is certainly a nice system, but it looks like the two things it really offers are one thing that is hard to get on Wintel sytems and one thing that isn't offered. The hard to get one is a ph4t professional graphics card, and the other is a huge data bus. (oh yeah, and Unix)

    You can buy the ph4t professional graphics card for a PC. The data bus will still be small. Will there be any other work done that involves pushing large data sets around quickly, or will this system spend most of its time being used for other purposes? It seems silly to spend 15,000 of his research budget just to run Maya.

    Keep in mind, too, that Linux may not fit his needs. Especially when we're talking 3D modelling. Linux's 3D acceleration support is totally krappo. DRI has come a long way, but I still keep a Windows partition around so I can reboot if I plan to be doing a lot of blendering. Lots of drivers are buggy, no support for professional 3D cards, and Mesa isn't perfect, either.
    • Linux's 3D acceleration support is totally krappo.

      The binary-only NVIDIA drivers are excellent - they are extremely stable and I have yet to find any issues with OGL compliance. A solid Linux box with a Quadro is an excellent replacement for an IRIX box.

      Our lab has several O2s, a few Fuels, a few Octanes and a couple of Onyx IR3 systems. The only boxes that can keep up with a dual 2GB Dell Linux box in almost all situations are the Onyx or Octane systems. (Our lab does data vis, flight simulators, and we use Maya on both SGI and Linux systems).

      If I were given the choice between a Fuel and a Linux box, I'd choose the Linux box in a heartbeat.

      • The only boxes that can keep up with a dual 2GB Dell Linux box in almost all situations are the Onyx or Octane systems.

        That doesn't add up. Fuel has the exact same graphics as Octane2: V12. (I think you can buy V10 for Fuel, but I'm not positive. Maybe you have V10?) The only real difference between Fuel and Octane2 is the number of processors. If the Octane2 compares favorably to the PC, then the Fuel should as well.
        • The only real difference between Fuel and Octane2 is the number of processors.

          Ummm - what, exactly, doesn't add up? I was comparing a "dual 2GB Dell Linux box" with our IRIX boxes.

          And a high end dual processor Linux box will smoke a dual processor Octane in most situations anyway, except those where massive amounts of data need to be moved across the bus.

          The only reason we keep IRIX boxes around these days is because of old code that hasn't been ported to Linux.
          • Did you miss the part of the conversation where we were talking about Maya? Maya, when modeling interactively, is completely graphics-bound. (The dynamics stuff hits the CPU very hard, but that's not something an architect would use.) Whether you have two CPUs makes little difference when using Maya for interactive modeling. Therefore, the Fuel and the Octane2 are pretty much indistinguishable. (I know this because I've used Maya on both of those platforms, with V12 graphics, and I'll be damned if I can tell the difference most of the time.) So if the Octane2 is faster than the whatever-it-is PC, then the Fuel will be as well.

            Unless you're not talking about Maya. Which is what this is starting to sound like.
            • Did you miss the part of the conversation where we were talking about Maya?

              Did you miss the subject line?

              But if you're only talking about graphics-bound situations, then there's absolutely NO contest between a Fuel and a high end Linux box with a Quadro4. SGI doesn't even bother putting Viewperf results on the SPEC site any more because they're so far behind the Intel workstations. In both fill rate and geometry performance, a modern high end PC card will slaughter anything SGI is still offering.

              • No, SGI doesn't bother putting Viewperf results up because they're about as meaningful as Quake FPS. The only benchmark that matters is the "try it and see" benchmark.

                At NAB in April, I spent about an hour running Maya at the SGI booth on a just-introduced Fuel with V12 graphics. Then I played with the same cut of software on Windows and Linux on various other computers. No comparison. Fully textured and lit scenes were interactive as hell on the Fuel, and chunky on the PCs. Yeah, some of the dual- and quad-processor PCs could do a better job of running real-time dynamics simulations, but for interacting with scenes-- work you'll spend most of your time doing-- the Fuel was definitely the way to go.
                • Funny how SGI posted Viewperf results consistently until early 2000, when they began showing up at the very bottom of the result tables.

                  But yes, I suppose your 1 hour of experience at a trade show comparing a Fuel to PCs of unknown configuration is more meaningful than our lab's experience with machines that we OWN and use on a daily basis.

                  Maybe if you compared an IRIX box to a high end, workstation class Linux box with a high end NVidia card (which would be about 1/3 - 1/2 the cost of a Fuel), you would understand where I'm coming from. But, you obviously know everything there is to know, so I'll just shut up now.

  • Maya and Mac OS X (Score:2, Informative)

    by ibib ( 464750 )
    Maya in Mac OS X is a nice solution. Get the fastest available Powermac G4 and max out the RAM. Result: You have a very nice setup for using Maya.
    • When maxing out the RAM, make sure to not buy from Apple - WAY overpriced, and probably not even CL2. Spend half the money and get better RAM elsewhere.

      Also true for expanding HD space.

      What Macs really need right now is a 3ware ATA RAID adapter. And space for 4 internal ATA drives removable from the front (and still have space for an optical drive).

      IMO, anyway.

  • Depends (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Twirlip of the Mists ( 615030 ) <twirlipofthemists@yahoo.com> on Tuesday November 12, 2002 @12:13PM (#4651274)
    The right answer here depends on a lot of stuff that you (the submitter, that's right, I'm talking to you) didn't tell us.

    What's your friend's level of comfort with UNIX? IRIX is a very well documented OS, but there are few places you can go for help if you get stuck. You have to be prepared to sit down and read the manuals (techpubs.sgi.com).

    Does your friend want to do anything else with the computer? Like, say, surf the web or read email? If so, he'll be happier with either a Windows XP machine (and you said he's "fed up") or a Mac. Doing basic stuff on an IRIX box-- like word processing or email-- is like chewing on tin foil. Most people I know keep a PC or a Mac next to their SGI system for doing everything other than what they use their SGI system for.

    Is a new machine the right answer for this guy? You can get used Octanes pretty reasonably. Fuel comes with V12 graphics (I think V10 is also an option, but I'm not positive), and that's pretty serious stuff, but you can probably get your hands on an MXE or similar system for considerably less than a new Fuel. Consider contacting SGI's remanufacturing division; they sell older systems at a substantially reduced cost. Although I don't know if they sell to overseas customers. Might be US-only.

    All in all, I think the best choice is probably going to be a top-o-the-line Power Mac G4 with the fastest graphics card available. Right now, I think that's the GeForce 4 Titanium, for about $400. It's no V12, but it'll do the job. The dual processors are a nice bonus, letting you work at full speed while doing test renders in the background (I use that feature all the time on my dual 1 GHz "Speed Holes" model.) And because OS X is UNIX in all but name, you get all the advantages of running UNIX on your desktop while still being able to run stuff like Microsoft Office should you need it.

    I guess what I'm saying is that you should think about the questions I asked, carefully weigh all the factors, and then buy a Mac. ;-)
    • Well you concern seems to be you can not do normal stuff with an SGI. So Linux would seem to be a better choice as you can do normal stuff with a Linux box(web browsing and email). Nvidia makes professional level agp card, with linux drivers, way more horse power than a Gefore 4, but much more expensive. One of the main reasons that the CGI house are going to Linux on the workstation is that they are cheap, compared to SGI machines. They can afford to replace them every Movie(ever 2-2.5 years) instaed of every two Movies(5-7 years) and the preformance growth curve over time for PC hareware is way steaper than for SGI hareware.
      • So Linux would seem to be a better choice as you can do normal stuff with a Linux box(web browsing and email).

        Barely. I'm not going to get into a Linux flame war. Just know that my opinion of Linux as a single-user, general-purpose desktop operating system is not high.

        One of the main reasons that the CGI house are going to Linux on the workstation is that they are cheap, compared to SGI machines.

        You're sort-of right, but for the wrong reasons. The first Linux box you deploy costs considerably more, in time and energy, than a single SGI workstation. According to folks at ILM, they had to actually go in and do a lot of driver-level work to get the Linux NFS implementation to work reliably for them. So their first Linux box cost them tens of thousands of dollars to deploy.

        But their 100th Linux box-- by which time they'd gotten all the bugs worked out-- cost them practically nothing above the cost of the hardware, which is very inexpensive compared to SGI hardware. So Linux as a professional animation or compositing workstation platform makes sense, but only in context of an economy of scale.

        This submitter was asking about a single workstation for a single user. I don't think Linux would be a good choice there. It's harder to configure and use than IRIX, and it's less fully featured than OS X. In this specific case, I think Linux would probably be the worst of both worlds.

        ...the preformance growth curve over time for PC hareware is way steaper than for SGI hareware.

        That's true, but again in a way that nullifies the point. PC hardware improves more quickly than SGI hardware, but the SGI hardware was a hell of a lot better than the PC hardware to start with, so it's a question of catching up. There's no PC in the world that can match the capabilities of an Octane2 or a Fuel*. Someday the PCs will catch up, but not for a while yet.

        The implication of this fact is actually a pretty good thing for the owner of the SGI gear. Like Macs, SGI workstations keep their value much longer than PCs do. Last year's top-of-the-line PC is worth a couple hundred bucks now, at best. Last year's Mac or SGI can be sold for 80% of its list price. So if you buy a Mac or an SGI, your investment may possible be greater (in the case of an SGI, definitely so) but it'll be protected longer.

        * Of course, if you don't need those particular capabilities, the Octane2 or the Fuel would be a big waste of money for you.

    • You can get second hand O2s in Europe. Get two: one for design and the second as a renderer. You only need one screen and a KVM.

      Or get the bigest most memory laden Mac G4 with the high end video card option and two 23" TFT screens.

      You will be much more productive than on SGI for less money. The extra cash can be thrown at a Linux render farm...

  • Ask the manufacturer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Katravax ( 21568 ) on Tuesday November 12, 2002 @12:25PM (#4651360)
    Has it occurred to you to ask the manufacturer (Alias|Wavefront) rather than asking a bunch of high school and college kids on Slashdot? You're going to spend tons of money on the software, but then ask a bunch of beginners and web typists for advice on the hardware? Please.
    • Too right, just look [slashdot.org] at the kind of answers you get from "Ask Slashdot". :-)
    • "web typists"

      classic. Does Sam's publish a "Learn Web Typing in 24 Hours for Fun and Profit!!"
    • Has it occurred to you that SGI owns Alias|Wavefront and you may not get a fair answer?

      The SGI advantage has gone when it comes to workstation class graphics. PC cards outperform their systems in important areas and $15k could get you at least 3 top of the line PCs. Check out the specbench.org viewperf results if you want to see what the performance is like. There are a lot of systems and configurations there to choose from.
    • Has it occurred to you to ask the manufacturer (Alias|Wavefront) rather than asking a bunch of high school and college kids on Slashdot?

      Has it occured to you that many of us aren't high school or college kids, and many of us have years of experience that might be helpful. Disregarding the fact that usenet is the correct place to ask questions like this because you'll get a more targeted audience, there's an excelent chance that an ask slashdot question will recieve a few truly insightful answers from people who do something like this for a living, and know what they're talking about.

      If you don't like Ask Slashdot, there's a nice checkbox that'll remove it from your front page.
      • Yep, that occurred to me -- I'm not a student or kid either. But you know as well as I do most of the Slashdotters are kids and beginners. I enjoy the company, but wouldn't trust their advice on high-end hardware.

        This question should have gone to the manufacturer or, as you pointed out, a specialized group on Usenet or another forum.

  • Why Not Wintel? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by murat ( 262137 )
    I suppose a dual P4, 1GB RAM and an ATI Radeon 9700 based graphics card and Windows 2000 Professional will do very well and it will be cheap enough.

  • an SGI is still an SGI... (Score:3, Informative)

    by tolldog ( 1571 ) on Tuesday November 12, 2002 @01:08PM (#4651733) Homepage Journal
    but...

    There is that cost premium with them. And support. Neither of which are cheap. And at this stage in the game, I don't know how worthwhile it is.

    Our studio switched from an SGI only house to some blend of Linux/IRIX. We are moving towards Linux only on the desktop, but it is possible for us to get some OS X boxes for compositing.

    Depending on the level of work your friend is doing and how much raw power he needs, the choice can change. I assume that he would mostly be doing single frame renders. And if they are at high quality, he will need some serious horse power. Will he be using the Maya renderer or another one?

    Our switch to Linux was decent since we came from a unix back ground. The users were used to the IRIX desktop and it did not take long for them to feel comfortable using gnome.

    The OS X solution is extremely valid. I would have laughed at it a year ago, but having used Maya a bit on it and seeing just how well respected OS X is in the industry, I don't feel it is a bad way to go.

    When there is only a few artists and not a big support staff, you have to go with a name brand system. It is unfortunate that a premium like that must be payed, but downtime is a big killer. When it can take a day or so to render and your system is down 2 days before something is needed, the preasure to get it going again is imense.

    -Tim

  • I/O is most important (Score:5, Informative)

    by bmetzler ( 12546 ) <bmetzler AT live DOT com> on Tuesday November 12, 2002 @01:22PM (#4651861) Homepage Journal

    I work for a used SGI reseller [mashek.com]. You need to go SGI if you need I/O bandwidth. The bus on Intel-based machines doesn't cut it, no matter how fast the mhz. Pay for I/O performance, not fast, but mostly useless CPU speed.

    -Brent
    • I work for a used SGI reseller. You need to go SGI if you need I/O bandwidth. The bus on Intel-based machines doesn't cut it, no matter how fast the mhz. Pay for I/O performance, not fast, but mostly useless CPU speed.

      This is excellent advice. You can get a 2nd hand entry-level Octane for around EUR 1200 (say 256M RAM, 4 or 9G UW-SCSI disk, SE graphics, single 250mhz R10K). The beauty of this system is it's upgradeability... you can go up to 2G RAM, 3 9G disks, add TRAM (hardware texturing) or a VPro graphics card, dual R12000 processors.

      Integer CPU performance of the first system is on the order of a 400-500mhz PII, which doesn't sound like a lot, but you can sustain peak computation power on an SGI for far longer than you can on a PC, because of the bus issues. The Octane has a switch, like a mainframe. I would taker a slower-CPU, faster memory bandwidth and disk I/O SGI (or Sun) over a fast PC any day. Doesn't do so well on a 1-minute benchmark, but in the real world it gets the job done.
  • Linux Journal October 2001 GFX column [linuxjournal.com]
    has a good description of Maya on Linux "from the source"

    "My installation won't be on the typical Red Hat but rather on Debian Woody with kernel 2.4.7. My hardware configuration is a homebrew Athlon 1.2GHZ, ASUS A7A266 motherboard, 256MB DDR, with 100GB of 7,200RPM IDE disk drives. For graphics we're running XFree86 4.1.0 with its accelerated open-source DRI driver on an ATI ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON. Building and installing 4.1.0 with the accelerated RADEON driver is a story of its own--to be covered next month. "

    " What that means in English is that it has every feature you can think of for an animation package and then some. "

    That's why he needs it.

    rcb
    • Now if you x 4 all of the numbers there you will be close to what a $15 K system will be capable of in 2003.

      You'd think that "the source" would be able to purchase a more impressive system, even in 2001, huh.

      RADEON ALL-IN-WONDER, is that a budget concious video capture tool? Export your video to TV then 'capture' it with a VCR/TiVO?
  • It's a bit dated, but here is an interesting article from Ace's Hardware describing performance on AMD/Intel systems for comparison:
    Maya 4 and SSE-2 optimisations [aceshardware.com]
    AMD also makes a comparison here [amd.com], but Intel's benchmarks didn't include Maya.
  • Linux on x86 of course.
    ILM uses Linux on SGI, but that's only cuz they have the boxxen allready from the Irix days that where only a year ago or so before they migrated.
    x86 is the cheapest and most tested HW platform. Period.
    If you're box doesn't get a hold of the renderers load you get a second one (or a third and fourth) to do it and still turn out cheaper.
    If that still ain't enough you can get some Xeon workstation for the extra system bandwidth along with a rocketdrive if your models load to slow.

    Anyway you look at it there's allways a cheaper and more hassle free solution on x86 below the bottom line.
    Best platform for Maya: Linux on x86 - really a no brainer.

  • Go for second user SGI (Score:2, Informative)

    by lga ( 172042 )
    I recommend going for a second user SGI system.

    An earlier poster stated that his SGI Octane workstation kept up with his dual processor P4. That's quite impressive for an out of date machine.

    The thing about SGI machines is their bus bandwidth. It's all very well having several gigahertz at your disposal along with a top of the range graphcis card, but a PC just does not have the ability to connect them at a fast enough rate. An SGI octane uses the same design as the supercomputers - a crossbar switch. The XIO bus in an Octane can have multiple 1.6GB/s streams. Add in the power of multiple MIPS processors and MXE graphics and you have a powerful setup.

    Octanes are available second hand from lots of places, such as SGI themselves, Ebay and others.

    Steve.
  • SGIs are nice, and i mean NICE. but if you want to do anything other than Maya, your screwed. The software library for it is nil, of course you can use OSS stuff, but very little of that is up to par with Maya's quality. But overall its the best hardware, ive used SGIs since the days of the Indy and the Indigo, later the original Octane and mostrecently a dual Octane 2 with r14ks and v12 graphics. i damn near wet my pants using it. I wish i could use a SGI as my daily bix but unfortnately theres no photoshop, illustrator, premier, aftereffects, dreamweaver, office suite, etc.

    then theres the mac, maya rund on my G4 400, slowly but i think thats more my rage 128's fault. I hear its awesome on the newer G's though. THe problem is the graphics card, there are no DCC (digital content creation)class graphics card available. sure you can get a GF4TI4600 but, it lacks the developers of a quadro card, or fire gl card. OSX has all teh apps though.

    wintel/lintel boxes are cheap, run reasonably well and will rovide the best bang for the buck. I would get dual processors at least to speed up rendering and look into using xeons for the multithreading capability. you can also get DCC cards, like Quadros, wildcats and fire gls that support things like hardware overlay planes and other advanced features. unfortunately your left to decide between Windows and Linux. I dont know about linux, but we all know how windows is. you may have drivers problems in linux though, but nVidia might have a nice developer solution for that. Windows has all of the commercial software you need and linux has oss, just like the SGI.

    these are your options as i see it, i hope it helps.

  • Personally I would go with a dual P4 (I'd look into AMD, but probably only go with them on single processor machines at the moment). Make sure you get a motherboard that supports AGP8x. The bandwidth from CPU to GPU is where SGI excels. In terms of video cards I would probably wait for the NV30. But take a look at the workstation GPUs available out there, such as the Quadro, FireGL, and Wildcat. I don't have too much experience with the workstation video cards.

    So I'm gonna assume you will be using this machine for the next 3 years. So you can probably spend your money up front on an SGI machine or get 3 upgrades over that timespan.

    In terms of Mac, I wouldn't recommend it. The advantage of x86 over SGI is the fact you can upgrade components easily. Upgrading Mac components can be somewhat of a challenge.

  • If you do not have a back end render farm to support you, you just might want to go with the SGI. As it was already mentioned the bus bandwidth is a huge factor as well as the 64bit.. think painting with 55gallon drums vs quarts. If your friend will be working with global illumination, volume lighting and on a hdtv or higher resolution, 1 frame may take you 20 minutes+, at 30 frames per second the render time adds up fast. I'm running a Dell PowerEdge 2500 with dual PIII Xeons and a Dell Precision 530 Dual Xeon with a WildcatII video card at my desk. The Precision is my modeling box and the Poweredge is my local renderer. I can get all four processors running at 100% for 20hrs just to get 2 minutes final rendered architectural walkthough. With the cost of my desktop set-up the SGI's are not unreasonable, and more will be more stable. On a pc always render to individual images and compile them later because if you render to .mov and it crashes 18hrs into it.. it's all gone.
  • one possibility is a pimped out linux box. obviously you will NOT find the same quality hardware for a intel based box as you would for a try "heavy duty" unix box.
    est price: $ 5,000
    you could get a Sun Blade 2000. [price/config [sun.com] ]
    which would TOAST anything else people have brought up in I/O , and pure CPU power.
    est price: $ 20,000

    you could go the mac route mac [apple.com]
    which is the best combo of price/usability (ie you get all sort of cool little apps to run and can use it has a full desktop system, and be "cool")
    est price: $7,000

    and of course the SGI which you already have priced/configured. i know enough about SGI to know that they are very solid boxes, but i have a hard time thinking that a single (or dual) 600Mhz Mips would beat a dual 1Ghz Sparc. of course i dont have either one here to benchmark so i maybe wrong.
    to be honest i would go with the sun box. if for no other reason than it has the most powerful overall setup. bar none. Solaris is not a "fun and cuddly" OS but it wont EVER crash and it has a very high end graphics card (if you choose it in the "config").

    the Lintel system will be the cheapest hands down since you wont have any "extra software tax" (obviously maya still costs $$$)
    i also think *not sure* you could probally get the sun box down to 15,000 with cutting some stuff out of the config and haggling the sales rep.
    • While your answer is insteresting in that it is the only one that mentions Sun hardware running Solaris, there is a damn good reason it is the only one. Maya doesn't run on Solaris. Ooops. I don't think you've ever been near Maya, let alone that you are in much of a position to offer advice.

      The other thing that made me wonder was what experience you have with high-end x86 solutions... We're not talking about the x86 PCs you pick up in kit form from the local hardware shop - we're talking about well supported high end hardware. This guy earns his living using this stuff, so he's going to want support contracts and on-site replacement agreements. Your PC retailer doesn't do that. High quality workstations these day do use good quality components, and are a lot more reliable than their reputation suggests. In fact, it's Sun hardware (don't get me wrong, I'm a bit of a Sun fanboy :-) )that's been going down the swanny. At one point their workstations would blow away x86 in terms of hardware and construction quality, this is definitely not the case with the Sun Blade. Sun has, over the past few years steered towards commodity hardware, to keep their costs competitive, and this has certainly levelled the playing field in favour of x86 vendors like HP or even (gulp!) Dell! While technologically offering a lot of things that aren't available on x86 (in particular high bandwidth stuff), I don't think the build quality and component quality stacks up as an argument in favour of Sun anymore. I have little experience with recent SGI hardware so I don't know, but they seem to have continued much more down the high quality/high price road, where Sun has long since decided to take a shortcut.

      Of course, none of this has any bearing whatsoever on the matter in hand, since, as I said, Solaris won't help you at all in running Maya. :-)
      • okay i didnt know maya didnt run on solaris. sue me.

        but I'll put some serious money on it if you think you can build ANY x86 dual proc. system that would beat a sun blade 2000 in any damn thing. the Sun Blades might not be as good as the SGI's (or they may be, but like i said - i dont have the hardware to test it with.) but x86 is on the bottom of any pile as far as computation goes. and yeah rendering (depending on what type of rendering) is a CPU heavy thing. and damned to hell if the dual p4 XEON system all these x86 people keep recomending can even come close to touching the sun blade 2000.

        hell if you wanna get technical you could put linux on the sparc hardware. (and yes it runs just fine i have a dual proc sparcstation right next to me and everything works under linux BETTER than it works under the newer versions of solaris)(and yes the hardware is rather slow)
        • okay i didnt know maya didnt run on solaris.

          Normally this wouldn't matter, if it were not for the fact that this whole thing was about running Maya. This akes your whole post (entitled, pretentiously, "Possibilities" - which was a shame since one of the three you mentioned was everything but a possibility...) It wasn't a UNIX box pissing contest. You could put what you wanted (OpenBSD, Linux, NetBSD) on the sparc box, but it won't run Maya.

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