Render Farm.

[debido666]

Going to build a render farm for a friend. Have basic questions and need some info.

Dual core or single? Makes much of a difference? I'm guessing indigo can use more that one thread.
Does the amount of memory per node make a difference? 64bit is faster, plus use of more memory.
How does indigo scale? In other words, I see the minimum specs. But what's a realistic scenero?

Thinking of 4 nodes.
SFF
Core 2 Duo
3-4 gigs of memory each
SATA hard drives
1000 network interface

He is using Sketchup Pro.
Not sure of the size, complexity of the drawings yet.

[debido666]

Also, can I slave linux systems to a windows system. Thinking yes.

[dcm]

core 2 duo ? Indigo can useas much cores as you have. Mine have 4 cores / 8 threads.
You should go to i7 2600k with 4-8gb ram per node

[Headroom]

+1

Indigo will squeeze every last quant of performance from every available core!

There are two threads that may interest you:

http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/vie ... =5&t=10219

http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/vie ... =5&t=10105

[CTZn]

I own an i7 too and Indigo gets all of it.

The benefits of 64bits are one: the ability to use nearly as much RAM as your friend's projects will take. 4GB is pretty decent imo but a profesionnal around claimed to hit the ceiling with 16GB, so it's all relative I'm guessing.

Instanced geometries are doing a lot of good to save memory on arch projects with repetitive elements like structures and such.

A load of high-rez maps, but furthermore multiple light layers for a huge output image (ie for print) already multiplied by anti-aliasing may take more than 4 Gigs. Really.

Not to mention micro-polygon subdivisions used for displacement eventually... set this wrong and you'll blow any rig up. Rethorically speaking, the render will just not happen in such a case

[Soup]

Indigo's network rendering is really powerful, make sure you utilize the automatic Slave on Screensaver

More on networking

The network manager could also be handy if you're going to have more than one master on the network, it'll juggle the slave/master connections for your