14 replies to this topic

[kev2]

magneto, on 04 June 2012 - 12:59 PM, said:

Thanks malexander. $260-300 is reasonable. I don't remember seeing these boards a year ago though. Otherwise they look just like what I wanted at the time, 64 is pretty amazing. I use win7 pro, and it seems it allows up to 192GB

I'm  building a Linux workstation for Houdini as well. Anyone know of a complete spec sheet for a machine like the one outlined above. Part numbers, sources, etc where someone has sorted out the drivers, Linux distro, etc. to make sure all the pieces work together when assembled. I'm a newbie to Linux and building machines but willing to try if I have some idea I won't end up at a dead end or wasting a lot of money.

Thanks for the help,
Kevin

[miguelvfx]

Hello, can anyone give me some advice on what to get. I don't have a lot in terms of upgrade money so this move is more important that it looks like. I'm thinking of getting 550ti 2gb ddr5, or gt 630/gts 450 1gb ddr5 and 120gb ssd($100~ range). My question is how much performance am I giving up for not having SSD drive? I would say I'm still learning Houdini and effects that means, I'm not rendering production quality. My current system is 2600k@4.4ghz, 2x8gb 1333mhz ram, with intel integrated graphics. Thanks for the advice.

[melazoma]

malexander, on 07 May 2012 - 12:12 PM, said:

One thing I've discovered about the Nvidia drivers for OpenGL/CL is that OpenCL buffers do not seem to evict OpenGL objects from VRAM. So, if you've filled up your VRAM with OpenGL data by using lots of heavy geometry, lots of large textures, and/or lots of framebuffer (high AA levels, dual monitors, more than one Houdini or 3D app session running), then OpenCL allocations will fail. This is where a second graphics card would come in handy, as you could run your sim on the secondary card and not have its VRAM cluttered up with graphics data. Or you could just have 1 card with oodles of RAM (3-6GB).

Note that this doesn't seem to be an issue on AMD cards.

Hi Mark, this is really enlightening.  I was under the impression that the benefits of having 2 graphics cards is only realized with the Tesla + Quadro 6000 Maximus setup (thank you Nvidia marketing).
Are you saying that if I have say, a Quadro 4000 and a Quadro 2000 installed, this setup will allow me to dedicate one these cards just for OpenCL and the other for the OpenGL viewport?
Are there environment variables or the like to allow the user to pick which card for OCL/OGL?

EDIT: Nevermind, I just found your other post about HOUDINI_OCL_DEVICENUMBER
I'll give it a try as soon as I get my hands on the hardware.

Edited by melazoma, 04 July 2012 - 06:02 PM.