Digital Art Zone

I am curious how many users of Carrara are running AMD CPUs versus Intel.

Currently, I am building out a decently sized rack server to run lab virtual machines for my job. Naturally, I started thinking about shutting down the labs on the weekend and rendering Carrara stuff with all that horsepower…

To save $$$, my servers will likely be 2-sockets with 8-cores and using AMD processors (32 GB of RAM). I typically go with Intel chips but getting this many cores from Intel hardware is more $$$ than I’d like to spend.

If anyone has run Carrara on AMD hardware, I’d love to get your feedback on the experience.

HI Garstor

My current system is AMD, (as have the previous two)  and I’ve had no problems running Carrara or anything else.

for what it’s worth, ..apart from some speed differences, and the obvious price difference,..
running software, is running software, ..and there should be little, or no difference, in the ability of AMD processors to run whatever you throw at them.

Hope it helps

3DAGE - 12 June 2012 07:05 AM

HI Garstor

My current system is AMD, (as have the previous two)  and I’ve had no problems running Carrara or anything else.

for what it’s worth, ..apart from some speed differences, and the obvious price difference,..
running software, is running software, ..and there should be little, or no difference, in the ability of AMD processors to run whatever you throw at them.

Hope it helps

to true

3DAGE - 12 June 2012 07:05 AM

HI Garstor

My current system is AMD, (as have the previous two)  and I’ve had no problems running Carrara or anything else.

for what it’s worth, ..apart from some speed differences, and the obvious price difference,..
running software, is running software

Thanks 3DAGE! If someone who uses Carrara as extensively (and awesomely) as you runs smoothly with AMD, I feel quite reassured.

Generally, yeah, running software is running software…but my lab work might be a bit more finicky. :-D But that is not relevant to this thread.

I’ve only ever run Carrara on AMD machines. Never had a problem.

My only thought would be that many/some AMD CPUs do not have hyperthreading (HT) and thus effectively have fewer “cores” to process s/w code and thus may be slower than a similar Intel with HT.  Probably need to run a test to be sure.

S/W run on different CPU h/w can be dramatically different in terms of performance (yet still run without errors) .

DougS - 12 June 2012 08:35 PM

My only thought would be that many/some AMD CPUs do not have hyperthreading (HT) and thus effectively have fewer “cores” to process s/w code and thus may be slower than a similar Intel with HT.  Probably need to run a test to be sure.

S/W run on different CPU h/w can be dramatically different in terms of performance (yet still run without errors) .

I have 8 cores - wish it had HT ( wow that would be 16 then )

DougS - 12 June 2012 08:35 PM

My only thought would be that many/some AMD CPUs do not have hyperthreading (HT) and thus effectively have fewer “cores” to process s/w code and thus may be slower than a similar Intel with HT.  Probably need to run a test to be sure.

S/W run on different CPU h/w can be dramatically different in terms of performance (yet still run without errors) .

True on all counts. Since this will be a server platform first and foremost, it will have two sockets holding 8-core CPUs. So there is plenty of horsepower there.

I do think that overall Intel’s chip architecture is superior. AMD has competed by cramming more cores on (heck they have a 12-core chip too) and selling for a cheaper price.

I referenced the excellent book “Inside The Machine” on my long-lost performance troubleshooting thread in The Old Forums.   That goes a long way toward explaining the different CPU architectures and how they affect performance.