Pro/Forums - View Single Post - Oh man...just think where 3D gaming is going to go after this

bradford010 · 08-02-2002, 01:05 PM

What we have to do is just step back and take in the whole picture.

We're being told that the rendering power of multi-million dollar computer setups, that take up entire (larger) rooms is going to be made available through a card that fits in a AGP slot, at a consumer price point.

Within 6 months.

The Quadro line up from Nvidia (their current pro-graphics card line) could be considered at a consumer price point (albeit, this is a stretch, and we're talking about seriously wealthy consumers) and they come nowhere near this level of rendering power.

Even the current best offering from 3DLabs, the Wildcat 6210 does not come anywhere near close to the rendering power of a render farm. And for the price you'd pay for that, you could buy around two top end dual athlon systems.

Weta, the SFX company working on LOTR, just made another investment in expanding their render farm. Dual Xeons with 4GB RAM apiece. Joining the existing PIIIs they now have in excess of 400 machines in that render farm.
If the only number we consider here is the cost, would any company with any sense purchase that much hardware if it was possible that the same thing would be available at a fraction of a percent of the cost within a matter of months?

08-02-2002, 01:05 PM	#10
bradford010 Cooling Neophyte Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: NE UK Posts: 17	What we have to do is just step back and take in the whole picture. We're being told that the rendering power of multi-million dollar computer setups, that take up entire (larger) rooms is going to be made available through a card that fits in a AGP slot, at a consumer price point. Within 6 months. The Quadro line up from Nvidia (their current pro-graphics card line) could be considered at a consumer price point (albeit, this is a stretch, and we're talking about seriously wealthy consumers) and they come nowhere near this level of rendering power. Even the current best offering from 3DLabs, the Wildcat 6210 does not come anywhere near close to the rendering power of a render farm. And for the price you'd pay for that, you could buy around two top end dual athlon systems. Weta, the SFX company working on LOTR, just made another investment in expanding their render farm. Dual Xeons with 4GB RAM apiece. Joining the existing PIIIs they now have in excess of 400 machines in that render farm. If the only number we consider here is the cost, would any company with any sense purchase that much hardware if it was possible that the same thing would be available at a fraction of a percent of the cost within a matter of months? __________________ The internet. A revolutionary tool created by the american military, so in times of crisis high ranking officers would still be able to look at pictures of naked ladies. \|\| Our little hardware site \|\|