Quad Core?

Hi,

I'm looking to get a notebook for 3d modeling cars bikes boats etc... Liking the T61p with the penryn for now...

Does a quad core mean it can offer twice the performance of the dual core during the rendering process?

And when is it likely to come out? Cos I'll need it by august for college... Any chance they'll come out before august?!

THANKS!!!

 

um, i'll give this a shot..someone correct me where i'm wrong (and i will be wrong somewhere in here)

quad core for notebook processors won't be out till late this summer with nehalem and will be quite expensive. it doesn't mean twice the performance, but it will produce a significant boost. it would seem logical that it would produce double the performance, but for some reason i think that would only be the case for very complex algorithms.

i think what's more important would be the actual speed of the processor (which with duo core you don't really need anything over 2.2 at the moment..but always good to plan ahead) and the cache (which will most probably be higher in a quad core)

higher amounts of ram would be more important than processor speed.

 

No you said it pretty well! All I would say is if your app can't make use of 4 threads then no not even close to twice as fast. Now if you want to code video, play a game, surf the Internet and render CAD? Yea sure it might out perform. OP can already get a Quad Core in a notebook from XoticPC so why wait ? It is built on a desktop platform which crushes notebook platforms so if performance is what you want this will beat even the mobile Quads. Just thoughts.

 

I won't be doing anything else while rendering... And I want to stick to around 2000$ so I'm guessing xotic pc is out. And to be honest, I need some portability in terms of power. The desktop platform wouldn't allow this right?

I just looked around... quad core will be too late and expensive, as theyr coming out first in Xtreme guise. But I think I have to wait atleast for montevina! 1066 Mhz FSB will make a difference right?

But will montevina prices be very high for the first month of launch?

 

I have started alot of video editing my c90s does a good job it has a full 2.93ghz desktop core2duo worth of power in it, and its only 15" size.

The c90p may be around the corner to further improve upon the c90s.

 

For rendering, you really want a fast processor, it makes all of the difference in rendering times.

At RPI, we use Rhinocerous, for rendering, and yes it takes a while to render.
The students at the school have the same T61 as in my sig. WIth Vista Ultimate
It takes the T61 about 2-3 hours to complete a render.
I have a slower processor in my E1505, but i have XP.
Literally the render times are less than 20 minutes for the same exact render file.
I have found that Rhinocerous does not work well with Vista, and this has been addressed in the Rhinocerous forums.

So, in short if you love Vista for what ever reason, you will want a quad core.
But if your smart, you will stick with XP and get more power and performance with just a dual core.

I dont know if this is true with other cad rendering programs, but I know first hand with Rhino, that Vista, is whats causing major slowdowns.

If your going to be using Rhinocerous, with either the Penguin or Flamingo plugins, please listen to my advice.

K-TRON

 

It all depends on the cores the program will use.If the software uses only one core,it won't give any boost at all.But you can run many applications at same time.

 

I know in 3d rendering, with Rhino, the rendering engine does utilize 100% processing power on all cores of the system.

K-TRON

 

thanks for the input K tron. going to seriously research OS performance for modeling programs.

But aren't most rendering programs designed to make use of multiple cores? i wanted to know if that would give the quad cores a significant edge...

 

Yes, a quad would have the upper hand over a dual core

I was trying to say that if you had a dual with XP, it would most likely outperform a quad core with vista.

K-TRON

 

As for the rendering...every program I've heard of was designed to work with any number of available cores. You'll like it.

XP dual core is going to probably be SLOWER than Vista with quad. We might all hate Vista, but quads are powerful beasts. Not to mention you can buy a quad Vista machine and just install XP later.

 

cool... now that it's clear they have a big advantage, are they going to be very expensive when they come out? I have a budget of around 2 maybe 2.5k $ tops.... but since they'r going to be in the xtreme slot, they'll be like a 1000$ upgrade right?

 

To the OP: Are you doing CAD for engineering, i.e. solidworks/proE, or are you doing 3d modeling for art related purposes?

If you are going to be using it for engineering/CAD then what you need is a good graphics card, not a quad core. Solidworks and proE utilize the graphics card more than the CPU, so a dual core should be more than enough for CAD if you get a good graphics card, if you are going to be using it for solidworks specifically look into getting an nvidia quadro since they are the only mobile graphics cards officially supported by solidworks.

If you are using it for 3d animation, then I wouldn't know.

 

K-TRon Rhino is too slow for rendering. I did some work with it about a year ago. I left my laptop for 6 days to render a 1024x800 picture. I exported the file to 3D Max and the rendering was done in less than 10 minutes, and the result was much better.

3D application (3D max, Maya...) have been multi-threading applications for decades. So I won't be suprised if a quade-core is twice as fast as a duo-core processor during rendering tasks. But then, rendering is a task that uses both the CPU and GPU. The geometry is calculated using the CPU, then the GPU apply to it textures and materials depending on the parameters selected for the environment (i.e. lighting etc...)

So depending on your budget you should balance between the CPU and the GPU:
duo core X7900 (2x2.8ghz) + integrated GPU = slow
duo core T8100 (2x2.1Ghz) + nvidia nvs series = good
duo core T8100 (2x2.1Ghz) + nvidia FX series = very fast

 

Thanks a ton guys! You guys have been brilliant... I think I'm pretty sure about what I need now... just a matter of waiting! I think I'll just wait for montevina... hope it's in my budget, and if it's way out of my budget, the penryn based platform would get cheaper...
THANKS!!!!

PS: Just wondering... will montevina's faster FSB and memory make a big diff in performance for my use? which is 3d modeling... mainly on design related programs...