Usefulness of older Macs for network rendering

[Paul P]

Hello all,

I have some older macs lying around, and apart from selling them on eBay or similar, one other thought i had was to network them and set up a small render farm for EI. They are almost all G4's, so 'm just curious to know if the effort will be worth it, or if I'm just wasting my time.

I have :

G4 cube 450 MHz

2 G4 Powerbooks (667 and 1 Ghz)

G4 MDD tower, 1.25 GHZ dual processor.

Quicksilver G4 933 Mhz tower

Macbbok Pro 2.4 Ghz 17 inch display.

My main computer is a dual core G5 tower. Hardly cutting edge stuff I know.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[fantomaz]

Hi Paul,

when you sell the PowerBooks and the MacBookPro and the Cube

you should earn enough money to buy a Octo Mac plus Ram (maybe used).

He will be much faster in rendering than all your old Macs together.

Another benefit is: you only need one 'powercable' and one networkadress

and make min four other people very happy with a used mac :rolleyes:

I tried some month ago the same here, but the rendertimes of these

old machines are so slow that i stopped the experiment very soon.

Also the noise of the G4 was so loud, i cant imagine that i worked with

these machines years ago everyday and everyday.

Alex

[Paul P]

Hi Paul,

when you sell the PowerBooks and the MacBookPro and the Cube

you should earn enough money to buy a Octo Mac plus Ram (maybe used).

He will be much faster in rendering than all your old Macs together.

Another benefit is: you only need one 'powercable' and one networkadress

and make min four other people very happy with a used mac :rolleyes:

I tried some month ago the same here, but the rendertimes of these

old machines are so slow that i stopped the experiment very soon.

Also the noise of the G4 was so loud, i cant imagine that i worked with

these machines years ago everyday and everyday.

Alex

Alex, thanks for your response. I appreciate you taking the time to help me out. And thanks for sharing your past experiences.

Well it's off to eBay for me.

Thanks again.

[Tomas Egger]

Ola,

I totally agree with Alex, EIAS 9 loves Mac intel machines.. Because of the 64 bits rendering and Multi-processors.

Thanks

Tom

[interstellar]

Hi Paul,

My trusty old G4 refuses to die; my mother-in-law still uses it for email! Until a few months ago, my renderfarm consisted of three G5's. That's when I bought a used octo-core Intel Mac for half its original price from my local Apple dealer.

The render-speed of my Intel Mac is fantastic. It also occupies less space than my three G5's and it produces a lot less heat, which is a bonus if, like me, you work in a small room in a hot climate. In addition, fewer computers and less air-conditioning mean I am saving electricity.

Still, I am keeping a G5 handy when I need to render with Dante. On the Intel Mac, Dante ceases rendering large numbers of textured particles because Camera runs out of memory. Once Dante is corrected I'll be able to fully retire from G5's!

Joe T

[Paul P]

Hi Paul,

My trusty old G4 refuses to die; my mother-in-law still uses it for email! Until a few months ago, my renderfarm consisted of three G5's. That's when I bought a used octo-core Intel Mac for half its original price from my local Apple dealer.

The render-speed of my Intel Mac is fantastic. It also occupies less space than my three G5's and it produces a lot less heat, which is a bonus if, like me, you work in a small room in a hot climate. In addition, fewer computers and less air-conditioning mean I am saving electricity.

Still, I am keeping a G5 handy when I need to render with Dante. On the Intel Mac, Dante ceases rendering large numbers of textured particles because Camera runs out of memory. Once Dante is corrected I'll be able to fully retire from G5's!

Joe T

Joe,

thanks for your reply. Appreciate your time. Sounds like the 8 core Mac Pro is the way to go.

Thanks again.