I'm building a render farm that i will be using for distributed processing through high end render engines. I'd like to turn my 21 day rendering process into just a couple days if possible. I've read that a render farm is less concerned with the processing power then it is with the amount of processors. so my question to you is: which system do you think will be faster for me when rendering? 8 - Dual Opteron 246 HE 2.0 GHz 1U Blade Servers with 4 gig of ram OR 4 - Sony VAIO Core 2 Duo 1.6 GHz laptops with 2gig of ram these are about the same price. I'm looking to spend around $2500 once all is done. Any comments or other suggestions would be really helpful. thanks, jake

Is that 8 and 4 units? If so you get 64 processors with (8) 8 cores Dual Opteron You only get 16 processors with the duo core (4)2 cores. You sure aren't getting 8 Dual Opteron for $2500 Have you googled building your own rendering farm?

thanks for the fast reply wanderer! it is 8 and 4 units respectively the blade servers have two opteron 246 he 2.0 ghz processors in them ( http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?in... ). these are older systems. so i think with the blade servers i get 16 processors, and the sony vio's i get 12 processers. but will the 4 core duo processers be faster, even if they are 1.66ghz, instead of the 16 2.0ghz older opterons?

You have to look at the total picture. Processing also includes memory usage and comparing 4gig to 2gig I will always go with the 4 gig. You are also comparing workstation processors with server processors. Server processors traditionally can do more. Have you reviewed some of the google articles on building your own render farm? "At its core, a render farm is pretty simple: Seven or so machines on a network, a network-accessible storage location, a rendering app, and a queue manager." You need to think about the whole picture not just the processors.

i have reviewed a bunch of the websites discussing the creation of a render farm. most of it seems straight forward to me. I think I've decided to go with 4 - core 2 quad 2.4 mhz workstations with stronger video cards and 4gig of ram. there is still a chance though that i will go with the 8 - Dual Opteron 246 HE 2.0 GHz 1U Blade Servers with 4 gig of ram. especially if the server processers can handle more like you were saying. plus i get twice as much ram with this option. thanks for the advise! -jake