What machine to purchase?

[James Taylor]

hi all,

not been here to long but i'm trying to decide what route to take for a new machine.

i'm an architectural visualiser using autocad, max with vray / mental ray, after effects and photoshop to produce animations / presentations and high res images. Needless to say the machine is purely for work not gaming.

i'm after advice as whether to go for a dual amd opteron machine or dual xeon machine, and am looking to spend around £200 / processor. (could go higher but would have to save up for a bit longer!).

i'm keen to have 64 bit in order to be ready for new releases of 64 bit apps (windows etc.) as i figure getting these further down the line will feel like an upgrade again.

am i correct that amd 64 chips are not suitable for dual processor application?

Are the xeon or opterons actually 64 bit like the amd 64's or do they employ a "work around" method ( Intel® Extended Memory 64 Technology) to confuse people like me?

my final option is simply to purchase two individual machine using the amd 64 chip as i believe that vray supports distrubited rendering so i could therefore have a "multiprocessor machine" on the cheap?

any advice would be most welcome. hope the above makes sense, i'm no techie so please forgive any stupid questions i've asked!

thanks james

 

[jinexile]

I think both the Xeon and Opterons come with 64bit options these days (havent looked much into them myself thought)

As for a suggestion I couldn't give you an educated opinion but personally I have a bias towards AMD