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it's a HP Visualize P-Class (dual Pentium III/1G w. FX10 graphics 64MB and 1 GB Ram)
comes with the 'sticker on case Win2kpro license' (really valid ?), CD-writer, small HD for 250 Euro (and is in good optical shape).

I was not able to find out the mobo, it's preinstalled with ACPI and misbehaves the usual '.dsp file not found' way (not due the 'attrib-issue')
I'd preferably use it to house my old Pulsars, but this question here is more related to 3D usability - does it make sense or is any 100 bucks modern card superior ?
If someone knows that this type of mobo doesn't work at all with SFP, I'd spare the re-install of the OS.

tia & cheers, Tom

On 2005-09-25 15:15, astroman wrote:
it's a HP Visualize P-Class (dual Pentium III/1G w. FX10 graphics 64MB and 1 GB Ram)
comes with the 'sticker on case Win2kpro license' (really valid ?), CD-writer, small HD for 250 Euro (and is in good optical shape).

I was not able to find out the mobo, it's preinstalled with ACPI and misbehaves the usual '.dsp file not found' way (not due the 'attrib-issue')
I'd preferably use it to house my old Pulsars, but this question here is more related to 3D usability - does it make sense or is any 100 bucks modern card superior ?
If someone knows that this type of mobo doesn't work at all with SFP, I'd spare the re-install of the OS.

tia & cheers, Tom

Here is something about the video card:
FX10 at CNET

That looks like a solid system. Are those P3 Xeons? Look at the main bridge chipsets, that should tell who manufactured the mobo. Does it have the original Win2k CD, otherwise the serial is useless (I think).

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: BingoTheClowno on 2005-09-26 13:11 ]</font>

It really depends on what sort of 3D work you're doing too. My old Oxygen 202 card is nothing compared to my ti4600 (with "Soft" Quadro drivers hacked in place) but there are still quite a few features that the Oxygen 202 has that the non-pro Nvidia card doesn't. Antialiased lines is the most obvious (highly important if you're doing actual architecture or engineering with the system and not just 3d renders).

Maybe it depends on how much time you have for rendering. You can render while you sleep and then it wouldn't matter. Faster cards usually help with stability in my opinion. AGP II is great.

thanks a lot for the responses

looks like the sticker on the box indeed represents a W2K pro license because it cannot be removed and according to German law... bla, bla..., though the 'official' (phone support) version by M$ says sticker plus recovery cd...
not that I care that much, but obviously they sell tons of that garbage on ebay as 'licenses'

dunno what prevented the first installation of Pulsar to fully succeed, but after the 2nd attempt it seems ok - no more missing file errors.
at least with ide drives (instead of scsi) it has the same PCI capacity as a BX board, so no big surprise here.

yet the machine 'feels' pretty fast - according to Valis' hint I checked some more specific 3D items with the Maya demo, and voilà - it produced some very nice pics, even interactively
that's one sh*t of an impressive program, btw... well structured, could get the hang on it...

Maya isn't said to take much advantage on dual CPUs(???) for rendering, but that's a bit contradictory to what I saw - unless the special 3d card is capable of simplifying the render job (called 'software render').

at least the (comparison) PIV 2.4G with a simply Radeon VE finished only slightly (20%?) better despite a 150% higher clockrate.
...and of course the result was complete crap compared to the HP card's output

in fact I'm more interested in 'technical' (scientific, architecture, construction) 3D apps than in games or POV render scenes.

anyway this looks like a worthwhile entry system into 3D - next time in the shop I'll check a more recent 3D card

cheers, Tom

chipset still unclear - they glued a big cooler on that thing

aren't the FPUs on P4 crap compared do P3?
ie. with clocks the same won't P3 always outperform P4 if floating point calculations are involved?

That system will definately be good enough to get a start Astro, but Autodesk software for example, is optimized for newer hardware, both CPU/mainboard & GPU/memory wise. In reality that means that a newer hyperthreading system running a top-notch card like a Quadro or Wildcat, should literally 'fly' in comparison when using Autodesk software. Not sure about Maya tho

Blender seems realy good & is free, but not as nice an interface as Max by a long shot.

in fact it turned out that I obtained a nice box
I took the Maya demo on an usb stick to the PC dealer today and installed it on an AMD 64 3G system running XP64 equipped with a recent Ati board in the 200 euro range.

while the AMD was moving data noticeably faster, the speed difference in rendering wasn't that dramatic, but the difference in texture quality were stunning.
the old HP card won hands down
one of the examples features a nice wooden floor, which lookd like I forgot my glasses on the ATI card, while the HP pictured it with crisp realism
[edit] well, that's the problem when one can't a/b the exact same scene - the blurry image could have been caused as well by the camera focus (too close to the object)...
[/edit]

the only drawback of such a cheapo 'entry' system is that it takes a significant amount of handwork to redirect airflow if one wants to share the same room with it...

cheers, tom

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: astroman on 2005-09-28 14:44 ]</font>

On 2005-09-28 03:23, Michu wrote:
...ie. with clocks the same won't P3 always outperform P4 if floating point calculations are involved?

not necessarily... found this on the subject

Alias|Wavefront has used the special Intel Compiler optimized for the Pentium 4 to compile Maya 4. According to the first data we received, the Dual Xeon 1.7 GHz should be able to render about 44 images per hour, while the dual Athlon MP should reach 43.5 images per hour.

In short, SSE2 optimization turned a (fairly small) AMD advantage into a slight Intel nudge

cheers, Tom