Like the godfather, the Godbox is the head of our RenderStream High End 3D workstation family. When selling such a high-end system, we thought it would be important to share with you the thought process behind the design of our flagship model – The Godbox.

With formula-one cars, the experience gained at the high end influences the rest of the fleet. It is the same in rendering hardware. At RenderStream we built the Godbox to be our “formula-one car”, a high-performance machine that a professional or advanced avocation-ist can afford. In building any integrated system it is important to consider the targeted region in which the user wants the tool to operate and to make sure that no critical subsystem will be limited by any other subsystem’s functioning. At RenderStream we strive to achieve the balanced performance of the processors, visualization experience, storage, I/O and cooling with the use case and the budget. This is the Zen of our systems and it is at the heart and soul of everything that we do.

Let us explain why by going through the components:

Operating System:

This depends on the application you are running. We offer Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit w/ Windows 7 upgrade option, XP64-bit, Linux or dual or triple boot. For Windows we use Vista Ultimate because we feel that, after service pack 1 and the maturity of the third party market infrastructure, it provides the best performance. Windows Vista Ultimate is also the first operating system that directly utilizes the power of a dedicated GPU (graphics processing unit).

Processor:

We use DUAL XEON W5580 3.20GHz, 8MB cache, 1333 MHz, 6.4 GT/s QPI Quad-Core. Nehalem-processors from Intel that are inherently faster designs than the previous generation Intel processor and they have two fully functioning threads per processor that we found boost 3DSMax’s rendering performance of the four cores per processor by 1.4X. So with dual processor you will potentially get 4 cores X 2 processors X 1.4 X Core GHz= 11.2 effective cores X Core GHz. We chose 3.2 GHz W5580, so effectively we have 35.84 GHz (aggregate) with Max but any processor from 2.67 GHz on up will be topnotch because it is using 6.4 Giga-transfers/second providing the fastest communication between the processor and memory. Below 2.67 GHz the processors are powerful but have significantly slower communication speed.

Memory Speed and Size:

We chose to use 6GB DDR3-1333MHz ECC unregistered memory (3 x 2GB Module, CL9). This seems a little low but for now we believe it offers the absolute peak performance for most rendering problems. However, if you need more memory, our system may be upgraded to 24GB in this configuration that is using ECC unregistered memory and up to 96 GB using ECC registered memory. It is important to know that memory in this system is triple-channels so for best performance, memory should be added in groups of three.

Hard Drive Speed and Storage:

For the Godbox we use 4 x 500 GB SATA II 5400RPM – 7200RPM Hard drives, enterprise Series, 32MB Cache, 3.0 Giga-bit/s configured in RAID 5 (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) This configuration provides higher performance by aggregating spindle speed so that the rotational speed is approximately the number of drives minus one, or in this configuration (4-1) X 7,200 RPM=21,600 RPM to make for significantly faster reads and writes; further this aggregation increases to the total contiguous storage to 3 X 500 GB=1,500 GB=1.5 TB. In addition to the high read/write performance just discussed, RAID 5 also gives you the knowledge that if one of the hot swap drives fails, it can be replaced and the information reconstructed from the information contained on the other drives.

For added security and unlike the majority of hard drives found in many other computers on the market, all RenderStream hard drives, unless otherwise stated, are Enterprise class which means they are the most dependable drives available with one million hour mean-time-between-failure ratings under normal operation.

To maximize performance and better balance the whole Godbox system, we use a high performance PCI-e RAID controller with a 128 MB cache and process controller with up to 6.0 Gb/s bandwidth which meet’s the requirement for today’s 15,000 RPM SAS and next generation SATA 3.0 hard drives. This controller increases performance on the Godbox by off loading much of the disk I/O management from the CPU thus essentially freeing a core for rendering while allowing streaming information needed for doing rendering or compositing. We use it for 3.0 Gb/s SATA II because the large cache and the advanced control processor even helps this technology. This system is standard on the Godbox and is available on RenderStream Production workstations too.

Finally, with respect to storage, we offer the following hard drive combinations:

HD Option 1. Less Speed – Largest Storage – Low Bandwidth

• 4 x 500 GB SATA II 5400 RPM – 7200 RPM
• 21,600 RPM aggregate speed
• 1,500 GB storage with 3.0 Gb/s bandwidth

HD Option 2. More Speed – Less Storage – Low Bandwidth

• 4 X 300 GB SATA II 10,000 RPM hard drives
• 30,000 RPM aggregate speed
• 900 GB storage with 3.0 Gb/s bandwidth

HD Option 3. More Speed – Less Storage – Big Bandwidth

• 3 X 450 GB SAS 15,000 RPM
• 30,000 RPM aggregate speed
• 900 GB of storage with 6.0 Gb/s bandwidth

HD Option 4 (Ultimate). Most Speed – Large Storage – Big Bandwidth

• 4 X 450 GB SAS 15,000 RPM
• 45,000 RPM aggregate speed
• 1,350 GB of storage with 6.0 Gb/s bandwidth

HD custom options 5 and beyond:

• We also offer various solid state drives options that may be used just contact us to learn more.

Optical Drive:

Sony 22x SATA DVD±R/RW Drive is the drive we offer but we can offer BluRay/DVD combinations too.

Card Reader:

All-in-one Internal Card Reader to meet most if not all your media I/O needs.

Audio:

Onboard Realtek ALC1200 8 Channel High Definition Audio

Graphics Controller:

PNY nVIDIA Quadro FX 5800 (512bit, 4GB GDDR3, PCI?E x16 Gen2, Dual DVI?I w/VGA Adapters, 1x DisplayPort) meets the most demanding professional graphics needs. Its less powerful but still impressive sibling, the nVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 was recently shown to be three to ten times faster than a GTX 280 general-use graphics card (
review at Tom’s Hardware) when running 3DSMax and Maya. With these cards the most complex real time modeling and rendering of objects may be manipulated and studied in the utmost realistic visual detail. The more processing capabilities the more Vista utilization of the processor the better the experience; waiting for refresh is a thing of the past and with the advent of GPU acceleration even more benefits will be realized. For the Godbox we offer the following graphics card options:

Graphics Option 1:
PNY nVIDIA Quadro FX 5800

• 512bit
• 4GB GDDR3
• PCI-E x16 Gen2
• Dual DVI-I w/VGA Adapters
• 1x DisplayPort

Graphics Option 2:
PNY nVIDIA Quadro FX 4800

• 384bit
• 1.5GB GDDR3
• PCI-E x16 Gen2
• DVI-I w/VGA Adapter
• 2x DisplayPort

Graphics Option 3:
PNY nVIDIA Quadro FX 3800

• 256bit
• 512MB GDDR3
• PCI-E x16 Gen2
• 2XDVI-I w/VGA Adapters

Networking:

Embedded Intel Dual Gigabit Controllers 82575EB this allows set up of a dedicated Ethernet for the system with the render farm and a network general communication.

Power Supply:

Single ATX 12V & EPS 12V 1200 Watt Power Supply (SLI Ready, Modularized Cable Management)

Default RAID:

5 but you can use even higher performance RAID 0 so that you get aggregate speeds and storage equal to 4X the drive RPM and Storage values.

Conclusion:

As you can see the RenderStream Godbox is configured to be the fastest and most efficient 3D workhorse you can find. We also offer an extremely powerful Production Box geared towards the average 3D artist. We also have a very well configured Entry Level Box targeted towards students and those just starting out in the industry. For current pricing and to view the rest of the RenderStream workstation family, please visit http://www.renderstream.com/workstations.html