Network rendering - how much of an increase?

[DoctorJellybean]

Up until now, I've been creating the scenes (DAZ Studio) and rendering it on the main PC. It's a fairly old system (Quad Core Q6600, 8GB RAM). I've recently obtained a laptop with an i5 CPU and 8GB RAM. For my latest render, I trasferred all the files to the laptop and it seems to render slightly faster than on the PC. Maybe it's because the laptop is not being used for anything else at the same time. I've now purchased new components for my PC; i7-2600k CPU and 32GB of RAM.

If I were to build a new system with the purchased components, instead of replacing the old parts with the new, and use the existing machine purely as a slave for network rendering, how much of an increase would I get? Perhaps use the laptop as a slave as well.

[B.Y.O.B.]

Just test it out (e.g. with a benchmark, here are some results from Lux: http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/Benchmarks).

[DoctorJellybean]

It doesn't provide a comparison between a standalone and a network render, which is what I would like to know

[SATtva]

There is absolutely no difference between network and standalone rendering (well, a tiny bit of resources are wasted on periodic film transmissions, but they are negligible with high enough update interval), Lux scales linearly in network rendering mode.

[B.Y.O.B.]

There is absolutely no difference between network and standalone rendering (well, a tiny bit of resources are wasted on periodic film transmissions, but they are negligible with high enough update interval), Lux scales linearly in network rendering mode.

Even more linearly than on one multicore machine (with very high core count, like 24) as Dade tested some time before (have to search the thread). EDIT: found it: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2919&hilit=scalability

Sorry that my answer was that short, I misunderstood your question slightly.

[J the Ninja]

There is absolutely no difference between network and standalone rendering (well, a tiny bit of resources are wasted on periodic film transmissions, but they are negligible with high enough update interval), Lux scales linearly in network rendering mode.

Even more linearly than on one multicore machine (with very high core count, like 24) as Dade tested some time before (have to search the thread). EDIT: found it: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2919&hilit=scalability

Sorry that my answer was that short, I misunderstood your question slightly.

Keep in mind, that was before the tiled film buffer was added, it probably scales a bit better than that nowadays.

[DoctorJellybean]

There is absolutely no difference between network and standalone rendering (well, a tiny bit of resources are wasted on periodic film transmissions, but they are negligible with high enough update interval), Lux scales linearly in network rendering mode.

So I'll be no better off using Network Render?

[B.Y.O.B.]

So I'll be no better off using Network Render?

You can go two different ways: start luxrender on each PC to render the scene, then take all the film buffers together to one PC and merge them with LuxMerger.
Or you can start a "master luxrender" on one PC and a "luxconsole -s" on each other PC and then use network rendering, which does nothing more than automatically transport all the film buffers (or better, the computed samples) to the master PC in an regular interval.

I recommend network rendering, as long as you are in a LAN.

[Pilchard123]

There is absolutely no difference between network and standalone rendering (well, a tiny bit of resources are wasted on periodic film transmissions, but they are negligible with high enough update interval), Lux scales linearly in network rendering mode.

This is kind of misleading, but I think I know what you mean... There isn't a difference in the way network and standalone rendering works, apart from the network communication.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but yes, network rendering will speed up your renders, almost exactly the same (this is where there is no difference) as if you had added the same resources to your main computer.

[J the Ninja]

There is absolutely no difference between network and standalone rendering (well, a tiny bit of resources are wasted on periodic film transmissions, but they are negligible with high enough update interval), Lux scales linearly in network rendering mode.

This is kind of misleading, but I think I know what you mean... There isn't a difference in the way network and standalone rendering works, apart from the network communication.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but yes, network rendering will speed up your renders, almost exactly the same (this is where there is no difference) as if you had added the same resources to your main computer.

Correct