Workstation or Super computer?

I am looking in to new computers for my dad's recording studios for video rendering and editing platforms,right now i have it down to 2 computers..

Workstation computer..TYAN mainboard bass:
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/thunderk8qsdpro.html
Price: $40,000.00 (Fully loaded)

and

Super computer..Cray XD1's
http://www.cray.com/products/xd1/index.html
Price: $50,000.00 (1 Chassis)

Please give any info i can because i am in need of a lot of CPU power and these 2 are all that well work but i don't know much about the CRAYS..Talked to CRAY a few times and they sound like a winner but if someone can give me more info to help me with my decision it would be VERY helpful...Thanks,XDUDE

Look into SUN microsystems ... you really can't get much better than them.

I would go with the TYAN workstation. If some componet breaks in that system, you can get an AMD chip or a RAM stick anywhere and have it working again in no time. With the Cray, someone is going to have to come out with some special $$$ RAM card and then charge you for the labor, and the service call, etc etc

i aggree with lucassix. The tyan workstation seems more customizable to your specs.

You could also build one hell of an Apple xgrid with the money you're talking about. Not sure if it would be compatable with the software you want to use... but it'd be hella fast.

well i like PC's..see form "64 Bit Windows and CPU's..The way of the Future..." for more on that.

But...

i didn't think about that lucassix..but the thing is i sure like the 106 GFLOPS of power the crays put out...the tyan is not a cray speed wise but it is nothing to thumb your nose at with 4 - 2MB L2 Cache / AMD Dual Core Opteron™ 870's 2.2Ghz (total 8 CPU's)..and the software i have and plan to get is for PC...plus,i like Avid XpressPro HD better than Final cut Pro HD...

Another thing to consider:
If you are building the system for a specific software package, make ABSOLUTELY sure the software will actually USE the hardware you're throwing at it.
The Tyan is nice, and I know Avid is high end software, but I haven't seen much software that will take advantage of multiple 32 bit processors, let alone multiple 64 bit processors.

I would suggest finding out from the software manufacturers whether or not the software will take advantage of the hardware you're planning on using (and make sure to talk to someone who isn't a marketing drone)
Other than that, I would suggest buying the Avid software and testing it out on a single processor machine. This is video you're talking about, and I know some higher end applications require serious horsepower, but I have done some video production in the past, and unless you're talking about realtime broadcast feeds, I can't see a need for a $40k computer. You might be better off buying 8 or 10 $1500 computers and setting up a render farm.

Will we are looking into setting up a render farm because we are going in to full motion picture production in the new few years,but i need some kick butt stations to edit and then i well send it to the farm to get done...the video we are talking about here takes about 9 hours of rendering per 1 frame of HD video and there is 60 frames in one sec. of film so..this is going to need some very big horsepower...but thats the farms job..the stations are just going to be working in a realtime 3D rendered scenes (Animation/effects)...the avid if for just editing and some effects..for effects and CG i am using Alias Maya Ultimate and i know for a fact that Maya is made to run on render farms or multi CPU's.....

With a 9 hour frame time, I have to ask what raytracing engine are you using?!? I use 3D Studio Max 6 with Brazil R/S and the most a single HD (1920x1080) frame has taken is about 5 hours on a AMD Athlom XP 3200+.
Also, there are still only 30 frames per second in HD. There are 60 FIELDS per second, but since each field is only half the vertical resolution (even or odd lines), it still amounts to 30 frames per second, render-wise.

There is NO WAY I would spend $40k on a post-processing machine, if all it's going to be doing is splicing and after effects. I would put that $40k into my render farm and try to reduce that 9 hour frame time.

well that fact i gave u is the time it takes for motion picture rendering at a render farm i looked into(not the one we are looking to buying) and they said pixar rented there computers to do part of the film and it took about 9 hours per frame to render Shrek 2...but that is like 4 to 500TB's of storage per effect on each frame.....so the farm we put together wont be as fast as that because it is a big farm from what i remember..were just thinking about doing like 2 to 6 Cabinets of the cray XD1's for the farm(12 XD1's per Cabinet)...but effects stations have to be big them selfs because i tryed to load a test render world and on my FX it took 2 mins just to pan one frame with real time effects

I think I'm missing something here, what "real time effects" are you talking about? Xaos Pandemonium can take about 2 mins to render complex effects over a single frame on MY box, but my machine isn't anything seriously powerful. 2 mins isn't that long for post processing on a frame that takes 9 hours to render.
Anyway, back to my point: If you're going to throw hardware at a problem, make sure you're throwing it at the right problem. If you are expecting your render farm machines to take 9 hours a frame, and your post processing machines to take 2 mins a frame, I'd concentrate on beefing up the render farm machines, not the post processing machines.

see..your talking about just normal plugin filter effects..the effects i am talking about are HUGE..they take like 500GB's of space just to install them and they cost like 4 to 20 grand each effect software..these are like Matrix type effects and rendering...8 hours per frame is fast rendering in the motion picture world...motion pictures take YEARS or work and rendering....the matrix took something like 5 million tera bytes of space in total when they sent it to the render farm..thats y when they finish filming a movie they don't release it for another few months or even in some cases almost a year later...this is HUGE amounts of data PER frame....let alone in total....

Again, I must be missing something here. What software package are you talking about that requires half a terabyte to install?
I'll have to look it up, but if I remember correctly, The Matrix used Maya or SoftImage, neither of which require half a terabyte of install space, nor do any of their plugins that I'm aware of. As for effects software, I'd like to know what package requires half a terabyte of install space to render effects over a 1920x1080 frame. What does that ship on, 100 DVD's? How long does the install process take, a few years?

Again, I've done this for a number of years, and although I haven't done too much lately, I can't see a need for a $40k editing machine (since that is, by definition, a very small part of the equation) or a 500GB software package to render effects over a 1920x1080 video. Just my 2c.

i well find the info online and post it on here when i find it..but they didn't come on DVD or CD's..they come on a harddrive...one i can remember came on a Seagate Cheetah 10K 300GB SCSI Hard Drive and u hade to have another 200Gb's of space for it to run....i think it was a effect pack from dreamworks...i am not sure..i well have to get back with u if u want more info because my dad and i are still learning and shopping for all this stuff..when we talked to the people about the Maya they sounded like for the whole software and all the plugins ia was going to be several tera bytes..i well see what i can find and do another post soon....

Right after i posted this i found this..:

At a minimum, Maya requires a system with:
Windows: Intel® Pentium® III or higher, AMD Athlon™ processor
Macintosh: Power Mac® G4 and G5
512 MB RAM
CD-ROM Drive
Hardware-Accelerated OpenGL® graphics card
3-button mouse with mouse driver software
450 MB of hard disk space

and that is just the main software,that has nothing to do with the effect plugins and software..those are what takes the BIG power and space...i'll pose what else i fine when i find it....talk to u later

Whatever way you look at it its going to be one hell of a number cruncher. Have you looked into writing a distributed computing program, sharing the workload out accross hundreds of computers with the application installed, they take a small part of the render, render it, then send it back to a main server which will compile all of the renders. Im sure some of the users at ozzu would install the app and give you a hand.