01-20-2005, 05:15 PM

since these mini macs are so affordable and powerful, has anyone considered making a mac cluster for image rendering or video conversion, becasue you could buy 4-5 of these for the price of a single dual G5.......any thauhgts? (as you can see from my post count i am a newbie but it just seems like such an obvious use for them)

01-20-2005, 05:24 PM

I dont know if thats possible, the mac minis would need a pci x gigabit ethernet card, which they do not support. they could probably combine with a powermac g5 or something as a hub and all work as a cluster that way.

01-20-2005, 05:24 PM

could you not just use the normal ethernet port on the back of them like you can do with pc's? or are you just talking about using the normal ethernet port and using a g5 as a controlling node?

01-20-2005, 05:28 PM

In effect you would have to link each Mini Mac together. As Macman said you would ideally use a gigabit card so you would have a much higher bandwidth. The first would link to a G5 or your main editing machine then each mini mac would have o have a second NIC in order to interconnect them.

01-20-2005, 05:33 PM

yer sounds pretty much the same as clustering pc's under win2k server edition, would be interesting to give it a go, see how they stack up dollar for dollar against a g5 cluster

01-20-2005, 05:50 PM

If only I had some spare cash to try it out