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AJLynn

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AJLynn last won the day on January 24 2023

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  1. AutoCAD isn't really all the GPU intensive - current reasonably decent GPUs can handle it easily. Same with SketchUP. I have it on a Radeon 7770 that costs a bit over $100 and it's great. If I were using Max a lot I might spend as much as $200-300 on a GPU. Now, GPUs with Vray, that's a complicated thing. First, Vray in normal mode runs on the CPU only and GPU has nothing to do with how fast it runs. Vray does have RT-GPU mode, which is not the Vray you're probably used to - regular production Vray relies on calculations of a type that GPUs aren't any good at, so they haven't bothered with it. Vray RT-GPU it's more like a Vray version of Maxwell Render that uses GPU. It's quick for some things and slow for others. Vray RT-GPU runs best on a good current generation Geforce card with plenty of memory, and if you're planning a workstation to run it you should have that Geforce card that's for GPU rendering be the second GPU in the system. The first GPU should be some other card, which can be more modest than the render card, and which is used to run the display. The second card should not be running a display, only rendering.
  2. Recently I had to add a workstation for running Revit, Adobe Creative Suite and Office, and I thought I'd give a report on it because I'm very pleased with the results. The parts list is here. This isn't a machine for running renders on, though it certainly could in a pinch. I chose mostly energy efficient parts to keep power, heat and noise at a minimum, and since I wasn't going to need a ton of air circulation to support the CPU and GPU I went with a MicroATX form factor and saved some space. The result is nearly silent and puts out almost no noticeable heat.
  3. Do you have experience with Vray RT GPU? It's a bit of a dog. You need two video cards to use it effectively - one to only run the display and the other to only run Vray. If you run Vray on the same GPU that runs the display, it will monopolize the GPU and you won't be able to get anything else done with the computer while Vray is running. GPU rendering is also not the magic bullet some people think it is. Some renders will run quickly, others not so much. The GPU has the ability to run many simple, unrelated tasks at once, and only achieves complex calculations by running many simple ones in parallel. The result is that the render task is monte carlo only - completely unoptimized. Skillful use of regular CPU Vray in many or most circumstances results in a faster production render. RT-GPU is most useful for quick feedback.
  4. Also, the single-threaded performance on the Intel is much better. In a high end box I wouldn't slow down my Max / Revit / etc. user interface by a substantial amount just to save $140 (the US price difference for the K version - if I don't want OC and buy the non-K it's only a $110 difference).
  5. Don't carry around hard drives, that's an easy way to break them. Just run a sync service like Sugarsync or Skydrive and leave the computers on. They sync in the background. The majority of your stuff won't change in any given week, and even if you do have a 1gb PSD file (at which point it's time to reconsider your PS usage patterns) on your work PC, just leave it uploading as you head home and when you get home turn of the laptop, leave it on the desk, have a beer and when you're done your file is on the laptop. Cloud sync is so much easier, and provides backup in the process, that it doesn't make sense to use your own hardware.
  6. Everything I've seen comparing the FX 8350 to the I7 3770 has the 3770 being a bit faster in multithreaded work and a lot faster in single threaded. The 4770 is a bit faster than the 37700, so I'd like to see an explanation of why the AMD "is faster when we look at the numbers".
  7. A few comments: Haswell chips don't overclock as well as the previous generation. I've seen it said that some fairly high percentage of 4770K chips won't go above 4.2 without losing stability, and to get that high you need a lot of cooling. I wouldn't necessarily spend that much on video cards. SLI is good for games but gives almost no advantage in 3D authoring apps (and multiple GTX cards would also require a larger power supply than you listed). Honestly, in the current market, unless I were gung ho about GPU rendering and needed a multi-GPU rig for it, I would not spend more than about $300 on a GPU for a workstation, and a majority of 3D authoring users would be happy with hardware costing half that. High power Geforce or Radeon rigs are for gamers and high power Quadro and FirePro rigs are for nVidia and AMD to make money.
  8. On my work PC, which is a Xeon W3565 at 3.2GHz, 6GB RAM and a Radeon 5770, 1920x1080 display, Max Design 2014 with Nitrous (Direct3D 11.0): Realistic: 13.3 Shaded: 13.1 Consistent: 13.7 Realistic + Edged: 7.7 Wireframe: 8.3
  9. Have you tried Autodesk technical support or contacting your Autodesk vendor?
  10. That just goes to show that different people have different needs. I think the greatest areas for concern are the two slow hard drives (which will use a lot of power and weigh too much), the low res, glossy screen, and the fact that the laptop costs twice as much in the Philippines as it does in the US. At $900, this is a decent cheap option.
  11. Do you intend to do any GPU rendering on it? (GPU rendering is not often used for animation...) Assuming you don't, you don't need a very high end video card unless you are working with models much more complex than is normal for architecture work. Something like a Geforce 760 or 770 or a Radeon 7850 or 7950, for example, is more than enough.
  12. No. Vray can be run three ways: -Regular (production) Vray. This is CPU-only. A GPU has no effect. -Vray RT. This is CPU also and runs in a side window, using a monte carlo algorithm. -Vray RT-GPU. This is like Vray RT, but adds the ability to run on a GPU. If you run Vray in any mode other than RT-GPU, Vray will not be using your GPU at all.
  13. If you start 3DSMax using Change Graphics Mode, what mode are you in?
  14. While there is an advantage to buying a bit better computer that comes with good service - e.g., my 3.5 year old Macbook Pro got a free overhaul at 2.5 years and then an SSD upgrade and is basically the same as a new computer, and my boss's 4.5 year old one died and is getting saved out of warranty for $300 and then will be as good as a new computer - if that Boxx costs that much, that's crazy. Do include Boxx in your comparison shopping because often they do make sense, but don't spend $8000 on a PC.
  15. GPU rendering programs are like regular rendering programs such as Vray and mental ray, but GPU rendering engines can run on GPUs. Current versions of Vray and mental ray include GPU engines, and there are purpose-built GPU renderers like Arion. GPU renderers are like Maxwell Render, but run on a GPU which makes them in many cases as fast as (or even faster than) CPU renders, and like Maxwell, in many other cases are impractical. GPU render engines are not like the ones you're used to. They don't run like mental ray and Vray, which first calculate lighting and then render each pixel. GPUs have the ability to simultaneously process a very large number of simple operations, so they are not suited to the type of computation that regular Vray and mental ray run. Instead, GPU renderers work by performing many ray traces in parallel. A ray fired to each pixel on the screen can be calculated many, many times, and each time its quality is improved. You can run the render for as long as you like - at first you will see a very grainy image, like a digital photo taken in low light, and over time it will resolve into a smoother image. How long that takes will depend on the materials and lighting and the size of the render output. It could be minutes or several hours. The algorithm doesn't leave room for user optimizations, so it can be easier to use than mental ray and Vray which have many settings. GPU renderers don't have a lot of buttons and numbers to enter. But the flipside is that you can't really optimize the render engine to the scene. There are a lot more people using CPU renders in production than GPU. Also, GPU renderers are not as good for animation as CPU ones, because you can't run the lighting calculation once, save it and use it for multiple frames - each frame must be calculated completely on its own. If you're in doubt, the answer is probably that you don't need to worry about buying hardware for GPU rendering right now.
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