Upgrade question

[sol7]

Hi all

 

I am a 3ds max user and I use V-ray as a render engine , I am looking forward to upgrade some of my hardwares but I am on a kind of low budget so I am seeking your help for the most efficient stuff that might decrease render times and allow me to deal with heavy max scenes .

 

My current pc is AMD athlon XP 2600+ processor running with 786 of RAM memory and my video card is NVIDIA GeForce MX440 ( 64 mb memory ).

 

I am considering upgrading my video card to xfx NVIDIA GeForce 6200 ( 512 mb memory ) and adding more RAM memory . Will that be that be satisfactory or I will have to replace my processor as well.

 

Thanks in advance

[AJLynn]

Those upgrades would help, and a CPU upgrade could substantially increase render speed if you can budget it. (An AthlonX2 can more than double the XP 2600's performance.)

 

If you were to upgrade your CPU you would need a new motherboard, probably new RAM and while you were at it you would want to switch to a PCIE video card, so plan it now and if you can do all these upgrades, do them all at once instead of buying parts for the old MB and later finding out they're not compatible with a new one.

[carlangas]

if youre really short on cash I would recomend you get more ram, the video card will not make as much difference as getting more ram. I actually had the same card, a mx440, upgraded to a geforce 6600 (128mb) and didnt see all that much of a difference

[JohnT]

If you didn't want to blow too much cash on the upgrade, here's what I'd do:

 

1) GeForce 6800 Ultra -- you can find it on ebay for $190, soft-mod it via Riva Tuner into a Quadro FX4000

 

 

-the GeForce 6800 Ultra comes as both an AGP & PCIE card, so you could use it with your current system, or if you opt for the upgrades below, it work work great as well. Your current system uses AGP, while all modern motherboards use PCIE

 

All options below should be done w/ a video card upgrade as well:

 

2) Upgrade your CPU & Motherboard:

 

-939 Pin Athlon64 or Athlon64 X2

-939 Pin Motherboard

 

Using an AMD Athlon64 in the 939 Pin form factor (NOT the AM2) you'll be able to utilize your existing RAM... kinda nice if you've already sunk a bunch of money into a few gigs of DDR 3200.

 

3) Upgrade your CPU, Motherboard & RAM

 

I'm a big AMD fan, but honestly speaking the new Core 2 Duo (Conroe) processors are pretty kick-butt.

 

Build yourself a Core 2 Duo machine w/ some DDR2 memory (quite cheap now) and a Conroe compatable motherboard.

 

...and possibly consider a 4-point harness for your office chair

 

 

If you'd like to stick with AMD, Go for an athlon 64 X2 in the AM2 configuration with some low latency DDR2 memory & an AM2 Motherboard.

 

 

 

Note: Don't neglect your power supply. New video cards are absolutely rediculous in how much power they require... and that's not even SLi (dual video card) setups. Most new motherboards require 24 pin power connectors on the motherboard instead of the 20 pin your AthlonXP Mobo most likely has.

 

Don't cheap out on the PSU because a weak or poor quality power supply can create a host of hard to troubleshoot problems. (the only time I considered calling a priest for an technological exorcism turned out to be the power supply )

 

 

If you're wondering where to purchase all this stuff, I've had good experiances with zipzoomfly.com and newegg.com... I don't have any commercial interests in either company, but I've just found them to be the nicest to deal with.

 

Look around and if you have the time, read up over on http://www.tomshardware.com those guys write some rediculously in-depth reviews, and almost always benchmark hardware against 3DSmax.

 

 

Okie, I'm gonna shut up now