Jason Matthews Posted October 20, 2006 Share Posted October 20, 2006 Hey guys. I finally got the funds to build a machine. Any advice would be greatly welcomed. Also, if you guys know of any known hardware/softwar issue please advise. Do you think anything is excessive? Powersupply or cooling fans? Also, I am looking to run Windows XP 64 bit. Is there any advantage to running 64-bit vs 32-bit besides additional RAM? Any known issues with Viz2007 and 64-bit Windows? So hear are the stats: Corsiar XMS2 2GB DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe ASUS P5W DH Deluxe ATX Motherboard Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler PNY Quadro FX 1300 PCI Express Western Digital Caviar 320GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive Thermaltake Armor VA8000SWA Silver Aluminum ATX Tower Case (2) Thermaltake Thunderblade 120mm Case Fan (2) Kingwin 90mm Case Fan Raidmax RX630A 630W Power Supply Windows XP 64 Bit AutoDesk Viz or Max Vray Photoshop CS Thanks everyone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CookiE Posted October 20, 2006 Share Posted October 20, 2006 Hey guys. I finally got the funds to build a machine. Any advice would be greatly welcomed. Also, if you guys know of any known hardware/softwar issue please advise. Do you think anything is excessive? Powersupply or cooling fans? Also, I am looking to run Windows XP 64 bit. Is there any advantage to running 64-bit vs 32-bit besides additional RAM? Any known issues with Viz2007 and 64-bit Windows? So hear are the stats: Corsiar XMS2 2GB DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe ASUS P5W DH Deluxe ATX Motherboard Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler PNY Quadro FX 1300 PCI Express Western Digital Caviar 320GB 7200rpm SATA Hard Drive Thermaltake Armor VA8000SWA Silver Aluminum ATX Tower Case (2) Thermaltake Thunderblade 120mm Case Fan (2) Kingwin 90mm Case Fan Raidmax RX630A 630W Power Supply Windows XP 64 Bit AutoDesk Viz or Max Vray Photoshop CS Thanks everyone. Cant see anything wrong with the pc but i have been told by many that windows 64bit is just a waste of time and space. Hardly any driver support etc so you might have some issues there, but i know expert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted October 21, 2006 Share Posted October 21, 2006 That system would be kickass. If you can budget it, a Quadro 1500 would be good. Win64 should be fine, I'm running it now after my Win32 failed spectacularly and I sat down with it for a couple hours to figure out my boot disk priority issue and my FireGL driver issue. Most of the driver availability issues have been solved, and you can get Max for 64 and Vray to go with it. Only thing I have with no driver is an older ATI TV card. I switched to free Avast antivirus for the Win64 support. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aaron-cds Posted October 21, 2006 Share Posted October 21, 2006 take a look at this Caleb. http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=17192 I would stay away from xp 64 if you're going with viz 2007 and it's going to be your workstation and not a rendering slave. I've heard that people don't have problems with xp 64 and viz if they're just hitting the rendering button. I had numerous problems with viz 2006 and xp 64, mainly constant crashes when importing dwg files. I switched to xp 32 for the cost of the OS in about 3 hours. I can switch back to xp 64 if I get max 9 64 bit or if, wait let me hold my breath, autodesk comes out with a viz 64 bit version. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hao La Posted October 21, 2006 Share Posted October 21, 2006 that's a kickass machine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Hess Posted October 21, 2006 Share Posted October 21, 2006 Only thing I would possible considering doing to that configuration is adding a second harddrive to run a raid 1 for data redundancy. Not really necessary, but if the motherboard supports serial ata ii raid, might as well utilize it for the protection of your data. Other then that, ass kicking system. Should easily run at 3 ghz or higher, if thats what you're shooting for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Matthews Posted October 21, 2006 Author Share Posted October 21, 2006 Thanks everyone for the comments. I am thinking of installing both XP-32 and XP-64 and just booting XP-64 when I need to render. Greg, I am looking at overclocking the system but I really don't know where to start. Any advice? I will be setting up data redundancy in the future but right now I am trying to cut as much cost as possible up front. No one things the cooling or power is overkill? I am trying to cut cost as much as possible without sacrificing speed or stability. Thanks everyone!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted October 21, 2006 Share Posted October 21, 2006 I'm actually not convinced about the 64-bit for rendering. I tried a scene in Max mental ray having installed both the 32 and 64 versions, and got the same render time in both. Maybe mr isn't really a 64-bit app yet. No idea about vray. But 64 bit does seem to make the interface faster with high poly scenes. I do know that C4D renders faster in 64 bit, but the interface doesn't seem to gain from it. Maybe the 64-bit FGL driver isn't as good as the 32-bit, or maybe I haven't tried it with complex enough scenes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Hess Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 Saturn, No I don't think the cooling or power is overkill, especially if you are looking into possibly overclocking. Cooling, power, and ram are the most often "cutback" components, so its generally considered good to have a bit of excess flex room in those components. My thinking is, it's better to have components running at 75% of their capability 100% of the time, then to have components running at 100% of their capability, 75% of the time. You also tend to have to upgrade less components at once (if you are a tweaker), as the system is built to handle future components. I'd have to look up how to oc that asus board, but from what I hear, its relatively easy. First get the system setup and running stabily, then worry about pushing it . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 Everybody says the Asus 975 board is one of the best for overclocking. They include a utility to do it in software, but I don't know if that's XP64 compatible. The 8-phase power system is a huge plus. I'd recommend getting Windows to work first, installing CPU-Z, Core Temp Beta and something that can run the CPU at full for a few minutes like Prime95 or a renderer, then looking up the spec voltage for the CPU and RAM and the appropriate RAM timings and setting the BIOS to those settings, and bumping the RAM speed up 10MHz at a time until you start to get problems, each time running something CPU intensive and keeping track of temperatures. You should be able to get it above 3GHz without issues, and if it can't, increase the numbers in the RAM timings. When you're happy with the speed and it seems stable, torture test it by running 2 copies of Prime95, with processor affinities set so each gets used by one Prime95, with one Prim95 in the "use a lot of ram" mode and the other in "generate a lot of heat" mode. If it's stable without errors, that's a good indication that you were successful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Matthews Posted October 22, 2006 Author Share Posted October 22, 2006 Excellent! Thanks for the advice everyone. Once I put it all together I will keep you guys updated with the final specs. Thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aaron-cds Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 I'm actually not convinced about the 64-bit for rendering. I tried a scene in Max mental ray having installed both the 32 and 64 versions, and got the same render time in both. Maybe mr isn't really a 64-bit app yet. No idea about vray. But 64 bit does seem to make the interface faster with high poly scenes. I do know that C4D renders faster in 64 bit, but the interface doesn't seem to gain from it. Maybe the 64-bit FGL driver isn't as good as the 32-bit, or maybe I haven't tried it with complex enough scenes. How much ram did you have with that test? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted October 22, 2006 Share Posted October 22, 2006 2GB, and it was nowhere near overrunning it. Now, I'm not saying that my test was definitive - it was just one scene with some of the new materials, a couple lights and FG, but maybe I was too hast and 64-bit is important if you've got a lot of RAM and you want to do a huge photon map. Or something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aaron-cds Posted October 23, 2006 Share Posted October 23, 2006 My understanding is that 64 bit will use up to 4 g ram and 32 bit will use up to 2 g ram. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Hess Posted October 23, 2006 Share Posted October 23, 2006 It should be noted (that when stress testing), that dual prime95's is significantly more stressful then rendering. Some sites will even go as far to run 3 prime95's, and a 3D program (to stress the video), but thats getting a little crazy. Basically if I prime95 (one cpu, one ram, affinity set to put each on one core), the 2.4@3.0 (@1.4) will generally hit 55C after 48 hours. If I setup some 3dsmax Vray renders, the same activity will only net about 46-47C. Prime95 basically extracts every little tiny bit of juice outta the cpu. General stability failures are... 1) Ram latency too low (raise it up a notch) 2) Not enough CPU voltage. 3) Not enough ram voltage. (BE REALLY CAREFUL ADJUSTING RAM VOLTAGE!) Of course if you get crazy...then you also have to worry about MCH and FSB voltages. To give you an idea of how stable an oc'd machine "can" be... 1st number in CPU time is hours. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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