ssstrutz Posted April 28, 2007 Share Posted April 28, 2007 Hello all, I am a hardware novice so please bare with me. I am currently running autocad, Photoshop, 3dsmax8 and vray 1.5. I have a Dell XPS400, running XP media center, Pentium D 2.8 ghz, 1 gig ddr2 pc2-4200 533 mhz memory, 256 mb ATI Radeon graphics card. There are currently 2 512 chips taking up two of the four dimms. I found a good deal on 1 or 2, 1gig memory chips and am trying to figure out if I should purchase them. I am most concerned with the speed of 3ds max rendering with vray. I have noticed the long rendering times with vray(especially if using vray fur). Does anybody know if using three gigs of ram is efficient with the operating system and programs that I am using and will I see a large difference in the speed with the extra ram? Do you need to purchase the ram in pairs (as I have heard) to work efficiently? Would a change in video card help? Maybe 512 mb. Maybe a new workstation instead of a gaming machine? Any information or help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Scott Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted April 28, 2007 Share Posted April 28, 2007 Video cards have nothing to do wih Vray speed. Nothing at all. As for the rest- Whether you have a "workstation" or a "gaming" PC isn't very important. CPU, RAM and your ability to optimize your rendering are. The Pentium D 2.8 isn't great by today's standards but usually with Dells you can't upgrade that. Upgrade the memory if you're running out while rendering (use Windows Task Manager to monitor memory usage) - if you only use 512MB, increasing from 1GB to 3GB won't do anything. And work on optimizing your renders. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ssstrutz Posted April 28, 2007 Author Share Posted April 28, 2007 Thanks for the reply. The memory is topping out over the 1 gig I currently have according to the task manager. I believe I can bump up the ram to 3 gigs for just over $100. Do you think it would be worth the upgrade? After all its only $100. I am assuming I should see some improvement over what I am currently rendering at. The question is how much of a difference. As for the renderings themselves, times are not extremely long until I start adding lighting or vray fur. The models are usually pretty simple. Scott Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted April 28, 2007 Share Posted April 28, 2007 Yeah, well, lighting and fur add calculations. Yeah, more RAM should make things faster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ssstrutz Posted April 29, 2007 Author Share Posted April 29, 2007 Thanks for the info. I will be buying the extra ram tonight. Scott Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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