Brian Cassil Posted February 25, 2009 Share Posted February 25, 2009 I can't get a new computer... ever... without running things by here. I was surprised when our IT guy came by and said they were going to be getting me a new computer very soon. I hadn't even been asking for one but hey sure, I'll take it. The one I'm on will go to a cad guy now. Anyway, I haven't even been looking at what the latest and greatest for everything is. My budget is $2500 which I think will be enough for something decent. It will be built by a local place here in salt lake and they will do whatever we ask them to and service it for the next 2 years. Processor: It seems that the i7's are the way to go, although I don't really know too much about them. How many cores are on those? Are there mobos that support 2 procesors yet? Are there any special cooling needs? Mobo: ??? Memory: ??? Video card: I haven't bought a quadro card for a long time. I just haven't been able to justify it since the Maxtreme drivers went away. What's the best way to go nowdays? I'm mostly wanting to crunch as many polys as I possibly can in max, although doing some realtime lighting and material effects in max would be nice too. I can't remember what the tech was called where two video cards could be run simultaneously to enhance performance but I do remember that it was limited to only working with one monitor. Has that been overcome yet? HD: I've heard that solid state disks have come down in price significantly, and I understand the theory behind the technology and that in theory it should make a big difference in performance (especially video editing) but theory does not always translate to practice and I haven't seen any comparisons on them yet. Has anyone tried using these? All advice is greatly welcome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted February 25, 2009 Share Posted February 25, 2009 i7 is definitely the way to go. RAM is going to be 6GB or 12GB. Motherboards... I think it's too new to say that any are that much better than any others. If you OC I've heard good things said about the Asus. Video - is this just for Max? A nice Geforce works well. If you have OpenGL needs the good price/performance these days seems to be in the FireGL line or whatever the heck they call it now. Hard drive - an SSD for video editing sound nice but out of budget considering how much space you'd need. There are a bunch of good 7200 RPM drives in the 500GB-1TB range to choose from. If you go SSD choose carefully - there are a few generations of the technology floating around and if you get something old (and "old" can mean 1 year) it might actually be slower in sequential read/write than a regular hard drive! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Cassil Posted February 25, 2009 Author Share Posted February 25, 2009 This will be mainly for max. Some openGL stuff also I guess, but nothing too heavy. We are trying to push VR but the point is to create scenes that our clients can view. I've got 8 GB ram now and it seems to be enough usually. What type of ram is best to get now? I've heard of tri channel ram. Is it worth looking into? Brand? I think I'll stay away from SSD for now. I've read a little bit and it sounds like it could be a headache. One other thing I just thought of. I've been sticking with XP 64 so far. Is Vista stable enough yet to give it a go? The only reason I think I would care about it would be to have directX10, or is there really no benefit to having that in max? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted February 26, 2009 Share Posted February 26, 2009 You're going to need triple channel RAM with these things. Brand... hell if I know, I always just buy Corsair or Crucial stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martincg Posted February 26, 2009 Share Posted February 26, 2009 (edited) hello Brian, CPU: agree with i7 - /i am happy with 920 2,6ghz too - with stable overclock it to 3,2/ MEM: 12gb (6x2GB) - with middle freq and CL /1600 is good but you can go with 1300 too - in render performance compared to better memories it is just few seconds / GPU /for 3d work/ : almost every newer geforce,radeon 1 GPU unit is good choice - 3d programs can not work with multiple units now. recomand namely: nvidia 260 gtx /280,285/, ATI 4850 /4870/ HDD: some kind of sata II with 32mb cache /it is better have 2-3 discs - one for system, one for work, and one for library, or you can go through raid too./ (did'nt tested SSD yet) ....and quadro is wasting money for archviz :-( Edited February 27, 2009 by martincg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Cassil Posted February 26, 2009 Author Share Posted February 26, 2009 Thanks guys. And what about vista? Are there still headaches that outweigh the benefits of directx10, or are there not any real benefits to having directx10 to begin with? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted February 26, 2009 Share Posted February 26, 2009 I'd been planning to skip Vista but there are people out there who are happy with it and they seem to have fixed up a lot of their issues in the SP releases. But doesn't your office have standards for this stuff? If everybody else is on XP and you've been successful with XP64, you might as well stick with that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Cassil Posted February 26, 2009 Author Share Posted February 26, 2009 I'd been planning to skip Vista but there are people out there who are happy with it and they seem to have fixed up a lot of their issues in the SP releases. But doesn't your office have standards for this stuff? If everybody else is on XP and you've been successful with XP64, you might as well stick with that. Everyone else is on XP. We (the visualization team) are the only ones on XP 64 so that makes us oddballs already. The IT department has said that if I wanted to go with Vista and if there was a real benefit to it than he would support me in doing so. Right now I'm still leaning away from it. The new windows is coming out later this year I hear and maybe that will be a better time to switch OS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Cassil Posted February 26, 2009 Author Share Posted February 26, 2009 (edited) GPU /for 3d work/ : almost every newer geforce,radeon 1 GPU unit is good choice - 3d programs can not work with multiple units now, namely: nvidia 260 gtx /280,285/, ATI 4850 /4870/( I meant to ask. Are you suggesting that none of the 200 series geforce cards are recommended for 3D work? It appears that they are SLI compatible but they wouldn't have to be used that way. Some of the 9 series appear to be SLI compantible as well. edit: This might be a stupid question but I'll ask anyway. Can a card which is specified as being 'directX10' run 'directX9' as well? I've assumed that it could but maybe I shouldn't. Edited February 26, 2009 by Brian Cassil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJLynn Posted February 26, 2009 Share Posted February 26, 2009 Any of these DX10 cards are also very good at DX9 in XP. Also, "SLI Compatible" just means you can use 2 of them for SLI - but with 1 card you still get all the other advantages. What Martin is saying is that the cards that have 2 GPUs per card will not get their full 2 GPU benefit in Max, so if you were looking at one of those, you would get better price/performance from a 1-GPU card. They've got some crazy jacked-up GTX 28x cards, and the 9800GT which has taken the 8800GT's spot as the killer price/performer, and then there's the 9800GTX which also looks like a good option now that it's under $200. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
martincg Posted February 27, 2009 Share Posted February 27, 2009 I meant to ask. Are you suggesting that none of the 200 series geforce cards are recommended for 3D work? It appears that they are SLI compatible but they wouldn't have to be used that way. Some of the 9 series appear to be SLI compantible as well. edit: This might be a stupid question but I'll ask anyway. Can a card which is specified as being 'directX10' run 'directX9' as well? I've assumed that it could but maybe I shouldn't. :-) no, it was meaned i recomand these cards /except 295 series - it has 2 gpu units/ btw...i am on vista 64 and no prob with it /of course:aero off/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Cassil Posted March 3, 2009 Author Share Posted March 3, 2009 So here's what I'm getting: Proc: Core i7-920 Mobo: Asus P6T Deluxe Ram: 12 GB DDR3 Video Card: geforce GTX 285 HD: WD VelociRaptor 300GB (x2) Case: Antec Three Hundred DVD: Lite-On RW PS: PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 ATX12 Cooling: A few Vantec fans OS: XP 64 Maybe when the new windows comes out I'll think about switching at that point. I just don't want to go to another OS and than have to switch to windows 7 again in another 8 months or whenever it is. The whole thing should be on my desk Friday. Thanks for the tips guys! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Cassil Posted March 13, 2009 Author Share Posted March 13, 2009 Well, the computer is here and now it's time to start installing everything. The IT guys jaw almost hit the floor when he saw the size of the video card. I knew it was big but I had never seen one in person before and it surprised me as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now