Getting back in the saddle.

[Dan J]

Not whining here, but these last few years I (like many others) have had to take work outside the industry to keep afloat.

 

It seems the industry has turned the corner and work is picking up. After choking on a simple track home rendering test as part of an interview process, I need to get my skills back up to speed and I'm thinking of a little quicker system.

 

My workstation is about 6 years old and works fine for modeling, but is slow to render ( HP xw 6000, 2x xeon, small scsi hd, nvidia 980).

 

I've read through Adrew's lists for new systems and I'm comfortable assembling them. My last system was a refurb from HP Business Outlet center and I was looking there again as the prices are a few $$ less.

 

I didn't see any of the workstation systems, but was looking at the "High-performance" business systems.

Like these setups-

-HP Pavilion HPE h8-1160t W7HP-64 i7 2600 3.4GHz 1TB 8GB BluRay Writer 1GB NIC WLAN 15-in-1 Rmkt PC $695.20

-HP Pavilion HPE h8-1080t W7P-64 i7 960 3.2GHz 2-1TB SATA 12GB BluRay 1GB NIC WLAN BT 15-in-1 Rmkt PC $911.20

None seem to have a graphics card or the SS HD, but seem to be a good offering.

Any thoughts on these systems and their configurations or HP's hardware in general?

 

Also, my software licenses (owned) are dated: Max 9, CS3 pro w/ vid, Revit 9 and I believe are 32 bit. I don't have the extra $ to upgrade everything, but just wondering if these will work fine and will my licenses transfer over to the new systems?

 

I really appreciate the feedback.

 

Thanks much!

[Tommy L]

You'll need to be working in a 64 bit environment for sure. I just keep 32 bit programs hanging around for legacy plugins (mainly DOFpro and Polytrans).

Both the machines you have listed here look to be good deals, but you'll need a decent graphics card also. Or maybe you could invest in a couple of the machines listed, one as a workstation and one as a render node. Add a gamer card and you'll be set for around $1600.

[frog_a_lot]

Re: Software

CS3 will be fine, a bloke in our office still uses like cs2 or something. so i wouldnt bother upgrading that.

Max 9 i eould probably think about trying to upgrade if you can. Im not sure how vray 2 would go on Max 9. up to you though

[AJLynn]

Just check the specs on the computers before buying - I'm not familiar with those particular models, but if they came with video cards on the motherboard they might not have a PCIE-x16 slot with 8 lanes available and a good enough power supply to run a proper 3D card. (A proper 3D card doesn't have to be a very expensive one - when on a budget, something like this is an excellent card from the money.)

 

The i7-2600 is superior, but if the system comes with the onboard Intel video adapter enabled, that means it's using a motherboard that is not capable of providing a full PCIE-x16 slot. (Because of limitations of the chipset spec there isn't enough frontside bandwidth to have both.) So the comparison would be, say, the Budget system from my list, only with a i7-2600 CPU, no SSD and maybe that Radeon I linked to above instead of the more expensive one. Oh, also, something weird is happening to WD hard drives. Next revision will have this one instead of the one listed, and this hard drive, which is the new model. Okay, I need to do updates, I've been way too busy lately. Anyway that would come to just over $1000, plus a copy of Windows because that seems to have fallen off somewhere. Okay, this week isn't so bad, I'll overhaul all the lists.

[Dan J]

Thanks for the responses.

I'm going through the specs on the machines and comparing. Mostly getting up to speed on the new performance & technology.

Fortunately, any system I choose will be a huge leap in speed and it will take a little while to grow into before needing to upgrade again.

Thanks again.