I am about to order my new system; any comments?

[adamandelkovic]

I am buying a new system in a couple of weeks. Could you guys take a look at the below specs and offer your opinions.

 

I use 3DS Max 2012 with VRay 2.0

 

I am limited to small jobs with my current system and i would like to expand my capabilities. At the moment if i put like 5 archmodel trees in my scene the render takes 8 hours plus! i have a lot to learn about optimizing a scene, but i am getting better all the time. I really want good performance in the viewport; do you think the Quadro 4000 could handle 6-8 million polys smoothly?

 

I would like my new system to be able to handle a multiple dwelling development (12 dwellings and up) with modelled, or Vray displaced, grass and trees and plants, etc. I currently just photoshop those things in.

 

The quote i got for this system is AUD3350/USD3520/GBP2220/EUR2640. What do you think?

 

2x Intel 240GB SSD 520 Series with Desktop Kit - SATA III 6Gb/s, 25nm, MLC, read/write speed 550/520MB/s 80K IOPS 5-year warranty

 

1x Western Digital 3TB NAS Red Hard Drive - 3.5", SATA III 6Gbs, 64MB Cache, IntelliPower, 3 Years Warranty

 

1x Intel i7-3770 Core i7 Processor, 3.4GHz, LGA1155, Quad Core 8 Threads, 8M Cache, Intel Turbo Boost Technology (up to 3.9GHz), 22nm, with FAN

 

1x Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP4-TH / Z77 / 4 x DDR3 / 6 x PCI-E / 1 x PCI / 2 x SATA3 / 8 x USB3 / HDMI / VGA / DVI / TB / GBLAN / RAID / CrossFireX / SLI / ATX

 

1x Samsung SH-224BB/BEBS SATA Black Internal 24x Speed Plus DVD±RW Drive, 12x DVD-RAM, 8x +R DL, 8x-R DL, OEM with software included

 

2x Corsair 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600MHz CL10 LP Vengeance Unbuffered DIMM Memory with XMP 1.3 for AMD and Intel platforms. = 32Gb in total

 

1x Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit with SP1 - 1pk OEM DVD

 

1x Silverstone TJ04B-EW Black & Windowed Mid-Tower Case, Front USB3.0 and Audio, Aluminum Front Panel & Steel Body 4x 5.25', 9x 3.5',No PSU

 

1x 750W "Antec" EarthWatts Green ATX Power Supply, 80 PLUS Bronze certified, 135mm fan, 4x +12V outputs, 4 x PCI-Express, 9 x SATA

 

1x Leadtek nVidia Quadro FX 4000 PCI Express 2.0 x16, 2GB GDDR5, 256 Bit, 256 CUDA Cores, 89.6GB/s, 1x DVI-I, 2x Display Port, Single Slot

 

 

Thanks for reading guys!

[Jason Matthews]

I am not as up to speed on hard drives as I should be, but why not stick with a single fast SSD (250gb) for OS and programs and a large 7200rpm (2 or 3Tb) WD black caviar HD for storage of files. You can always add another HD later. I think you would save a bit of money. Use that extra $$ and get the i7-3990k hexa core processor.

 

The 4000 is a good card. Handles geometry pretty well. I would say it is your best bet for viewport performance for the price. If you are looking for performance with VrayRT then this is NOT the card for you. I would look into a fast GTX card for doing that. Effectively you would have two cards. One for viewport and one for RT.

 

RAM is good. I like to have some extra headroom in my system and 32gigs is nice. Try to learn how to maximize you scenes though. Like if you don't need the trees on to spin around the scene then turn them off. Also for tree usage, you should look into ITOO software. Great free plugin called forest. Easy to use and allows you to hide the forest if not in camera view.

 

 

Jason Matthews

[adamandelkovic]

Thanks for the reply, Jason

 

An extra Graphics Card? That sounds like an interesting idea. I will definitely look into it. I would love to be able to use VrayRT for test renders just to speed up the process.

 

In regards to optimizing scenes, do you know of any good tutorials? I know things like "Display as box" and hiding layers, but it would be great to learn some other techniques.

[Jason Matthews]

Well I do my modeling in sketchup so I wouldn't be much help as far as modeling goes, but a key component to many large scenes are xrefs. I usually have my various components referenced in. I break up my scene so that entourage (minus the trees) are xref'd together, each building or group of buildings are xref'd and my site. This is because if I need to change something I can easily update the model and load only one item where as if I had all the models together then it would take a lot longer to update. The other nice thing is that you can quickly isolate the various xrefs and hide them via the select by name tool. I typically group the geometry from the various xrefs into their corresponding models (select all the geometry from say the site model via the xref dialog box and then group the geometry) and this allows to easily turn on and off the geometry. Just one of the many things...

 

 

Jason Matthews