ram and video cards (1300 vs 3400)...

[chuck]

Hello all,

 

My firm is looking at purchasing a workstation. We are looking at a Dell dual 3.2 xeon.

 

I was wondering If Viz/Max will use more than 2gb of ram when rendering a complex scene with advanced lighting- vray or scanline radiosity. I've heard that XP pro won't use more than 2gb per process, so will anything more be a waste? I'd also like to be able to multi task in other ram whore programs like photoshop- hi res renderings with all those layers.

 

Also, we are looking at the Quadro 1300 and 3400 cards. I was wondering if there will be a large difference between these two. Some of my scenes contain around 200 geometric trees on top of fairly detailed architectural modeling. I see a large difference in RAM (128 vs 256) and I don't know if 128 can handle one of these scenes with a ton of materials applied.

 

Thanks for your help,

 

Chuck

[Tim Nelson]

Not too sure about the video cards. Cgtalk.com has some good threads I think.

 

Max can only use more than 2 gig of ram if you are using the 3gb switch. But this is tricky if you have service pack 1 installed. I have to call up Microsoft to get the patch from them. You don't need the patch if you have SP2 but you probably know already to stay away from that.

 

Here's the 3gb thread on the Vray forum - you might have to register to view it, but its worth it....

 

http://www.chaoticdimension.com/forums/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5014

 

Hope that helps,

Tim

[chuck]

Thanks for the reply Tim-

 

So having a computer with over 2 gigs isn't over kill then? It seems that 3 would be a good idea if i wanted to do photoshop at the same time.

 

Thanks,

 

Chuck

[Tim Nelson]

I have 2gig on each of my machines and I could probably use 3 or even 4 although I don't find it necessary.

 

When I'm rendering I usually have everything else shut down as much as possible to fully free up the cpu's. And during rendering time I really dont want to slow it down any by using any other apps. So even though there may be plenty of RAM available, you're renderer will take up all 100% of the cpu's & make it really slow to use anything else at the same time, even with dual processors.