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another new system post - video card/RAM questions


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Thought I would post the specs of a new system I am considering and would love any feedback. I currently use 3d apps such as Rhino and AliasStudio and do no gaming.

 

Intel P4 3ghz 800fsb

Asus P4P800 Deluxe Intel 865 800fsb

2GB Kingston DDR PC3200 RAM

WD 250GB Ultra ATA/100 Hard Drive JB w/ 8MB cache

Pioneer 106s slot load dvd 16x/40x

Plextor 48x burner

 

(2) questions -

Is 2GB of RAM going to make a difference in rendering speed/system performance vs 1GB?

 

Which video card makes sense from a price/performance standpoint?

Quadro 750/ 900/ 980

FX 1000/ 2000

Fire GL X2/ X1 256mb/ X1

Wildcat VP990 Pro/ VP 870

 

Thanks for any input.

 

Brian

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Is 2GB of RAM going to make a difference in rendering speed/system performance vs 1GB?

 

Depends. Thats a decision you'll have to make based on your own rendering experience.

 

Ram amount doesn't effect performance (past the first inital 300 megs or so) very much until you run out of it.

 

You won't run out of a gig of ram unless your doing video work and/or rendering at high resolutions or extremely large scene sizes.

 

Of course I'm not aware of the type of work that you do, so I can't comment if 2 gigs is the right amount for you.

 

If you were doing print work, especially larger then standard 11x8.5 (Letter) I'd definitely er on the side of more ram then less.

 

 

Which video card makes sense from a price/performance standpoint?

Quadro 750/ 900/ 980

FX 1000/ 2000

Fire GL X2/ X1 256mb/ X1

Wildcat VP990 Pro/ VP 870

 

I don't know your budget...but I'd go for either the Quadro 500 FX or the Quadro 1000 FX.

 

http://www.3dchips.net/content/review.php?id=63&page=1

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Greg,

 

I found the review you mentioned to be very interesting whening looking at the 3DS MAX results.

 

Comparing the 3DS MAX DirectX and Optimized driver results from the review you mentioned, the ATI cards with DirectX have much better frames per second than the NVIDIA cards using optimized drivers for 2 of the 3 scenes.

 

Example: From the Xeon charts

ATI Fire GL X1 (DirectX) has results of 22.8 / 79 / 101 fr/sec.

Quadro FX3000 (optimized drivers) results 41.5 / 23.5 / 36

 

The Fire GLX1 is 3x as fast as the FX3000 for the "wireframe2" and "geometry2" scenes but half as fast for the "textured2" scene.

 

If using 3DS MAX and working mostly with wireframes or untextured geometry, would it not be better to go with the ATI cards using DirectX?

Is there any disadvantage of using DirectX over NVIDIA's Maxtreme drivers?

Are wireframe lines as sharp in DirectX as in Maxtreme?

 

Just wanted your expert opion on what is happening here.

 

Thanks.

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http://www.aceshardware.com/forum?read=105033519

 

Check that thread out, for some behind-the-scenes ideas of how real IT managers in the real world actually think. All of those guys handle huge IT budgets in their jobs - i know the thread starter for quite a while now, and he administers thousands of systems.

 

So i guess, the rule seems to be, just get whatever is good and cheap, whatever is going.

 

My own preference is that of not upgrading very often - spending as little time as possible tinkering and as much time as possible actually working.

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