cheapest desktop to run messiah?

[Qslugs]

Don't know if you can do all that for under 300. I might suggest getting a bargain basement Dell, although I think thoes run in the 600 dollar range. The problem isn't that you can't find cheap components, but the problem is that all the cheap components start to add up. I was going to build a computer for a relitive over christmas (not even for 3d) and the parts stated to enter the 500 dollar range. There is a chance you can do it but I haven't any suggestions. I can tell you what I run though (it seems to run messiah fairly well)

Dual xeon 1.7 - messiah doesnt run both processors for animation purposes though. Rendering is multithreaded. Basically more or less the same as a p4 1.7 with 256k on chip.

512 ram - pc800 (expensive- look for cheap ram match the board and processor to that.)

geforce fx 5700 - It's a 128 meg board. I think I paid around 200 for it. I just upgraded from a 32 meg quadro 2 ex. That board worked ok, depending on the scene the frame rate held up fairly well until loads of expressions or tons of bones were introduced. also if you get a slower machine it wont matter too much how fancy the video board is if the cpu cant feed the board fast enough.

ata 100 discs - ibm and segate

I would assume you could throw together a cheap penium 4 computer with 256 or 512 ram and a geforce 2 or 3. My only real suggestion would be to find some cheap ram and move on from there. Next would be to figure out what video board you want and then figure out what motherboards are available that support the video and ram you have picked out. I noticed you lived in IL, at least thats what your id tag says. If you live in the Chicago area (nothern and western suburbs) a couple places to take a look for parts - pc progress and spartan technologies. Both fairly descent mail order places that you can actually pick up orders from. Both I believe are owned by the same guy and are right next door to one another.

[kvernon]

I don't know about cheapest, but I can tell you that it works well on my workstation which is dated. :thumbsup:

abit board
1.2gHz tbird (AMD)
1gb ram
g4 mx card (one of the lighter card versions)

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