Amd Opteron Series..........

[ILS]

i wouldn;t worry about the processor too much it is not as important in 3d graphics as you might think the important parts you should be looking for in a processor is the cashe size and the bus speed. also the speed of your ram pc4000 or so. also if you have extra money invest into a SCSI 15k drive. when it comes to 64 or 32 it doesn;t matter unless you run linux or unix or irix windows doesn;t utilize 64bit anyway.

[Vertizor]

Right now, 32/64 bit CPU doesn't matter (and no I won't get into future proofing :) ) but fact of the matter is the Opteron is a workstation CPU. It runs great in 32-bit mode. If you completely ignore the fact that it's a 64-bit chip, it's still a great chip.

About the model numbers:

1xx series: single CPU systems only. So power user or enthusist gamer.

2xx: Dual CPU capable system.

8xx: covers 4 and 8 CPU systems.

The latter 2 digits are like model numbers, go to any online vendor and look up the model number and they should also show you the speed in MHz if you care. But the MHz is by no means a performance measurement.

[imashination]

i wouldn;t worry about the processor too much it is not as important in 3d graphics as you might think the important parts you should be looking for in a processor is the cashe size and the bus speed. also the speed of your ram pc4000 or so. also if you have extra money invest into a SCSI 15k drive. when it comes to 64 or 32 it doesn;t matter unless you run linux or unix or irix windows doesn;t utilize 64bit anyway.

Pardon me for being upfront but that entire paragraph is complete junk. I've seen some bad advice before but this is the worst I have seen by a very long way.

- The cache size and bus speed make very little difference to rendering speed. You can take an older 333mhz bus p4 3gig and a newer 400mhz bus 3 gig p4 and they will perform almost identically in rendering speeds. The speed between the cpu and memory only has a real effect on realtime tasks, typically fps games.

- A 3d apps hardly scratches the use of even a low end harddrive in use. Spending money ok a 15k scsi harddrive is a total waste of money, it will give no advantages in the slightest.

- Current versions of windows will make use of 64bit cpus. A 32bit cpu will be limited to 1.6 gigs of ram in practice. With WinXP SP2, 64 bit cpus can access up to 3.4 gigs of ram per application. If you use the 64bit version of windows then eventually this will be much more.

[greyface]

Non-Realtime rendering is one of the tasks which is the MOST dependent on the processor, and works quite well on dual processors too. If you want to go dual, Opteron is good, for single processors, get an Athlon 64 or Pentium 4.

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