Ed C. and Peoples in the know:

[Ed Caracappa]

call me and we can talk through this:

faster processors means faster rendering. I would not opt for the 2mb cache because I don't think you get the ROI so go with 1mb cache.

you want 2gb of memory

for hd performance, get two drives in a raid array that make them look like one big drive.

as for graphics card selection you want a card that offers both hardware and software acceleration like the Quadro FX line. more memory on the card is better if you working with lots of polys and textures, etc.

feel free to call.

Ed

[tecton3d]

Thanks for the speedy reply. I will be sure to call.

[Tarrbot]

I would not recommend a lone RAID 0 array in a single system that isn't backed up properly and consistently.

The safety of the data on a lone RAID 0 array is noticeably lower than even a single drive.

RAID 0+1, 1+0 or 5 is a much better option.

[singularity2006]

after my experience with my own laptop upgrade, i highly recommend getting a 7200RPM (or 2 in RAID) hard drive.... the speed difference from 4200 to 7200 is out of whack. Even 5400 to 7200 is a big step.... I thought i would have to eBay my laptop for chump change, but now that I got the new HD for it, it's become a good desktop psuedo replacement for menial business tasks. =)

[tecton3d]

Which is the fastest and most reliable system for a single workstation without a backup tape system? RAID 0+1, 1+0 or 5

thanks Tarrabot!

[SheepFactory]

Ed , any word on the financing?

[maninflash]

About the graphic card, I have a Quadro FX1100 and it gets really slow to 4 FPS at 196,000 polys, maybe you should consider Quadro FX 3000 or higher so you can work comfortably with 500,000 polys.

On hard drives, a SCSI 15k RPM would be really good for fast read/write speed on larger files, mine is a Maxtor 36GB and I haven't had any problem working with 60MB files in Maya. You could run your softwares from this, perhaps your OS too and get another SATA 7200 RPM with lotsa room(which are usualy cheap these days) for storage. A DVD burner would be good for backup.

About RAM, first of all you should find out what is the maximum limit of your sofware, for instance, Maya 6 can only use up to 1.5GB of RAM, regardless of how much RAM you have on your system, USUALY softwares under WIN XP 32bit can not use more than 2GB. Although Maya 6.5 claims it can use 2.6GB.

On CPUs, they only come into play when rendering, usualy 3D softwares use only one CPU during UI calculations. For rendering, it's really software specific, for instance, Mental Ray really takes advantage of the CPU cache and XEON's Hyper Threading, and cuts down on your render time, but Maya Software Renderer does not, so find out if having that extra MB of CPU cache is really going to make any difference in MAX 7, you should probably be able to dig some info if you call Discreet or just search for some benchmakrs online.

hope that helps :)

[tecton3d]

I have been eyeing the fx 3400... I think I can deal with a little chunking for 800$ less than the fx4400... or is the added performance of the fx4400 worth it? How does the fx4400 handle scenes with 500,000+ polys?

~in what type of raid arrangement should the hd's be?

~a dvd burner is a given these days

~I use Mental Ray in Max 7 for 90% of my renderings... does the Max 7 version of MR use the proc the same way MR does in Maya?


~that does help

[maninflash]

I have been eyeing the fx 3400... I think I can deal with a little chunking for 800$ less than the fx4400... or is the added performance of the fx4400 worth it? How does the fx4400 handle scenes with 500,000+ polys?

~in what type of raid arrangement should the hd's be?

~a dvd burner is a given these days

~I use Mental Ray in Max 7 for 90% of my renderings... does the Max 7 version of MR use the proc the same way MR does in Maya?


~that does help

-I don't know about FX 4400, perhaps you should research some more to see if it's capable of handeling such high number on Polys.

-About MentalRay, yes, I believe it operates the same way in MAX7 as in Maya, since they only output the scene data to MR and then it does the rendering job. So if that's the case, I think that extra cache would make a difference, also, when rendering in MR, make sure you turn on HT and set MR to use 4 threads (two physical, two virtual created by HT)

-Hard drives, Well, that really depends on your workflow, if you do backup frequently, you could do a RAID0 and enjoy the speed, but if one of the drives fail, you will probably lose all data, RAID0 1 would be good for added peace of mind. But one thing to remember about hard drives, SATA drives use your systems CPU for their read/write task, so when reading or writing large files, your CPU gets invovled and you MAY notice the drop in performance, but SCSI drives, have their own CPU (either onboard if your mother board supports it or on the SCSI internal card) so they take the weight off of the CPU's shoulder when working with extra heavy files which could be nice, also, when rendering, as Mental RAY take FULL advantage of all your 4 CPUs, the task of writing images would become a bit easier and faster (although it may not be noticible unless in long render jobs)

[Ed Caracappa]

Ali,

We're still negotiating with the finance company. Right now I'd say we have a 50/50 chance of pulling this off. If all goes well it will still take 45 days or so to launch the program.
Ed

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