ok...please dont kill me for asking...

[jcbray]

Whats your budget?

[Layer01]

consider yourself killed :twisted:

ho ho ho, j/k

Your question is very hard to answer, its like asking how long is a peice of string.

Basically the amount of Ram you can use is limited by your OS, the amount of ram an app will use is limited by the OS and the app.
64bit applications can use more memory, same goes of 64 bit Operating Systems.

Quad or any sort of multi core will increase your ability to multi task, but i think xp 32bit can only support 2 cores/cpu's? not sure though. for more go for a 64bit OS (xp64 vista 64. or some flavour of linux) But if your app only uses one core/cpu then you'll only get as much speed as that one cpu..
you will see a big speed increase at render times if your application supports multi core/cpu rendering.

so you have to choose what app you want to use, an OS it will run on, then based off that see how much ram/cpu's you can have, then how much ram/cpu's uyour app(s) can use, and by then you should have a better idea of what you should/could get.
as for gfx cards, i've no experience with pro video cards, the quadro/fireGL line etc.. but a good high end gaming card will suit in %95 of cases i've seen.

[lots]

There are 100s of posts on this subject posted every month. You can look back the past few pages on this forum and get exactly what you need, so I wont repeat here.

Instead I'll just give an explanation of some of the things to keep in mind while you look for parts.

1) RAM is good, you want alot of RAM. As much as you can afford (and as much as your OS choice lets you have). If you go down the 32bit route, you are limited to 4GB of RAM at maximum, though to be honest you will only ever be able to access 3GB of it. RAM is pretty important to complex projects. Large textures, millions of polys, etc. all benefit from having more space in memory.

Speed of RAM comes into play as well, though to a lesser extent. Faster RAM will of course make the system overall more responcive. However speed comes at a price. So finding the balance between speed and quantity is the path to take. Personally I favor capacity over speed, mostly because the differences in speed are not as great as review sites would lead you to believe. In my experience its more important to have ENOUGH RAM rather than fast RAM.

Think of it like gas for your car. You can drive up to the pump and fill it up with regular, premium, or some sort of super premium. Your car runs just about the same with each flavor of gas. But since regular is cheaper, you can get more of it, and your car will drive further. When you run out of gas, the car stops working. RAM is like gas. You can get varoius grades of RAM, each offering some sort of small speed up, but once you run out of space in RAM, your computer no longer goes anywhere and everything becomes slower than molasis :P

2) CPU, generally speaking the faster and more CPUs you have the faster your renders will be. There are limits however. As you add CPUs (or cores) to a system, you get deminishing returns. For example, 2 CPUs is NOT 2 times faster than 1 CPU. 4 CPUs are not 2 times faster than 2 CPUs, etc. Each time you add more CPUs/cores there is an overhead to manage them all and keep them in sync. This causes a sort of fall off in performance as you add more CPUs to a single system.

Another limitation is your renderer of choice. Most renderers support a fair amount of CPUs rather well, however renderers like Mental Ray require a license to have support for many CPUs. This means you must buy a license that lets you use all the extra CPUs/cores you have in your system. This is merely a money problem more than anything else.

The last limitation is the OS. Windows XP Pro(and I assume Vista depending on version) support up to two sockets. Note I say sockets here instead of CPUs. This is how Windows is licensed. It is not licensed per CPU/core. It is licensed by the socket. This means that if you were to have two sockets in your computer's motherboard, and each socket had an 8 core CPU on it. That would be a 16 way system, but XP Pro would support it properly because its two sockets (again this is a licensing issue more than anything else).

So the post above is sort of accurate :) Windows XP Pro supports two sockets, XP Home supports 1. If you need more than two sockets (that is one expencive system first of all :P) you will need a server varient of Windows. The more sockets the higher the price for the Windows Server that can handle it.

At best, you will likely be using a system with 2 sockets, which means you need to use XP Pro at the least. I'd recommend using it anyway :P Windows XP 64bit also only supports two sockets, as do most of Vista's versions.

3) Graphics cards. Against what seems to be the popular belief among many, the video card does absolutly NOTHING to make your renders go faster. The ONLY point (in most situations) for having a nice video card is for fast interaction in your app of choice's UI. This means you can edit large models, scenes and whatever with relative ease. Models tumble easily, can be millions of polys, etc.

There is an exception to this though. There are a few hardware renderers out there. These utilize the video card to process rendering. However keep in mind that the hardware renderers are not in wide spread use, and from what I can tell not as feature rich as the standard renderers.

Nvidia is usually the one to go with. A Geforce 7 series card should be plenty for most needs. Personally I'd go after a 7900GT or similar. I would only consider a Quadro if I could find solid evidence that my performance would be noticably better, and I was making alot of money :P If you wait some time, you will likely be able to grab the new Geforce 8s when the refresh comes (by this I mean the higher end Geforce 8 (8900 maybe?) and the midrange (8600)) This should make prices fluctuate a bit and you may find a good deal.

4) Power supply. Mostly overlooked by many that post here. This is probably one of the most important parts of your computer. A good quality stable power supply will help create a fast stable system. A stable supply can deliver clean non-fluctuating power which helps lenghten the life of your parts, and keep them in a stable state.

If you cheap out on the supply, be prepared to replace parts should they burn out, or the supply its self. Bad supplies can cause many problems and even damage your system if they blow. Toasting all your work the day before the deadline is probably not ideal :)

5) RAID. Many people seem to want RAID 0. As a 3D artist, I don't think the RAID modes designed for speed really help any. Instead I would go after a solution that would duplicate my data, to keep it safer. RAID is not absolutly needed in a config, but if you consider it I'd consider RAID 1.

6) Motherboards are fairly important, but they mostly depend on your budget and the CPU you get :P If you go Intel, the 965 and 975 boards are good. If you go Intel quad core the 975 is the one to take. If you go for AMD, an Nvidia based motherboard is the best route to take.

You can look around more, there's alot of info on the forums.. try a search

[chrispignatelli]

I think I just learned more in 5 minutes than I have in the past 5 days of surfing.

[leif3d]

That's the general experience when reading a "LOTS" post...smart guy.:thumbsup:

[Garibaldi]

And even better, from the point of view of someone who is not particularly tech-savvy, myself being one, it was easy to understand.

Thanks Lots!

[Fede]

Thanks "lots" that was an awesome post.

[lots]

Heh no problem guys :)

Since I'm posting a bunch of stuff about buying I might as well add to what I said above.

This is a slight edit to the CPU bit of my post above:

In addition to what I said, determining the speed of a CPU compared to other CPUs is a sometimes confusing task. When you go out looking to buy a computer you're usually presented with alot of numbers. You'll see MHz GHz, Cache sizes, FSB speeds, etc. While all this can tell the general speed of a CPU, most of this is only really useful when comparing CPUs form the same family.

For example, a Core 2 Duo can be compared to any other Core 2 Duo derrived part (including Xeon 51xx's) using the MHz, FSB, Cache size, etc. Generally bigger numbers will mean better. However, when it comes to comparing a Core 2 to a Pentium 4, or an Athlon 64, things get a little cloudy. MHz is an absolutly useless form of comparison in this situation. Similarly, FSB and cache size are also quite useless in figuring out which is overall faster. This is because of design differences between different CPU families. You're really only left with one option. And that is to look up benchmarks and see where each CPU sits in the speed scale for your apps. After that it should be fairly obvious which one fits your budget and your wants.

Some good benchmark sites:
www.techreport.com (good general benchmark site)
www.anandtech.com (same as above)
www.xbitlabs.com (actually a good place to get info on PSUs and other general benchmarks)
www.silentpcreview.com (covers alot of stuff on silencing your noisy PC)

I find its best to go to a few different sites and see what the overall reviewer opinion is. Some sites (tomshardware) tend to be a bit biased (in Tom's case its cuz they're pretty heavily in the intel camp, litterally, I believe thier HQ is ON an Intel campus in Germany :P). So getting multiple reviews under your belt before buying can get you a pretty decent idea of what to expect.

[perham3d]

lots = legend (simple maths)

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