need advise on a new computer

[lots]

Dont bother with cross fire. Don't get a Geforce 8800 (Lightwave 9.2, which is the version you should have ;), doesn't play nicely with it just yet - driver issues). Nvidia gamer cards work just great with LW. Just not the most recent generation, due to its immature drivers.

Anyway to speed up your renders and modeling, the first thing I suggest you do is upgrade to LW 9.2, there are alot of enhancements in Radiosity, and OGL speed that should get you a good ways towards your 100% speed up goal.

The next thing is you want a Core 2 Duo at least. The E6600 is good. If you go the quad core route, get a Q6600, both are reasonably priced.

Get at least 2GB of RAM.

A good 975X motherboard should do quite nicely.

A Geforce 7 series card. A 7900GT is a good starting point.

All in all that should pass the 100% mark...

[flyboy1]

Hello Lot. Thanks. My computer pentium 4 is 6 years old. Im going to give it to my kids. I think I will get a core 2 duo quad 6600 or 6700 extreme. Intel 975x mother board. Nividia 7950 GT video card. 2 GB ram. 2- 500 or 300 GB hard drives 16 mb 700 watt power supply. Vista home premium, thats what it comes with but I can get XP . I can buy a set up like this from several companys. Gateway is too high priced.I have been looking at a computer web site called "iBUYPOWER.com " have you ever heard of them? they will build you a custom gaming -high performance computer using namebrand off the shelf components, and there prices seem pretty good. A few of there computers are listed on NEWEGG that is where I found them. I could build a computer from scratch I have allways wanted to, and have made minor repairs ,new hard drives ect. But if it is like anything else it would probubly cost more to build it than to just buy it at a really good price. I am waiting for newtek to release 9.2 there is some sort of delay. I didnt get in on the beta testing. Can you tell me , if you are using a quad core computer does LW automatically take advantage of all the 4 processors. Or do you have to set this to 4 threads in the render tab. I have some more questions I would like to ask you but I will keep this one short. And if you dont mind Ill send another thread. Thanks again for your help

[lots]

Check on NT's forums about 9.2 and Vista. I don't think there are any outstanding issues, but I know 9.2 works properly on XP...


EDIT:
About Lightwave 9.2: In this release they upped the max number of cores you can render on from 8 to 16. So you should be well within the limits of the software. If I recall it should automatically detect the number of CPUs, but you can also set it manually via render options panel.

9.2 is also released, you can go to your registration page and go to the downloads section. There you'll see some downloads for 9.2. I recommend it as the speed up in Radiosity is quite nice, and the adjustments to OpenGL have improved tumbling and to an extent, some modify operations on large poly objects.

If I recall, on the machine in my sig (which is less powerful than the one you have specced) I can easily tumble around 5 million or so polys without much slowdown (which is a huge jump from 9.0). Modifying polys on that large of a scale is still somewhat slow, but Modeler was not the focus of the 9.2 release, so I'm glad we got something at all in that regard..

The next patch hopefully will address Modeler and CA tools. Definately an exciting time to be an LW user :)

[krzlesniewski]

If you are talking about hardware and software, I've got question too. I'm using 3D max and I don't know which graphic card is better, Nvidia or Ati? I'm interested too in which part of working in 3d the graphic card is important (modelling?)..

[LazyGunn]

If you are talking about hardware and software, I've got question too. I'm using 3D max and I don't know which graphic card is better, Nvidia or Ati? I'm interested too in which part of working in 3d the graphic card is important (modelling?)..

despite someone the other day linking me to a website about using your gpu as a cpu for rendering, i couldn't make head nor tail of it, so your 3d card is there to help you with the modelling and texturing process, your cpu will do the rendering - the way raycasting/tracing and the way 3d cards represent 3d geomtry and lighting is fundamentally different so yeah - if you want to work on complex 3d scenes in your viewports then your 3d card will be doing thr grunt work - as soon as you click render your cpu is the daddy

[krzlesniewski]

so the graphic card is just for making scenes, cpu is for rendering, and ram memory..obvious that more=better but why? Ram speeds up the rendering? I think that yes, cause it gives cpu more space for light maps and etc..Em I right?

[LazyGunn]

memory is used throughout the process, and the more the better - as far as speeding things up is concerned... it's complicated but the main reason less memory would slow things down is if your computer started to use virtual memory instead of physical memory because it ran out - it would be swapping around a lot of data on your hard disk which is a lot slower than physical ram and this would slow things down - memory is important because it holds everything the computer is working on within it, it gets to a point where things become literally impossible to do when you havent enough ram because there's no capacity for the amount of data needed for what you are working on

to put it into context, when you are rendering, your cpu will be the main factor in determining how long the render will take, from a few hours to a few days (or in one personal case, 1 and a half weeks), but the amount of memory will determine wether the render is even possible in the first place

that's a pretty dumb simplistic way of putting it but hey well

[lots]

despite someone the other day linking me to a website about using your gpu as a cpu for rendering, i couldn't make head nor tail of it, so your 3d card is there to help you with the modelling and texturing process, your cpu will do the rendering - the way raycasting/tracing and the way 3d cards represent 3d geomtry and lighting is fundamentally different so yeah - if you want to work on complex 3d scenes in your viewports then your 3d card will be doing thr grunt work - as soon as you click render your cpu is the daddy
Almost. In most 3D apps the CPU is also responsible for bone deformations, morphs, physics, and anything else that will modify a mesh. The CPU is very important to every aspect of CG. More so than the GPU. You could have the most powerful GPU money could by, and still get choppy playback in the UI while trying to animate something, if your CPU was slow.

You want as fast a CPU as your budget allows, and you want as much RAM as you can afford. GPU should be a secondary consideration after these two.

Also, here's a good analogy for RAM: Think of RAM like you think of gas for your car. If your car has no gas, it doesn't go anywhere. If your comptuer doesn't have enough RAM, it also doesn't go anywhere (quickly anyway..). If you have enough gas, your car doesn't go any faster or slower. Same for RAM.

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