Looking for a new pc!

[DThomas85]

Hi Sebastien,

In my opinion for the price of that combat ready pc the spec is very good indeed. The quad core will certainly help you out when using your production apps and wont hurt when playing the likes of crysis and farcry 2 either!

Here in the UK the chip, comparable graphics card and memory would come to about £600 (€768) before i even get to motherboards, hard drives, cases and power supplies.

my only concern is that it comes bundled with Vista which in my opinion is a waste of space and money. XP64 does everything for me just as fast if not faster and doesnt use as much of your resoures to do so.

Maya and Max i think are both available in 32bit and 64bit flavours so you just need to install whichever goes with the OS you are running. Remember though that to run more than about 3GB of ram you'll need a 64bit operating system as 32bit versions cannot address it all.

As for the difference in hardware for graphics work and games the main difference is in the graphics card. You'll find quad core processors and lots of ram in most proper graphics kit but you'll also find either a firegl (ATI) or quadro (Nvidia) graphics card. These generaly cost a lot more than the consumer cards and dont play well with games. But give it some rendering to do in a maya viewport and it'll eat a consumer card for breakfast.

Hope that is of some use :)

[lighthouse84]

Hi Darren,

first of all, thank you for your reply. You said, that a firegl (ATI) or quadro (Nvidia) graphics card would eat a consumer card for breakfast concerning rendering in maya ; ) Means that i should reconsider the graphic card in my constellation or is the card "okay"?

Apparently you have XP64bit, do you have any problems with support (Service Packs, hardware drivers)?

[Srek]

Be aware that rendering on a graphics card only happens if you use a GPU renderengine like Gelato. Normaly a graphics card only speeds up editing in the viewport and playback.

Cheers
Björn

[lighthouse84]

Thanks Srek!

[DThomas85]

Hi Darren,

first of all, thank you for your reply. You said, that a firegl (ATI) or quadro (Nvidia) graphics card would eat a consumer card for breakfast concerning rendering in maya ; ) Means that i should reconsider the graphic card in my constellation or is the card "okay"?

Apparently you have XP64bit, do you have any problems with support (Service Packs, hardware drivers)?

The firegl or quadro cards will only out perform a consumer card in production based scenarios. Since you said this was a gaming PC i would stick to the card that is in the link as it'll be perfect for games and will be ok for maya and stuff. Also by putting in one of those cards you are looking at probably adding another few euroes to the total.

I use a Q6600 with 4gb of ram and a Geforce 8800 GTS as my PC and it play games with ease and will also do everything i want in maya and such like. if i was making massive scenes than it would no doubt bog down in the viewports but as Bjorn said the CPU and the memory are the power behind the proper rendering, not the graphics card. If you dont want games then get one of the production level cards, if you do then stick with the gefore 260 that is in there as it'll do the job well enough. Should you get good enough or want to get another computer down the line then maybe consider a change.

and yes i use XP64 and have absolutly no issues at all. I tried Vista when it first came on the market and had several compatability issues as well as poor drivers for certain things (which are now probably fixed) but since my computer is working perfectly with XP64 i dont see any need to change. I think as far as Microsoft are concerned Vista was a mistake that they will try to rectify which they will replace sooner rather than later.

[lighthouse84]

I will consider if overclocking will be an option for me and soon i will have a nice machine.
Thanks for your replies!

[DThomas85]

i knew i missed something!

overclocking will generaly void your warranty so its best to do it only if you are comfortable. The new Core2duo and Quad cores are generaly good overclockers because they use a smaller manufacturing process which means they need to use less voltage to get the chip to work properly which in turn makes them run cool compared to chips of the past. A cool chip generaly means it can be overclocked a nice amount because they are designed to run much hotter than they do.

So yes its possible but its best to have a look aroud for as much info on the subject as you can before you go and fiddle with any settings. The chip in that pc will do you proud though so dont worry about it.

[imashination]

firegl (ATI) or quadro (Nvidia) graphics card. These generaly cost a lot more than the consumer cards and dont play well with games. But give it some rendering to do in maya and it'll eat a consumer card for breakfast.

*sigh* The blind leading the blind...

[DThomas85]

*sigh* The blind leading the blind...

if only someone knew better and could point sebastien in the right direction.

i made a mistake in saying that a firegl or quardro card will eat a consumer card for breakfast in a render situation. It is instead the cpu that performs the work when doing an actual render. The grapics card, as Bjorn said, will only help with your viewports (as far as i am aware, please if anyone knows better help out).

may i say 10 hail fathers for my sin.

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