New computer for 3D work / gaming

Battery35

Battery35

Battery35

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Joined
19 Mar 2009
Posts
10
Hello all :)

Im looking to build myself a new rig for heavy 3d work (Maya) and rendering, some photoshop and the odd bit of gaming. Im generaly looking for a bit of advice as to what I should be getting to cope with my needs. Im guessing im looking for quality cpu/gfx/ram. With a minimum of perhaps 8gigs of ram.

My other question is would it be more beneficial to get an nvidia quadro or top end gtx/ati card ? Would quadro cards be able to cope with recent & future pc game releases ?

Guess im looking for suggestions on builds, so any help anyone could give would be great :)
 
Rendering is one area where the i7 line justify the slightly more expensive platform, they perform a fair bit better at it than the croe2 line.
 
For Maya the quadro really pay for themselves - there are some FX 3450 at the rainforest place for peanuts currently, which is a only just below the current high end cards, but lacks the memory.

If it's just 'the odd bit of gaming' it will work fine.
 
had a look at putting some items together, currently im at ...

cpu - i7 920
mobo - Asus P6T

As for memory and gfx this is the area im still really usure about. At the moment there is some OCZ gold 6GB 10600 tri-chan ram on special this week.... Im wondering if it would be better to say, buy 2 sets of this for 12 gigs instead of say 6 gigs of kingston hyperX 16000+ ram. Again, what are peoples thoughts on this ?
 
TBH I save your self a bit of money and go for something like this

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 940 Black Edition 3.0GHz (Socket AM2+) - Retail £198.94
(£172.99) £198.94
(£172.99)
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £164.99
(£143.47) £164.99
(£143.47)
Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 750W ATX2.2 Modular SLi Compliant Power Supply £120.99
(£105.21) £120.99
(£105.21)
Samsung SpinPoint F1 RAID 750GB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HE753LJ) £91.99
(£79.99) £91.99
(£79.99)
Asus M3N78 Pro NVIDIA 8300 SLi (Socket AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £73.59
(£63.99) £73.59
(£63.99)
Antec 300 Three Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case - Black (No PSU) £50.59
(£43.99) £50.59
(£43.99)
Corsair XMS2 4GB DDR2 PC2-8500C5 TwinX (2x2GB) Dual Channel Kit (Twin2X4096-8500C5) £39.99
(£34.77) £39.99
(£34.77)
Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme CPU Cooler (Socket LGA775/AM2+/AM2/939) £32.19
(£27.99) £32.19
(£27.99)
Pioneer DVR-216DBK 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £19.54
(£16.99) £19.54
(£16.99)
Sub Total : £689.39
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £13.75
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £105.47
Total : £808.61

But if you want to spend all the money you could go for another 4870 and a blu-ray player.

dP
 
I had a Quadro FX3500M (laptop) and it was amazing for professional programs such as CAD & Maya and also games that are optimised for OpenGL. Direct3d though you will feel the pain. Also the pain on your wallet!!!
 
danielmp007 said:
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4870 1024MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £164.99
(£143.47)
Asus M3N78 Pro NVIDIA 8300 SLi (Socket AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £73.59
(£63.99)
Click to expand...

If you do go for an ATi card, then don't bother with an SLi board, either go for a crossfire one or just a standard AM2+.

For what you want out of a system though, I'd be tempted by i7. 1k should get you a decent setup.
 
shadowscotland said:
For Maya the quadro really pay for themselves - there are some FX 3450 at the rainforest place for peanuts currently, which is a only just below the current high end cards, but lacks the memory.
Click to expand...

The FX 3450 is ages old now, thats about the level of a fx1700 if that. Quadro are due a refresh shortly too according to previous trends so it might be worth holding off if you can.

As to spec.
Spend on the cpu, (in order of best choice i7, c2q, phenom x4) and then slam in as much ram as the motherboard can take (8/9GB is a minimum for cad in my view now).

I'd also consider a ati firepro gpu (ati's quadro fx) as they seem to offer the best bang per buck at the moment although as I said quadro are due an upgrade around now.

1k should be able to get a system based around an i7 920 and firepro 3750 (about ati hd4600 in games) along with 9-12GB of ram.

Now I admit I use 3ds max (so slightly different to maya) but it loves ram, quads and pro gpu's so I would suggest focusing on these aspects and then upgrade the easier things (Hard drive, optical, case etc) later down the line.
 
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I know the FX 3450 is an older card but it's still midrange (over twice the bandwidth of a fx1700) but for £100 notes it's a CAD monkey steal.

Without a uber budget it's best bang for buck I could find.
I'm Just a professional AutoCAD / PS users (with a oc'ed 8800gs) so top end 3D gpu's are beyond my personal experance.
Quite happy to learn from a heavy cad user/system builder.
 
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I've always found Mid to high range gaming cards to be both stable and well performing for much less than the pro cards. This is strictly for 3d though, primarily Cinema 4D and Studio Max.
 
shadowscotland said:
I know the FX 3450 is an older card but it's still midrange (over twice the bandwidth of a fx1700) but for £100 notes it's a CAD monkey steal.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily, bandwidth/clock speed measurements aren't always indicative of the relative performance. The FX1700 is 2 generations on and has cuda support, it's also able to use additional gpu features inside the programs (for example shader 3 etc) which can improve workflow. Just for a reference the fx1700 is roughly equal to the previous generations fx3600 in all the benchmarks, yet costs half the price new. So actually thinking about it the next one down the fx580 (about £150-200) might be the better comparison the fx3450.

The DX9 performance would be better on the fx3450 over the fx580 though.

I'm not sure I'd go second hand for this type of gpu either as I'm not sure how the 'support' (which is what you pay for) is like in this instance.
 
thankyou for the replies, has helped a lot :)

At the mo im currently looking at ..

i7 920
asus P6T
2 x ocz Reaper 6 gig (3 x 2) 14400 (1800Mhz) tri chan ram. 12 gigs in total

I've opted for the extra ram over say a mid range quadro's as they are pretty expensive. I think ill go for a nvidia BFG 285 GTX for gpu. One thing that did baffle me, is the mid range BFG 285 card, which seems slightly better than the low end one is a few £ cheaper ? - am i missing something there ?

As for storeage. I have a 250gig SATA hdd which is a year or so old and a 1tb external hdd. So i guess i can use those and save myself a bit of mullah by not getting bigger space. Its not as though im fighting for space at the moment tbh.

But the case probably can be upgraded, I have an old coolmaster wave case, which does get very warm to the point of the pc shutting itself down when i run certain games. So i was thinking of something large with pleanty of fans ?

Just leaves the PSU really, what sort of power would I need to run the proposed hardware ?

Oh, one last thing, i assume I will need vista x64 to run all that ram?
 
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well here is my current build ...

BFG GeForce GTX 285 OC2
I7 920 oem
ASUS P6T
lian-li PC-B25B
OCZ REAPER 6 GB 14400 X 2
vista x64 home premium
WD 1TB hdd
corsair hx 450w psu
noctua nh-u12p cpucooler

slightlyover budget, but i usualy dont upgrade for a few years. What do you think, should be ok ?
 
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Battery35 said:
well here is my current build ...

BFG GeForce GTX 285 OC2
I7 920 oem
ASUS P6T
lian-li PC-B25B
OCZ REAPER 6 GB 14400 X 2
vista x64 home premium
WD 1TB hdd
corsair hx 450w psu
noctua nh-u12p cpucooler

slightlyover budget, but i usualy dont upgrade for a few years. What do you think, should be ok ?
Click to expand...


Increase that 450W PSU, I think that might be on the edge using it with the above setup.

I still think the GTX285's are overpriced, for what really is just an overclocked GTX280. So depending on what you want out of your games I'm sure the much cheaper (half the price) GTX260-216 will be enough, it should overclock to just below the performance of the 285 aswell. Plus you can always add a 2nd in later if it's not enough (for the same price as 1 GTX285, but should give greater performance). The SLi setup will definitely need a more powerful PSU.
 
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