newbie help on build for graphics/rendering pc

paul777

paul777

paul777

Associate
Joined
30 Jun 2006
Posts
15
Hi guys,

I am planning to build 1 machine for use for designing and rendering. I am still new and got a bit of help from a friend:


Intel Core 2 DUO Extreme Edition X6800 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.93GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-130-IN)

Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)

Antec SLK3000B Midi Tower Case

2 of Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4 TwinX (2x1GB) (MY-108-CS)

Asus P5W DH Deluxe WiFi (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-152-AS)

Enermax Liberty 620W ELT620AWT ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CA-024-EN)

Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80GB ST3808110AS SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-051-SE) (one hard disk for Windows and Program Files)

Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB ST3500641AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-049-SE)


This total comes to £1490.10. I still need to add a graphics card without going too near to £2000. What card should i get, just a NVIDIA 7900?

Would appreiate your thought and help on this :)
 
The Conroe extreme is perhaps a little excessive, I would suggest dropping to a more cost effective Conroe (E6600?). Also, is that 4GB of ram? If so then you'll need a copy of Windows XP 64 as standard Windows XP will only recognise 3.5 GB.

When you say designing do you mean CAD work? If so then consider a dedicated graphics card as this would suit you better. If you don't want to go down this track then something like the 7900GTX or 1900XT would create an really good games machine... in case you get bored rendering and designing... :)
 
X1800XT sounds like a great graphics card, I'm getting one for my conroe system. It's not much worse than the X1900XT and it's only £160.
 
this machine is for work not for personal use so its not my money, might as well get the best chip :)

this is a mahcine for 3d max/photoshop/illustrator/after effects/premiere/flash etc

i didnt know about with Windows XP regonising 3.5gig, does this mean i i order 4 gig, it will make use of 3.5gig or just 2 gig?

would the 7900GTX be good for 3d max at the NVIDIA Quadro cards are quite exspensive!
 
In windows xp x86, programs can only use up to 3gb of virtual address space if they have a special extension and 2gb if they dont. So no matter how much ram you have if your using x86 the program will be limited to 3Gb and maybe even 2. For cad work you could be considering matrox graphics cards.
 
ok rendering you need to buy 6/5 hdd (4/3 in raid( for apps rendering etc..), 1 for os, 1 for page file, page file hdd can be small 10 gig and if you can get a fast one like Western Digital Raptor 36GB WD360ADFD 10,000RPM SATA 16MB Cache ) 2 or 4 gig in 1 gig sticks.
 
Last edited:
paul777 said:
so i might as well just get 2 gig?

how will raiding increase rendering time?
Click to expand...

It wouldnt unless the cpu was processing more than 50MB a second. If it was then using a raid with striping would increase the read+write speeds.


If the app your using has the extension and you use windows 64 it could use upto 4gb so it depends.
 
Last edited:
how often do you use each application? if you used them constantly, with 2 gigs it would be worth shutting them down to play around with one of the other apps, with 4 gigs it would be quicker and be more responsive if you left othe programs open. its up to you, what computer do you have now at work, does it have 2 gigs, if so does it feel choppy. check task manager and see how much page file you tend to use. if the answer is lots and say 3d max is using 1.8gb mem and 1gb page file the answer is 4 gigs would make it faster. mem is fairly cheap tbh, ok you can buy the £357 2gb packs and have a 3-5% faster system(if you overclocked from stock), or you could just buy cheap mean £120ish for 2gb , £240 for 2 packs of it.

i'm not a 3d max user, does it support firegl or quadro cards, if so then you will get a speed increase buying one, if not, and you won't ever game on it just get something cheap and cheerful matrox, ati, nvidia, whatever.

having a quick look at discreets site and nvidias neither obviously mentino 3ds max as being supported by quadro cards. nvidia site mentions "CAD, DCC, and visualization applications", not sure if that applies to you.


there has also, afaik, always been places you can get bios's, hacked drivers to run a desktop nvidia card as a quadro card so you could always do that to save some cash if you want.
 
Energize said:
It wouldnt unless the cpu was processing more than 50MB a second. If it was then using a raid with striping would increase the read+write speeds.


If the app your using has the extension and you use windows 64 it could use upto 4gb so it depends.
Click to expand...
well its depends on what raid you use raid 0 is faster than raid 5, you would use raid 0 for cad, movie apps etc.. the only negative if 1 hdd goes then you lose all the data, with raid 5 you can replace the hdd and not lose your data but its uses more cpu processes and is slower than raid 0.
 
The cooler below is the one you need for an Intel LGA775 CPU.
Also with regards to gfx card I do a bit of amateur Lightwave 7.5 + Photoshop myself and only have an Nvidia7800GTX512 so a 7900 should be fine as long as you do not render above 2560x1600.

The bottleneck for any gfx work is always the CPU followed by how much Ram you have. That X6800 is a good choice as it can run 4 threads @ once so is effectively a Quad CPU.

With regards to Ram if you get 4GB then XP 32bit can only use 3.5GB but there are ways to get it to use more than 4GB but you need to do some additional research on this. I know of several investment banks in London who run over 4GB Ram on traders Dual Xeon workstations with special custom XP versions & DLLs MS have developed for them so it can be done. Not sure how easy it is to get hold of outside of these banks though!

To be honest 2-3GB Ram is probably more than enough unless you are working on scenes with massive polygon counts & or insane resolutions.

Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 775) (HS-017-AR)
Price: £14.95 (£17.57 Including VAT at 17.5%)
 
memory
there are mixed responses here with regards to whether to get 2gig or 4 gig ram. if my normal windows xp can make use of 3.5 gig then i will buy 4 as i do use each application constantly (3ds max, photoshop, illustrator). currently i have 1gig and its a fairly choppy.

hard disks
i dont think i'll do the raid option. i and used to the old skool IDE and i have not built a pc with 3 SATA hard disks, is this possible with 2 dvd drives?

graphics card
is it worth buying one of these cards over a 7900? 3d max should support Quadro or FireGL cards

PNY Quadro FX1500 256MB GDDR3 PCIE Dual DVI £389.99 inc vat
http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...11137&PageMode=1&NavigationKey=11137,40560000

or

ATI FireGL V5100 128MB PCI-E 2xDVI-I Retail £277.99 inc vat
http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...&SearchKey=All&SearchMode=All&NavigationKey=0

otherwise i will consider buying an Asus GeForce 7900 GTX/2DHT 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-097-AS)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom