System for Multimedia Rendering etc and Games

[jonomacg]

Hey as the title said i'm looking to buy a new system for rendering pretty quick and being stable on games for around £800 to £1000, if somebody has set up they'd like to share then it would be much appreciated.

 

[Messiah Khan]

Im not going to do an indepth spec for you, as there are people on here better than me at it. However for rendering, the main thing you want to look at is the CPU. What rendering program you using? If its a program that supprts bucket rendering such as final render or mentalray, then dual core is the way to go, as it will render literally twice as fast as single core. For real time 3d modelling etc, ram is also quite important so the more the merrier. The GPU however is less important, but if you want it for games then maybe get a decent one. Just don't go and waste loads of money on a top end GPU expecting to see a great boost in rendering. a decent harddrive is also usefull if your going to render uncompressed frames, as ive had projects with 2mb a frame and upwards. So overall I recon your lookig at a high end Conroe system with 2-4Gb ram, mid range GPU, 1 OS harddrive and 1 storage harddrive.

 

[jonomacg]

The programs are After Effects/Vegas. At the moment it takes 10 minutes to render 1 minute and 19 seconds of footage.

I was looking into a 6600 Conroe, 2gb ram and a DFI Diamond M/B

Also would a pair of 36gb raptors on raid 0 be more effective then a HD for O/S and another for storage?

 

[Messiah Khan]

Yeah, that lot sounds fine. You might want to look at getting more ram if you have any money left over. Another option you might want to consider is to get a sepearte low-mid range pc, and use it purely as a render farm. This way you can keep working whilst the previous scene renders. Ive had projects before where my machine has been rendering for 3-4 days solidly, which is really annoying as you can't do any other work.

 

[jonomacg]

I'm considering looking at other setups, quite interested in what other people who do this kind of thing have for their setups.

I can still use this PC i'm on atm i think.

It's got 1gb ram, ABIT KN8 M/B and an AMD Athlon 2300 (i think)

Only problem is that i don't have an idea how to use a computer as a render farm.

 

[shimy182]

i read on magazines about P4 CPUs being really good at video rendering and encoding.

but thats pretty old info and i dont know how well the conroe does it.
most likely to be faster with the conroe though...

sorry if this is useless. just thought i will share this small info.

 

[Messiah Khan]

Yeah, the P4 is pretty decent due to its Hyperthreading. I suspect however that dual core would do an even better job, but I havent tested this yet.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1815797,00.asp
Have a look at the above article, where they build a render farm out of loads of old cheap pc's.

 

[jonomacg]

Sounds a bit complicated to me
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1989024,00.asp
However in the article above it confirms that the Conroe is better for rendering than the P4 and AM2.

 

[jonomacg]

How does this spec look? Or is it worth getting the E6600 for the extra £100?
What are the chances of the prices lowering by beginning of september?

CP-126-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Alendalle" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-126-IN) 1
£129.95 £129.95
MB-062-GI Gigabyte GA_965P_DS4 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-062-GI) 1
£109.95 £109.95
MY-014-GS G.Skill 2GB DDR2 NR PC2-6400 (2x1GB) CAS5 Dual Channel Kit (F2-6400PHU2-2GBNR) (MY-014-GS) 1
£114.95 £114.95
GX-006-EA EVGA GeForce 7900 GT 256MB GDDR3 HDTV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-006-EA) 1
£161.95 £161.95
HD-095-WD Western Digital Raptor 36GB WD360ADFD 10,000RPM SATA 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-095-WD) 2
£68.50 £137.00
CA-026-EN Enermax Liberty 400W ELT400AWT ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CA-026-EN) 1
£40.95 £40.95
Subtotal £694.75
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £9.95
VAT £123.33
Total £828.03

 

[Messiah Khan]

Looks decent to me. Have you already got another harddrive? As 36Gb isn't going to keep you going for very long at all. You might also want to get a PSU nearer 500W.

 

[Stelly]

Looks decent to me. Have you already got another harddrive? As 36Gb isn't going to keep you going for very long at all. You might also want to get a PSU nearer 500W.

Totally agree with you there mate

Stelly

 

[jonomacg]

Is it worth 100 quid for an e6600 from an e6400 in my new spec?

CP-127-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6400 "LGA775 Alendalle" 2.13GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-127-IN) 1
£154.95 £154.95
MB-105-AB Abit AB9 Pro (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-105-AB) 1
£99.95 £99.95
MY-059-CS Corsair 1GB DDR2 XMS2-5400 TwinX (2x512MB) (MY-059-CS) 1
£64.95 £64.95
GX-006-EA EVGA GeForce 7900 GT 256MB GDDR3 HDTV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-006-EA) 1
£161.95 £161.95
HD-085-SE Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 200GB ST3200820AS SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-085-SE) 1
£47.95 £47.95
CA-001-SS Seasonic S12 500W Silent ATX2.0 Power Supply (CA-001-SS) 1
£64.95 £64.95
Subtotal £594.70
VAT £104.08
Total £698.78

 

[Messiah Khan]

Are you going to be overclocking? If so, then possibly go with the 6600 instead and go with the gigabyte motherboard. Apart from that, the second spec looks really good. Very nice harddrive there as well.

 

[jonomacg]

Going to switch out the Abit M/B for the Gigabyte one. Only £20 cost differance and more features.

That brings total to £720 ish. If i have £100 spare i'll get the conroe e6600 might have lowered in price by beginning of September tho?

 

[Messiah Khan]

They might do, but I wouldn't count on it or hold out for it, as prices will always tumble. With the spare money, I would probably get another gig of ram.