What should I go for in a 3D Rendering machine?

Solarius · 22 Sep 2006 at 14:52

Hey guys,

Pretty soon i'll be starting an automotive design course in cov uni and i was wondering what sort of upgrades I should be doing to my comp to help with 3d rendering times.

Currently I now have what is in my sig but with an added 1gb of generic crap ram, So 4x512mb sticks.

With rendering machine's would you go for more ram or cpu or what? What would be best?

Any advice much appreciated.
Think if i went conroe if would help that much either?

Cheers, Sol

Solarius · 22 Sep 2006 at 16:01

So its just ram thats the real key factor? Need to get some more, maybe 3-4gb in total then.
Cheers for the reply then mate,

Solarius · 22 Sep 2006 at 16:42

Hmmm, So maybe that quad core kentsfied later this year might be a good idea then. :S Prob cost a bit tho

Cheers mate

Solarius · 22 Sep 2006 at 16:53

Well, I know that they use Maya as the primary 3d design program. I would presume they are design for more than single core?

Yeah,I've been looking at graphics tablets but their so expensive for what they are

. I think the best one to get would be an A4 one aswell, Usually over £100 tho arent they

Solarius · 22 Sep 2006 at 20:35

Awesome guys, Thanks very much for the help.

Hmmm, didnt know about the ATI problem, I'll look into it, cheers mate for the heads up

.

I think its most likely going to depend on if i can spare the cash to get either a design tablet and/or a Dual core cpu then. If a mentioned dual core would pull away with helping with rendering and say photoshopping at the same time I might have to look into this as no doubt from the sounds of it multitasking would be very helpful later in my course when im rushing.

Thanks a lot everyone, You've given me quite an insight.

Sol

Solarius · 22 Sep 2006 at 22:39

Hehehe. 600 Mhz.... Must have been painful....
I have done some rendering on a G5 mac (single core obviously) i was using in my final college year and even tho macs are supposed to be godly with memory management whilst trying to multitask it was dog slow.

I think without a doubt now I will look at Dual Cores then,might look into how much a cheap Conroe rig would cost me then, maybe one of those E6300's .Do Reckon those Allendale ones are ok instead of conroe?

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Also, I did have an idea about 'render farms' or sumut like that, I think that is what you were on about with multiple machines but i never realised just how to do it.

Didnt know you had a central server and then send requests to other machines, Sound very cool. Will look into it definately now you have mentioned it. Thank you

So with animation renders you would do seperate frames and then paste them all together in a movie creator program then?

Cheers, Sol

Solarius · 22 Sep 2006 at 23:48

hehe, ok then. Lotsa ram and cpu it is

Solarius · 23 Sep 2006 at 01:23

Hehe, thanks for the advice mate. Might research into renders farm a bit. Learn a bit about em. What sort of 3D design/animation work did you do to require such an abundance of machines?

I take it you had to render a lengthy piece of animation?

Sol

Solarius · 23 Sep 2006 at 21:04

Thanks for all the replies guys and the offer FunkyCowie, Im sure if i get stuck I might start a post asking for some rendering help or sumut, Would love to take you up on the offer.

If I do end up doing much rendering for my designs i'll post the images and let you chaps know if I need some help with some hardcore machines for any animation rendering.

Thank you very much everyone

Sol