Hardware recommendations
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@kevsterman said:
I've been looking at the pcspecialist website and I've come up with the following spec for £1300. Is this good value for money? Will it give me a really fast computer capable of dealing with several intense programmes and the internet all running at the same time without any noticeable slowdown?
<SNIP>
[Your Spec list]
<SNIP>I'm just so clueless about all this stuff.
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I'm not clueless, but no expert. May I suggest going to TigerDirect.com or get their phone number.
They can put together a base system (or whole System) you can add to.
I've worked with them for 15+ years in building my own machines. I have not had any major problems in delivery or customer service. If any component doesn't work it is replaced. Even in these hard economical times I rely on their advice. I am totally new to SketchUp. I just started in the 3D world, but have been a Misc. Metals Detailer (Draftsman) for 29 years. My machines MUST work, period and significant downtime is not an option. I am on my 3rd Home Built machine (from Tiger) and each one has been an upgrade from the last, because of the component improvements.
I have absolutely no regrets or complaints.Good luck and
Take Care,
Scooter -
Wow, you definitely have space for new toolbars!
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an interesting post how to speed up SU by using fast styles can be found at the official SU Blog.
Norbert
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quite impressing arsenal list. heavy artillery.
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Gaieus@ Oh yeah! Three 24"s gives me a lot of room to work with. I really don't work at that resolution, I tend to have SU on the center while watching a movie on the left and surfing the Internet doing research, opening folders to the right monitor.
Thanks irwanwr, it was, wasn't it. I'm afraid that with the new crops of
PC games recently my heavy artillery needed some air support so Santa's putting some very cool fire power under my Christmas coconut tree early this year.I can't wait.
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Ok danny, if you don't mind i have completely unrelated questions.
Do you really live in Guam?
What do you do for a living? Something with SU or is it just a hobby?
How is the surf in Guam?Please ignore my questions if they are too personal, just got curious a bit...
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Not at all my friend and yes I do live on Guam in the village of Santa Rita, born and raised. Presently I'm a happy caretaker for my mother. Before that I always worked with public relations agency as a graphic artist.
I discovered SU just before it was bought by Google so I'm a late bloomer. I was getting Adobe overload and when I stumbled on to SU and a whole on world opened up for me...I was hooked ever since, thank you Sketchup.
Because of my schedule I'm in hobby mode at the moment but the future is bright right!
Surfing is great, and your all invited.
Note: As a follow up to my specs, I just recently added an XFX Radeon HD 6990 4GB DDR5 to the mix. BF3 and Skyrim looks so awesome.
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Great thread, very informative.
I guess I just want to get my $0.02 in as far as my experience with SU and hardware. I'm an old fart that love to game at times and get into some Photoshop and Illustrator but love to create in 3D models in SU. So about a year ago I built a rig that would let me play and work when I needed to.
Granted I've experienced the glitches early on as I was using ATI cards at the time as a matter of fact I'm still using a ATI/AMD GPU setup to this day. I think since Catalyst 9.5 I have not experience any bugs or glitches in fact it's been very smooth for me. I may not run those mega file like you pro but I've had my share of almost mega file with very smooth navigations.
These are the specs of my old humble play/work rig...
MB: Asus POG Rampage II Extreme
CPU: Intel i7 920 D0 @ 4.2GHz
RAM: Corsair Dominator GT (12GB) 2065mhz
GPU: XFX ATI Radeon HD 6990, 4GB, DDR5 (UPDATED 12-11-11)
Optical Drive: Pioneer BDC-2202B Blu-Ray
HD Primary: Western Digital VelciRaptor 300GB
HD Storage: Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB (x4)
OS: Windows 7 64Bit, SketchUp 8 Pro
Monitors: Samsung 245T 24" (x3)Since I game using Eyefinity technology here is a shot of SketchUp at a resolution of 5760x1200. Even at this resolution SU is very smooth.
Hope you guys like it and if you have any question fire away.
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Hey, thanks for the answer - i wasn't around earlier to read it.
I'm very jelly - must be an awesome place to live specially around xmas
Happy Festivus!
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it also made me gave it a thought of moving to Guam.
i worked for advertising & printing shops here quite a while.
but never got a chance to save some to get those kind of arsenal.
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Now that is impressive!. I use a single 40" LED LCD monitor and thought that was pretty "bling". I need to step it up - maybe three 40" screens and a lounge chair!
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Hi,
I'm looking to get a new desktop workstation for architectural design and rendering work. I considered getting a small render farm but I haven't a clue about programming or setting something like that up, and with my experience with vray for sketchup - it doesn't seem to support render nodes too well without bugs. So a single workstation it is, unless somebody has some better insights!?
I use the following programs:
sketchup - (of course!) multiple instances open - the more the merrier!
vray for sketchup
lumion3D (isn't too relevant with my current setup but would like to start working with it)
autocad
photoshop
3DSMAX rarely...
Might start using one of the GPU rendering software (wasn't relevant with my current setup)so generally I need this computer to handle both live previews of what I'm working on and also for rendering as quickly as possible using multiple cores.
One optional example spec I came by is the dell XPS 8300 (around 1700$ not too expensive I think):
Intel Core i7 2600 (3.4ghz)
8GB 1333MHz DDR3
1.25GB Nvidia Geforce GTX 560
Windows 7 64bit Home premium
2TB 7200rpm HDMy questions:
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For the above mentioned programs I use, will the Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 make me happy? maybe a different geforce would be better? I keep reading and hearing about the Nvidia Quadro's that are more expensive, slower in some instances and faster in others, but I haven't had a chance to see one in action with the programs I use. If a quadro were recommended, which would it be? price differences?
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for a singular workstation, would there be any point in getting a different processor/dual processor from the Xeon family rather than an i7? I know they handle more memory, but aren't i7s the fastest these days? And would I need a special motherboard to get Xeons to work better than a single i7? How many cores can I get running on a dual processor setup, Would I need any special arrangement for that? I have no in house programmer on hand...
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Motherboards!? they are rarely mentioned anywhere anymore. I imagine a motherboard would make a difference... Are there any general recommendations, or rules of thumb or magic numbers to look for?
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Would it make a difference if I got Windows Professional vs the Home version? Would I need XP mode for any of the programs above?
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Anything I should reconsider with the above specs that would really make a big improvement?
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Halroach,
Your example setup looks good to me. I'm using a Dell XPS as well and am quite happy with it (specs are in my sig below). It was the best PC available at the time without trying to do a dual cpu system (also I had no special GPU needs as you do with Lumion).
A few thoughts...
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You might consider more memory for your system. 8 gb is good and you may start there with the option to get more later. However I find that it's not terribly uncommon for me to use up most of my memory if I have a couple things going like a render and photoshop or 3ds max and some video editing or that sort of thing.
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Your HD. Consider how you'll back things up and how you'll eventually replace it. Having all of your resources on the same HD as your OS is a bit risky in my opinion. There are lots of options now with SSD's for the OS and a few programs and regular HD for data and such. My setup is this. I have mirrored 1tb drives in my PC but i don't really use them atm other than for the OS and programs. I have a NAS with mirrored 1TB drives with all my data so if a drive crashes there's no down time. I also have 2 external HD's. I'll back my data up to an external every month or so and then replace it with the other drive with is in a fire safe. So worst case scenario, if someone steals everything off of my desk or there's a huge fire, I lose about 1 month of data.
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Dual xeons should make for a faster system but I don't see them so I'm guessing there's an issue there. Probably it's the fact that your cost would go up quite significantly. But if you need the fasted single computer you can get, look into it at least. Maybe post on Tomshardware.com and see if those folks know more about it.
-Brodie
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Halroach,
All of the things Brodie states are good advice, one company I have been very satisfied with in the past is Xi computer. I bought my current computer from them about 3 years ago and have been very happy with it. Also, they were very helpful with determining what I needed based on what type of work I do. I dont know if this is still the case, but when I bought mine it was much cheaper than Dell or HP and they do offer good customer support as well.
jon
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More memory is good. I have 16Gb and it is noticeable. I also have the same processer you are looking at. As for Dell, the only thing I can say is they are not what they used to be. I have had 6 dell machines fail just out of warranty in the last two years - both laptops and desktops. All failures were motherboard related. My Dells that date further back worked very well.
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I just built a machine on HP with a 6 core i7, 12GB of RAM, and a 3GB NVIDIA card for less that $1,600. Shop around before buying the Dell.
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@valerostudio said:
I just built a machine on HP with a 6 core i7, 12GB of RAM, and a 3GB NVIDIA card for less that $1,600. Shop around before buying the Dell.
What he said. Dell is not on my favorite list. My HP's so far, are running great.
Why stop at 12Gb of Ram? That Nvidia card should work well!
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Thanks for all the replies.
I'm currently looking into the following spec - a bit different and better than the Dell XPS:Motherboard - Asus Gen3 P8Z68-V Pro Chipset Z68
Intel Core i7 2600k
CORAIR H60 (cooling..)
SSD OCZ Agility 3 120GB
Western Digital 1TB Sata33 7200RPM
Corsair Vengeance 16GB 1600Mhz CL8 4x4GB
Gigabyte Nvidia Geforce GTX560 Ti !GB GDDR5 Overclock Edition
Win7 ProI have the option to change the Nvidia Geforce into an NVIDIA Quadro 2000.
Does anyone have any hands on experience with Quadros?
After reading a lot online I think I'll stick with the Geforce which should cover all the programs I use "equally"... !? -
I use a quadro at work. It's nice but I'm not sure there's really much advantage to it. If I were spending my own money I'd go with the Geforce.
-Brodie
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Don't forget Sketchup is only capable of using 1 core so the clock speed is very important. I have 3.1Ghz and Sketchup runs really well.
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