Budget workstation
-
Hey!
I'm an architecture student who wants to make his way in the CG scene and I'm in a need of a new computer on a 1300$ budget(excluding the monitor) and as I mostly use my PC for sketchup, Autocad, 3ds max and photoshop I wonder if it's worth paying the extra buck to buy an entry level workstation card like Nvidia Quadro FX 580 or rather spend more on the rest and buy a cheaper Geforce series card instead. In which case would I benefit more performance wise in these applications? By the way I don't play any games.
-
personally id go for the geforce card. You'll get more performance for your money, and as long as you choose carefully (check which card/driver combos work with your chosen apps before you purchase!) then you shouldnt have any problems.
-
Here's a link to a GFX card comparison test: http://www.cgarchitect.com/news/Reviews/Review076_1.asp
I would go for a Nvidia Geforce card.
-
Thank you for the replies. Your help is very much apprechiated.
This is how far I got:CPU- Intel Core i7 870
Motherboard- Asus P7P55D LE
Graphics card- Asus GeForce GTS250, 1GB, GDDR3
RAM- OCZ 6GB, DDR3, 1333MHz, CL9, Kit Of 3, Gold
HDD- Western Digital 640GB 7200RPM 16MB Caviar SE16 + Intel X25-V SATA SSD 40GB 2.5" MLC
PSU- Corsair 550W 12CM ATX12V2.2 80+
Case- Antec THREE-HUNDRED
Acer H233HEBMID, 23" monitorWhen including the OS, the PC fits perfectly into my budget, but I wonder if I haven't overdone with the RAM, and can anyone tell how good would the HDD+SSD combo come along? Would the 550w PSU be good enough?
-
The amount of RAM youve gone for is a good compromise, in my opinion. I certainly wouldnt say youve over done it. I assume you know to get a 64 bit OS so you can access all your available RAM?
With regards to the HDD and SDD combo, it will help with the boot up time of your computer but probably wont speed up the overall running of your computer much, as it's too small to install all your programs on. Unless you can afford to get something with a higher capacity id ditch the SDD and save the money.
-
Sure, I know about the 64 bit thing
I did some reserch and it looks like the tehnology hasn't matured enough yet and the lower capacity SSD's are not too reliable. I guess I'll stick with the two HDD's then and look what will happen in a year or so in the SSD market.
At the moment I'm only concerned about my video card choice. I've seen some good reviews about it and I hope it will cope with everything I'll do to it
But what do you guys think of it? -
I think your graphics card looks good. I've got a 9800GT at home, which I don't believe is as good as your 250, and it runs everything just fine (SU, 3ds Max, Photoshop, etc.). I think the 6 gigs is a good idea as well, particularly if you'll be getting into rendering or video editing. I've got 4 at home and it's usually enough but I'd like to get more in there. At work i've got 8 gigs and that's almost always been plenty.
I think your i7 870 is a great choice for your workstation. The i7's are great when it comes to multicore stuff, but they also have gotten great ratings with single core operations like modeling.
I've heard mixed reviews about SSD's but have no experience. I'm excited about them but I'd probably hold off as well (and am doing so).
Only possible comment I might make would be to think about doing 2 smaller monitors rather than 1 larger one. I have 2 19" widescreens at work and a 23" widescreen at home. The 2nd monitor comes in REALLY handy for menu intensive programs such as 3ds max and SketchUp.
Let us know once you get your computer. Love to hear how it turns out.
-Brodie
-
Hey Brodie, I got the PC a few weeks ago. Here are the specs and benchmarks.
Intel, Core i7 870 (2.93GHz, 6.4GT/s, 8MB Cache, LGA1156)
Chieftec, 750W PFC Cable Management
MSI, GeForce GTS250, 1GB, Twin Frozr
Asus, P7P55D-E
Seagate, 250GB 7200RPM 16MB Barracuda 7200.12
OCZ 4GB, DDR3, 1333MHz, CL9, Kit Of 2, Gold
Seagate, 1TB 7200RPM 32MB Barracuda 7200.12
Acer, H233HEBMID, 23"
I'm kind of surprised about such good performance in the OpenGl test.
When I called to order the PC, the guy on the phone convinced me that the 6 GB RAM idea wont work for my motherboard, so I took 4 GB. Only after some blue screens of death and numerous errors that were in some cases told to be caused by bad RAM, I checked the P7P55D-E qualified vendors list more carefully to figure out that I have got an incompatible RAM (sadface). I run memtest 86 to check the RAM and got a few thousand errors, but after checking each stick seperatly and changing them in places I don't get any errors in the test anymore. After that my system started to behave better and I didn't get the errors as before, but unfortunately I still get at least one random blue screen a day and I'm totally unaware of what triggers this. If the PC does crash, then it happens randomly when opening a program in the first 15 mins when I use it and afterwards it runs just fine. That does not interfere with my work much but I wonder if I should even spend my time and $$$ looking for a new pair of RAM if memtest 86 shows mine is OK.
-
Really nice scores! I'm not too surprised about the OpenGL. In 3d world lately they've had several high end rendering machines specced and reviewed. They even had a couple with dual xeon's and that sort of thing but the best PC by a considerable amount in terms of all around performance was an i7 980x. It slaughtered the xeons in opengl because of the higher clock speed and turbo for single processor apps. The xeons would win out if you didn't do any modeling on the machine (just rendering) but otherwise the i7's are wonderful.
That's too bad about the blue screen. Something always goes wrong when building your own pc. I got a warped Windows Vista cd when I built my last PC. Ya warped, like someone had taken a blowtorch to it or something, very weird. Then I had some other issue and thought I needed to update my bios. Halfway through the update the PC froze and I had to restart, eeeck. I thought I was screwed but I guess with Shuttlebox it was just a matter of replacing a little bios chip, no huge deal, cost like $25. The 6 gig memory might make sense. I know certain setups sort of 'want' a certain number of memory chips. I never recall which wants what but I imagine he was saying that the i7's want them in multiples of 2 which would mean 4 gigs or 8 gigs.
I can see being hesitant about getting more ram. I'd try to RMA it and see what happens. If you can't do that and you'd have to eat the cost you may try getting some cheapo RAM off of craigslist or even trying to borrow some from a friend, just to see if that fixes it. If it does then you at least know you won't be wasting your money by buying some new RAM. As is, it sounds a bit like Russian Roulette with your blue screen.
-Brodie
-
Im almost certain you want your RAM in multiples of 3 if you've got an i7 processor, so in short the bloke in the shop was wrong. Something to do with it having a triple channel memory controller, or so my brief reading tells me.
http://techgage.com/article/intel_core_i7_-_choosing_the_best_memory_kit/
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/corsair-triple-channel-ddr3,6614.html
http://www.palicomp.co.uk/pc-components/motherboard-cpu-ram-bundles/intel-core-i7-bundles/prod_188.html
Advertisement