New Year, New computer....
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I followed this thread over the past few months but I guess months are years in technology....
I need a new system for home office so I thought I'd move my work PC to home and order me a shiny new one!
I only bought a new 24" monitor just before Xmas so all I need is the 'engine'
Being that I'm not all that clever when it comes to computer hardware it always concerns me when buying again that I'm going to balance all the components; as in processor / RAM / graphics card. The other issue is the whole multi-core debate; quad core, multi-core, etc... it is quite overwhelming!!
I work on some pretty large files and do render so it makes sense to not hold back. [within reason...]
Using SU / Maxwell / Podium and a BIM program called Spirit 2012. That's it.Any suggestions?
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how about PC It Yourself?
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All I'll say is nVidia and Intel. With SSD for the OS.
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What Rich says. For kicks, do a trial configuration maybe at Dell or HP, see what kind of costs with tweaking available upgrades. But you can try this also at maybe Newegg. Your rendering and graphics applications will set the bar. Not Sketchup--as has been said here before. Ideally, your GPU should have OpenGL and DirectX capability. Nvidia has a significant number of selections.
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Solid State Drive
Super fast especially when you've lots of ram and processing power.
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to you all... -
It's practically a giant flash drive built in. Since it has not moving parts and reading heads over a spinning disc, it is supposed to be more stable and faster than traditional HD's.
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OK, spoke to my geek guy.
Say:
i7 3.4Ghz with Hyper thread
8MB or 12MB RAM [he has 16MB on his system at home and doesn't notice a diffidence from 8.... interesting?]This is where I'm not sure:
He says that the NVIDIA Quattro cards while made for the design industry are expensive and you can get a similar performance from GTX card for a bit less cash.... any ideas here? Anyone using a GTX card [say 1GB] with 12MB RAM and find it works well? -
hi utiler,
@utiler said:
I work on some pretty large files and do render so it makes sense to not hold back.
Any suggestions?i think if i have the budget and not to hold back, that i7 3.4Ghz with Hyper thread is good.
with 8 GB of RAM. since the main performance factor is the processor itself.
as you said "not to hold back" i would go probably for something like those GTX. -
Thanks irwan, 8MB not 12MB?
Also, do you have a choice of GTX cards?
cheers,
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@utiler said:
Thanks irwan, 8MB not 12MB?
Also, do you have a choice of GTX cards?
cheers,
actually, i don't have much to upgrade my pc. you can try to search for latest GTX available on the net with Google perhaps.
RAM is not that expensive compared with other components. if you'd like to have 12 GB, why not?
it's just a "place" to load data to be accessed and processed randomly at fast speed.
if you were talking about RAM, that might be in GigaBytes (GB) not MegaBytes (MB).
What's A Byte
we can always use google to search for those kind of info.
how about that "PC It Yourself"? didn't find anything there? -
No I haven't looked at 'PC it yourself' yet; I will today... Thanks!!
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I'm considering either a:
Quadro 4000 or:
GTX 570 or 580......
Anyone got any thoughts or experience with both?
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@utiler said:
I'm considering either a:
Quadro 4000 or:
GTX 570 or 580......
Anyone got any thoughts or experience with both?
I advise against anything over 12 GB ram unless you are using a dual processor server board. I've got 24 and barely use 25% under a heavy load.
GTX 570 is fine. I have one and it's not worth the extra $$$ for the 580. If you're that interested, get 2 560s and run them in SLi. Better performance at higher resolution.
I also went overboard and got the i7 6-core 3.2. Things happen plenty quickly with that.
My one thing to complain about, and I hope you don't make this "mistake" -
You've just built a high powered system and you stick a standard 3.0 GB/s SATA drive in it with your OS and programs on it. That drive will be the bottleneck for the entire system. Trust me, I know. Because of the seek times involved in loading windows and the startup applications on my system, boot takes around 2 minutes to fully complete. My drive effectiveness goes from 2.95 GB/s down to 0.10 GB/s, fully defragged.
Get a dedicated drive, I don't care if it's SSD or SATA 3.0, and dedicate that only to the OS. Get anothe decent drive and use that for all other programs. In other words, your c:/programs should be on d:/ instead. I can't wait for drive prices to fall so I can get another small drive and do a fresh install of Win 7 on it and have the apps elsewhere.
That or do a RAID Setup.
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perhaps you'd like to visit this link for nVidia
i am using an old GeForce 8400 GS at the moment. i handpicked it, because i know its performance compared with the latter release back then.
i might go for nVidia GTX 590 if i got the chance to upgrade it.that's a good idea to have different HDD for different purposes. that way each will be able to work independently according to its purpose.
wish you luck with the upgrade
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More RAM may be useful if you are rendering really large images. Or using really large resolution texture files.
Here is a comprison chart of cards:
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.htmlNote that the future for many rendering (and similar) applications is GPU support so beside a good CPU (which you've picked already), a good card is also essential. You never know what programs you may start using tomorrow so best is to be prepared.
Not every application works in SLI configuration though.
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thank you Gaieus for the link.
i didn't even think of comparing the performance with independent site.
it seems the best performance is still with GTX 580, yet even with less price than GTX 590agree with Gaieus about RAM. as i said before it main purpose is to load data to be accessed and processed randomly by the processor.
thank you for reminding the performance benchmark from independent site, Gaieus.
good luck and happy up-grading, utiler.
PS: funny though, i didn't remember the benchmarking and related site. since that was what i did when deciding to buy 8400 GS rather than the latter release.
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AFAIK the GTX 590 is actually two 580's built into one (but never trust my hardware knowledge). Too experimental and therefore maybe not trustworthy but of course overpriced.
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@gaieus said:
AFAIK the GTX 590 is actually two 580's built into one (but never trust my hardware knowledge). Too experimental and therefore maybe not trustworthy but of course overpriced.
i understand. as soon as i found out the benchmark result, i searched for other independent sources for more info and comparison. at least that "overpriced" is so obvious.
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