Screamin' machine ordered...
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Tom, how's the new machine working for you then?
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Let us know what happens on the Crowd Test, will ya?
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Julian...just picked it up late Wed afternoon and then was gone all day yesterday so not much to tell yet, except: SU5 installed in less than 3 seconds...I kid you not, hit install, turned around to get something off my layoff table, and turned back to find it done.
The worst file I was complaining about is twice as fast now (but still not pleasing)...though the beachball/hopscotch is all but gone. Other slow files go to color-only rather than wireframe, but still have some bump and start. Still slow exporting big file jpegs (guess I was expecting blink of an eye), but all settings on the graphics card "general" screen: quality, performance, and mixed, export the exact same quality image...SU anti-alias on or off?
Also hoping SU6 is more suited to the 64bit processors...we'll see.
Spending today loading programs and doing the other honeymoon stuff, so more later I'm sure. Meantime, anyone have an FX1700? I'm thinking there might be some tweaks and there isn't an SU profile included in the drivers, so help me out if you can, thanks.
Best, Tom.
Reread this and seems down about the 'chine...not so: my new neighbor has been cutting down all the beautiful trees in his yard for 4 days now (including the ones shading the entire west side of my home all summer
so I'm suffering more than a little bit from "you stupid idiot" madness confounded by the constant chainsaw racket. If I wasn't renting we'd already have lawyers running around in the yard! -
Hank, what do I bench mark with the crowd test file?
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I guess just total machine config and performance.
With the whole crowd showing mine turns to wires at scene 11, whereas I can partially zoom in (show about 1/3 of the crowd) to scene 12 and the rotate and only the peeps inthe back go to wire frame. the peeps in the front stay colored. -
Such a nice machine deserves a great monitor. What did you get?
I built a system very similar to yours except I used an E6600 CPU and overclocked it to 3.2 GHz. Now SketchUp will only use one core, but if you do any rendering, say with Kerky, you can use both cores and start generating some real heat. I replaced the stock Intel fan with a Zalman CNPS9500LED which really cooled down the CPU. The 8800GTX has a nice builtin fan but it still runs at around 52-58 degrees Celsius.
Download a copy of SpeedFan to display the temperature of all your components - CPU (each core), HD and video card. Then you can decide if you need some fan upgrades.
Have fun...
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Oh Yeah...I also saw that SU did vet the ForceWare driver nvidia uses: but not since ver50, the current is ver162. For you high end 3d app folks, there are quite a few preset driver configurations and the ability to have the program start change the preset.
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PSP was similarly disappointing at first blush...much slower in fact, but I lucked out when my DC filters didn't work at all (giving me a "missing file" error). Saturday I went to that sit thinking there was an installation file I have since deleted (but found that was not the case). But while backing out to check ONE MORE TIME I barely noticed the "missing file error" graphic hyperlink (if you've been to the DC site you'll understand why I nearly missed it: a beautiful psychedelic experience that is hippy-dippy hard to read). Anyway the .dll for the windows/system folder not only fixed the DC filters, it speed up PSP to match my "only uses one core" expectations.
So, pleased again! Honeymoon's are hard work, but when they work: WOW!
Now my only sadness is my stolen copy of PyramidPaint doesn't work...seems the license of the Adobe trial (now deleted) I copied it from is still on my laptop allowing me to use the KPT filters there in PSP. Go figure...:`)
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Okay...it's been an interesting honeymoon so far. The neighbor's guy is still cutting trees down: 5 days and counting...sure hope he honors the sabbath and gives it a rest today! I need to be fresh Monday to start fabricating (err, formulating) my tax forms. So far 5 healthy and beautiful pines down, the christmas legacy of days and families long gone, ranging from 20 to 30 foot tall. Also a lovely 40 foot linden and a wild ranging redbud, not tall but a good 30 foot spread and so beautiful over the used-to-be honeysuckle along the fence. Go figure.
BTW, I figured out where I recognized the tree monkey from: our little town has a public service TV station...a computer, really, showing powerpoint presentation style public announcements and meeting adgendas with background music. They also put the mugshots or driver's license photos (hard to tell the difference) of anybody who has an outstanding warrant: that's where I saw him first...nice, huh? (It was surreal over the holidays with christmas music playing over the flashing not-so-happy faces of the current crime-stopper personalities.)
Anyway, after a disappointing first night...and hours of site searching and nvidia pdf downloading I found an installation notes that suggested turning vertical sync "force off" and setting the global preset to 3d app - default global settings. So now: WOW! The crowd test (the one I found here only had 11 scenes) works like this: SU5, wireframe on 9, bounding box around the entire group (with a wire frame showing for the first-scene 1, component) sometimes in scene 10 and most times in scene 11; SU6, by the third or fourth orbit (especially if I start with the screen filled with components - little or no surrounding white space) in scene 10 we stay full color, or sometimes partial edge only, and scene 11 stays mostly full color or all edge only, or sometimes partial wireframe. (Just to see: I copied the whole scene 11 crowd again, smooth move BTW, and didn't see much difference in the orbiting performance after (which throughout all the above didn't skip a beat after the first in scene 11...acts like it has to learn what you want it to do/save then can keep up) though most or all went to wireframe most of the time when zoomed out (but not still when zoomed in). I also tried adding another component and didn't have a bit of beachball-hopscotch finding snaps.
Cool, huh?!? (Happy me!)
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Kenny, thanks: the case came with 2 120mm fans (one of them 3-speed) and the motherboard has a cpu fan, plus temp software...I think I'm covered. I will start watching the temps this summer as I don't use the AC until the office gets up to 85deg or so...not ideal for computing.
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There are some interesting PCI slot fans/blowers around. This ball bearing one combines both functions http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16835114024.
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Just had an interesting thought and did a confirming "turn on shadows" test with the crowd test file:
SU6
Scene 8--3.5 sec
scene 9--8.5
scene 10--16
scene 11--31SU5
8--2.5 sec
9--6
10--11
11--22I've thought from the beginning that SU6 took longer to recover shadows after an orbit, thus making the seemingly faster orbit times more equal to SU5...? (I will admit, though, I do like seeing more of my model while orbiting...now that I have a machine that will comply :`)
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I'd love to hear some crowd test and shadows-on results from you guys with the GTX 8800, thanks!?!
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Tom, this might seem a little strange, but my SU v6 speeds in the crowd test seem to be as fast (if not ever-so-slightly faster) than you SU v5 speeds.
My machine specs:
Processor: Intel Q6600
Motherboard: DFI INF P35-T2RL "Blood Iron"
Memory: 4x 1GB OCZ Platinum DDR2-800
Video Card: ATi Radeon X1950GT 512MB
Monitor: Samsung 22" at 1680 x 1050 resolution
Hard Drive: WD 36GB Raptor (for OS) & WD 250GB Caviar (for data)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP2Explain exactly how you run your test and I will emulate to make sure we do it exactly the same.
I'd also like to know what the SU performance is like on the 8800 GTX cards, so please let us know ppl.
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Julian...I just count the time from checking "shadows on" to seeing the shadows.
(just did a statistics check of the crowdtest file: 1.1mil edges, 770k faces, 38.9k components...doing this well on that much means I'm doing fine indeed :`)
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Well, then I don't understand this. We're doing it the same way. SU doesn't scale with the quadcore CPU I have, and your CPU is clocked faster.
Anybody got any ideas?
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It looks good but have you ever considered custom building one?
I imagine you could save a fair amount of money. 1500 bucks seems kind of steep to me, but then again, it is a pretty good rig. i would have to take the time to look up all the prices, but im pretty sure you could save a few hundred dollars if you are willing to forgo the support, I always do.Aside from my comments about saving money (im all about it) i dont think you can go wrong with that. A 3 ghz core2duo is a sickenly fast processor for the money, and with that 1333 mhz fsb you should have no issues using that ram. But there is the bottleneck, your FSB and motherboard will be much much faster than the memory. You more than likely wont notice it however. Besides, the memory that matches that FSB is crazy expensive still.
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Masta, fortunately the Core 2 architecture is of such a nature that you don't need high speed RAM to get it to perform well. Obviously faster & quicker RAM does benefit, but as you rightly stated, it comes at a premium (not only the RAM but the motherboard as well - DDR3 RAM and motherboards are rediculously expensive still).
All 3 machines I've had over the last 10 years I've custom built, I'm fortunate to have friends that help me if / when I can't fix things myself - which seldom happens. Besides, you always have the manufacturer warrentee to fall back on should a component fail.
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