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.

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.

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.

Welcome to the forum Bill, it's me Scoob aka Danny over in this wonderful forum. Since I have joined the contest I would also like to invite the gang here at SkerchUcation forum to check it out and if you guys would like to join you are all welcome.

See you their and lets get Sketchuping....does that make any sense?!?!?

Danny

Hi everyone and thanks for all the positive comments. I'm sorry for being MIA for a while but I have a medical emergency with my dad and I'm out of the country right now and can't access my files.

@RayOchoa, No problem my friend, I just have to get back home to do it. Updates soon

@igor, since my last update I have redone the bikes body design and tweaked a few things and it looks a lot cleaner now. I have taken some of your and others suggestions, so thanks. When I get back home I'll post the updated bike.

@lapx, Yes, I created all the components. This is my first bike ever in SU...I guess I just have an eye for it.

Danny

I think that is a little better, you can see more details now.

Click on image to enlarge.

I'm no motorcycle engineer this is just what came out of my imagination so if you see a few design boo boos I did it cause it either looked good or I'm still working on it.

I'm working on that right now, as you can see I'm still getting a grip of rendering but I think I'll get there with some help from you good people.

Thank you for your comments, still a WIP I'll fine tune this bike although I'm still learning my way around KT... I have a long way to go yet.

Here are a few closeup detailed shots.

In this pic I integrated the "Stop" and "Park/Signal" lights right in to the tailpipes......smooth ahhh!!!

danny

Thanks guys, the SU side of things was easy enough but I think I have a long ways to go with KT. The rendering was to be set in a SEMA show case scene display hence all the "Bling".

Here are a few early test renders with differant color and background.

The bike in SU

Renderded in KT, no textures add yet.

Cue music of Comaro (Bubble Bee) enterance from the Transformer Movie. Full textured and rendered.

I'm still learning my way around KT so to all you KT gurus out their your comments are very welcome.

I still have a few more thing to touch up but at least 98% done.

Thanks guys, and don't tell anyone only Mulder and Sully knows the true.

While doing some research on this I was able to find a True Type font of the lettering found on the UFO. This is SketchUp in the Isaac Font.

Here is one of the said UFO photo.

As you may or may not know, recently their has been a lot of interest in some recent photos of a UFO. This is my rendition of that UFO, the Isaac Drone.

This is still a work in progress. I rendered in KT and this is only in clay.

Ivica, want to go for "PINKS"?

I've been working on my own concept bike too. Then I saw yours. Awesome as always Ivica.

Reminds me of bikes like the one in that Final Fantacy movies or the StormHawks series and the Akira Bike (Japanese Anime).

I'll post my bike when I get it all done.

Keep blowing our minds dude.

You have a point their Dylan, I guess you have to look at it in the grand scale of thing now and the unforeseen future.

It's just mind blowing how fast technology moves now a days. You get the latest gear and two months later it's obsolete already.

Thanks remus, I really don't multi task heavily and for now I can get a E8400 for a very affordable price. I can upgrade to a quad core later in the year as the prices go down a bit.

It's just to bad that SU is not taking advantage of multi core processing.

Now what to do about a GPU....

Okay guys, need some input here.

As you may or may not know Intel came out with their new line of 45nm CPU this year. And I'm ready to go for it.

I'm torn between the Q9450 quad core (which just got avialble today) and the E8400 dual core that has been out since last month. I do some music editing, Photoshop, and a bit of gaming now and then but my main concern is, would SU benifit from "Dual" or "Quad" cores?

I have seen great thing from the E8400 overclocking wise in reaching 4Ghz at 1.2 - 1.3 vcore and I think my rig can acommplish that. No real review yet of the preformance of the Q9450...still waiting.

So I homblly asking you opintion on this to help me narrow down my choices. TY

Yup, deslecting hardware acceleration sucks big time but surprisingly I have not felt the slowdown. I'm working on several file, one at 7Mb and another at 12Mb and it been smooth so far may be just a tad slow on the resonce but still workable.

Hi Juju,

Yes heat is the enemy of all computers. Actully I'm pretty good at that department as my CPU and GPU are watercooled and my NB and SB have third party heatsinks/fan coolers. As it is...

CPU: 36c/36c Idle, 54c/54c Prime Loaded (each temp per core)
NB: 34c Idle, 36c Prime Loaded
SB: 31c , 34c Prime Loaded
GPU 41c, 45c Prime Loaded
Memory: Never seen it past 45c (Fan cooled)

All heavy games running for hours and nothing. Prime, Memtest, OCCT load testing passed at 3.8GHz and my 24/7 settings at 3.6GHz. I unchecked "Use hardware acceleration" and so far it has been working fine for the passed 2-3 hours. I will revert back to double check on the outcome and post result later.

Thanks Juju

Thanks pmiller, I remember that thread I was the last poster, up to that time I had no issues with SU all this just seem to have started about a week ago. I guess it may be the card, at least through that thread and others with ATI cards. I'll see if I can contact ATI for more info and hope they add a fix on their new driver release.

I'll post feed back when I get some (I hope) from ATI.