We are looking at possibly building a computer for our animation/cad since our school computers can’t handle it. I hope i got this thread in the right place, also, sorry if i didnt. Anyway, does anybody have any recommendations on what video card to use? I was thinking possibly an Nvidia QuadroFX 700 or an ATI FireGL, paired with an Intel Pentium4 3.0GHZ and 1 to 2 GB of RAM. Any suggestions? there will of course be the things like hard drives/CD drives etc. etc.
Let me know of any suggestions, and don’t worry about explaining the technical stuff, like that i need a socket 478 processor or whatever, as i do have some knowledge about computers.
I don’t really think you need that killer of a card, unless you don’t have a budget limit, if not then maybe you should look into dual xeons =D
EDIT: I’m not too sure about animation, but for CAD, I use Inventor on my laptop, which has a ATI Mobility Radeon 5700 - 16MB Video RAM; lag isn’t too bad.
I’ll second that notion. You don’t really need a workstation class video card for animating unless you have an unlimited budget. Here’s why:
A spiffy super hot video card will only make modelling a little quicker and less jumpy. It also might make previews of your animation run a little faster or smoother. I think you’d be better served spending less money and getting a fast, (not bleeding edge) video card. Like something 6-months or a year old. Then spend all your money on a really fast processor and lots of ram. Also, you might look at the price for an AMD socket-939 based system as well, as they apparently are faster than pentiums in some rendering applications. A faster processor and more ram will cut a lot of time off your rendering, which is what really matters.
Also, If you have money left over after this spending spree, try to get a second box together. 3DS max will let you spawn an install onto other machines to use for network rendering so you can spread the workload and get things done even faster.
We have about a 1000 dollar budget, and we will meet it easily. If we didn’t have a budget however…
Dual Opterons
Nvidia Quadro FX 4000
16 GB of memory
OH YEAH!!!
But seriously, does anybody know whether ATI or Nvidia will perform better? THe FireGL’s are cheaper on newegg.com, but idk if the performance will be less…
From my experience (which is very little), CAD requires a lot more processor power then video card capabilities, so I guess it depends on if you are doing CAD or Animation. My crappy laptop with a 64 meg integrated video card runs inventor fine with a 3.0ghz CPU. Either way an Intel processor with 3.0+, HT possibly is a must. If you are going all out, I guess FireGL with PCI-Express. Ah yes and lots of RAM … don’t let your CAD die because you run out of memory (happened to me yesterday) and loose 2 hours of work.
For Inventor, I use a P4 2.4GHz,512mb RAM, Abit IS7 motherboard, 10K RPM SATA HD, Geforce FX5200 128mb video card. It works really well. There is some minor glitching with the Geoforce video card in inventor, but for the most part I like it a lot. Autodesk actually has a table on their site that shows what video cards are recommended and which ones aren’t. Sadly, I don’t believe my Geforce is a recommended one so maybe something like a Radeon would be better.
Here’s the main things that I see as necessary for a CAD computer to function well.
P4 Processor (Preferably 2.4GHz+)
512mb - 1Gb RAM
Video card with 128mb memory
decent motherboard/chipset
I would definitely have to second a workstation class vid card being overkill x10. It might make a difference if you were doing advanced character animation or CAD-ing complex assemblies like an entire car engine at once, but for robotics use, it would be a much better expenditure of money to sink money into your processor and RAM.
so basically its mostly processor power. weird. I am used to apps where its all about the video card. THis comp is being designed primarily for the 3ds Max, with possible CAD also. Would it be better to go AMD Athlon 64? I know that these are best for gaming and other 3d apps, but better for animation also? And if we could manage it, we could do maybe up to 4gb RAM and a sweet video card, possibly an nvidia Geforce 6800GT.
A hard drive can have a big effect on animation. Loading large uncompressed video in and out of memory can slow things down. Western digital 10,000 rpm SATA drives are fast. Two in a raid configuration are even nicer. If you do go with Raptors, pay close attention to the power supply and thermal loads. Compressing video is demanding on memory. Spend some money on good memory. Tom’s Hardware has some reviews of work station cards. Most work station cards are optimized for openGL. If the programs you use are not OpenGL or a mix, you might want to look at a high end game card and save some money. Don’t forget the monitor. Animation is best done on big screens LCD or CRT and they’re expensive. What I’m trying to point out is take the money you have and try for a balanced system and don’t just focus on the video card.
That stuff alone will total near 1000 dollars, CAD does not require a killer video card, nor does it require a top-of-the-line processor, but it does like to eat up quite a bit of RAM, though 4 GB’s of ram seems like a lot. I’m guessing the same goes with animation, but I don’t have any real experience. When I render a film using Adobe premiere it helps to have a faster processor, but when I’m actually editing, having more RAM makes things much faster.
As for your other questions, from my experience: AMD’s are known to be much faster and cheaper than Intel processors, but Intels usually last longer/are more reliable, and are better at multi-taking capabilites (especially if you have hyperthreading), which could be a good thing for Animation.
ATi’s and nVidia cards are about the same in speed and quality; ATi is just slightly faster, nVidia cards seem more reliable, usually. Personally, I always go with Intel and nVidia products.
With a 1000 dollar budget, I’d stick with an AMD processor and an ATi card and stuff a lot of fans in there. The more powerful components you get the more complications you’re going to need to resolve (like excess heat and power consumption, all which take more money).
He DOES however want to use this computer to do animation. Well, here is the bottom line, the better the card you have, the faster it will render frames. If CAD is your main concern, then it’s not soo much a big deal.
4GB of RAM seems like a bit much. Perhaps tone that down to 1GB and get a little bit slower processor (2.8GHz) and a little bit cheaper graphics card and perhaps squeaze two computers out of your budget?
Just a little personal workstation experience. I run a Dell 530 Low End workstation for PRO/E with the following:
Dual 1.5 GHz Intel Xeon Processors (Not necessary PRO/E is designed for single processor machines)
1.5 GB RAM (Worth it, see below)
NVidea Quadro2 Pro Video card (3rd card is the charm, I already burned up 2)
This is a three year old machine on which I manipulate 3-d models of power plants with few issues. When I got it I had 756 MB of RAM and had trouble. Since I got the upgrade I’ve had no trouble. The additional processor speed on newer machines doesn’t make a big difference in their performance like the RAM. The NVidea is impressive but when I fail that about once a year it makes me leary of them. As it is the IT department always wonders what I will call them with next :eek: .
As it is I can run the student version of the software at home on my PC (1.8 GHz P4, 500 MB RAM) and the limiting factor for model size is RAM.
BTW I also do the occasional photorealistic render from CAD on my workstation as well.
Pentium 4 3.0E LGA 775
Gigabyte Mobo, 865P chipset
1GB (2x512) Corsair Value select RAM
Sapphire Radeon 9600XT
120GB SATA HDD
CDRW drive
17" LCD monitor
Case with 400W PSU
I’d personally go with a Socket 478 CPU, namely the Pentium 4 2.4C or the 2.8C. A good Socket 478 board will be cheaper than an LGA 775 board and thus would allow you to move up to the i875 chipset series. Also the Pentium 4 C series (Northwood core, 512KB L2 Cache) have a lower operating temperature range, which will allow for less exotic cooling systems. Other than that, a great system for pretty much anything. It will perform workstation-class tasks with easy.
The last workstation-class system I used was a Pentium 4 2.0GHz (Socket 423), 256MB of dual-channel PC1066 RDRAM, and a Quadro4 750XGL. That i850-based system was the most stable computer I ever used, but it is not tremendously powerful by today’s standards.
Unless you are doing very serious rendering/CAD/CAM/CAE, a terribly (excessively) powerful computer will be useless and will just consume lots of power. I used Inventor for three years on a Pentium 166MHz, 64MB RAM, and a 2MB ATI mach64 (i could get 15fps in wireframe mode!). I never could use 3ds max on it however…