buying a new pc need suggestions!

[percydaman]

both amd and Intel are developing dual core processors that have effectively 2 processors on one die, each with their own cache.

[DaForce]

zuliban:
BOXX are good but pretty expensive. Your best bet would be to buy the part seperately and get someone you know how is good with computer to put it together, you can save quite abit. But depending on your situation and money levels may as well get a BOXX.

Ram, is "basically" high speed temporary storage. Programs put things into the ram as its quicker to access. So when your rendering it will allow max to access all it needs via the RAM, if you dont have enough ram it starts getting it from the harddisk which is much much much much slower. So you want to get as much ram as you can afford. It also depends on how much you will need as well.

More RAM doesnt necessarily mean that you renders will be fast. Especially on smaller scenes that dont use that much RAM. Like if you render a room full of teapots the RAM usage might be 300mb, so no matter how much RAM you have aslong as you have 300mb it will render the same (excluding system overheads..etc.). Now if your scene requires 2gb of RAM, and you machine has less than 2GB it will start accessing the harddisk and slowing the render down alot, where as if you have more than 2GB of ram then its quicker as it accesses it all thru RAM. So more RAM wont speed things up unless your running out of RAM on big projects and it starts accessing the harddisk.

So if all your do is simple to moderate scenes, you could get away with 1.5gb or so of RAM, if you plan on doing big complex buildings or scene with lots particles and huge textures (for example) then you would need more RAM.

Now RAM also helps general windows running as well, also makes a difference in Game load times. For instance my friend has 512mb , I have 1gb on certain games i will load a level 30% faster its pretty handy.

So yeah, more RAM is helpfull in certain situations in rendering but it all depends on the type of work you do. I always say get as much as you can afford without sacrificing more important items like CPU.

About the Quardo card, like i said earlier it may not be worth the extra money. You could get a high end gaming card and be damn close in terms of performance, and save lots of $$$

[Thoe99]

I used to have problems with AMD's heating up. I guess my case was designed poorly. So I took my side panel out and put a house fan to it, $10 fix. Cooling problem solved.

[ihavenofish]

hmmm
i've seen this "amd's run hot and get unstable" comment alot, online and from friends, yet in our farm of literally hundereds of amd chips of all types, we dont have many overheating issues as long as the room stays at a reasonable temperature. and the intel chips overheat too, which stands to reason considering they output alot more heat.

everytime i hear of someone's chip overheating, legitimately, not just hearsay, i just shake my head. often times they have usually installed some fancy aftermarket heatsink in a glowing neon chassis.

if you buy an amd cpu retail kit, it comes with a heatsink. a boring non led lit, ugly heatsink. this little thermodynamic marvel was DESIGNED for the chip in the box with it. in an appropriately designed case in an adequately ventilated room, it WILL keep your processor running flawlessly.

there are of course several people who use this heatsink and run into issues. just like there are people with overheating xeons. you know what the simple solution is? make use of that 3 year warranty and RETURN it. it's DEFECTIVE. this happens. amd would not release a chip with a fan that is not adequate. neither would intel. if your chip does not run at the specified environmental conditions, which inclued the boxed heatsink, then you have a chip that doesnt meet spec and should be returned to amd so they can provide you with one that does.

make sense? good.

about ram.. on a 32 bit system assuming you have the 3gb switch on xp enabled, 2gb is about the limit for ram being usefull. more than that and its either unused or make the system a bit unstable. all our machines have 2gb. without the switch, say if your running 2k, 1-1.5gb is the sweetspot, 2gb seems to again make things a bit unstable. there is a thread here somewhere about this.

on processor speed, i find amd opterons to have a bit of edge over xeons on most rendering, but in some situations, like using scanline, this can reverse a bit. hyperthreading by most accounds is a bit flakey with max, and when it does work, does not seem to provide a huge speed increase. it seems that the more multi-thread optimised an app is, the less ht makes a difference.

i personnaly like opterons, if only for their future proof quality. you wont need to chuck it as we get more and more 64 bit apps.

on video cards for fast viewport performance, the quadro 4000 seems nice even with some flakey drivers though, nvidia cards always seems to me a bit better than ati for max. especially in opengl (i cant stand direct-x). i'd personally get the fastest nvidia card you can afford.

hope some of that was helpfull.

later

[MarioRothenbuehler]

hi all

@home i have a dual AMD 2 Ghz with 1 gig memory and a fast ati card
@work i have a dual xeon 3.2, 2 gig memory and a fx3000 with 2 19" panels

what i can say.... the workflow with 2 gigs and the Hyperthreading on the xeon is a lot better then on my AMD

but for the price of the xeon i can buy 3 dual amd's !!!

is all about price !
when you dont have time to play with your machine... because he overheat and all other little problems.... buy a DELL workstation.....

/.mario'

[Thoe99]

...everytime i hear of someone's chip overheating, legitimately, not just hearsay, i just shake my head. often times they have usually installed some fancy aftermarket heatsink in a glowing neon chassis...

My overheating problem stemmed from the days I used to run the Thunderbird chip. That had serious heating issues. It would crash under heavy usage often, and that's when I put the house fan to my computer. I even bought the best benchmarked heatsinks with silver thermal compound (no neons). Since I've upgraded, I don't really need the fan anymore, but it's a peace of mind knowing my computer gets all the ventilation and cool air it needs, esp when I'm rendering under time pressure.

[paulison]

Man im really not looking forward to 40degC summer this year as im crammed into a small room with 4 pcs and no ventillation (not good)

I turn my AMD off because its just too fricking noisy! My main PC is a P4 2.8 but it overheats in summer. Anyway, I'm sticking to intel but will not be getting the latest 3.2-3.4 chips due to heat concerns.

I think the optimal intel solution at the moment is a dual 3.0Ghz Xeon with 800Mhz fsb and 2Gb ram as it is a balance between speed, cost and cooling problems. No doubt an AMD is cheaper though!

I think a 3.4 Xeon is about twice the price of a 3.0 Xeon at the moment?