Hardware for Rendering and Animation

[dogarila]

I know this question is coming up from time to time but I will put it again (things change):

What will be an optimum configuration to run reasonably well SW2007, Animator and Photoworks? Processor, videocard, memory, monitor, etc.

Your answer will be greatly appreciate. If you send me to "Search", please give me the keyword to search for. The FAQs in this matter are quite old so, I guess, not very useful.

Thanks

 

[ctopher]

Two great sites:

http://www.robrodriguez.com/

http://www.scottjbaugh.com/Tips_Tricks/Hardware Recommendations.htm

...and search through the FAQs above.

Chris
SolidWorks 06 5.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 10-27-06)

 

[rockguy]

Definately spend money on the fastest proccesor you can afford. Dual Core, quad Core, multiple processors, etc. PhotoWorks and Animator will multithread and this will greatly improve performance.

Ram is also a good investment and I would reccomend no less than 2 gigs and no more than 4 gigs unless you have a 64 bit OS.

I like 20" widescreen monitors but I noticed the 24" widescreens are about $600 at Dell. Thats pretty cheap.

I'm not sure about the video card. I typically buy a midrange Nvidea card. Something with 256 megs of ram. I think the larger your assemblies the more video memory you'll want?

Rob Rodriguez CSWP

http://www.axiscadsolutions.com

http://www.robrodriguez.com

http://designsmarter.typepad.com/rob_rodriguez/

President:

http://www.nvtswug.com

SW 2007 SP 2.0

 

[CorBlimeyLimey]

The term "to run reasonably well" is too subjective. Some people understand and can accept having to wait several (many ?) hours for a rendered animation, some others think several minutes is too long.

Your budget is the determining factor of what acceptable performance will be.

 

[007bondy]

Heres another suggestion and solidworks wont like this ,use another rendering program that is what i am having to do because I cant afford the extra 5000 it would cost to go up to solidworks office (it cost me over 11000 just to buy the program) I would like to be able to use photoworks as well as animator those are the only 2 components Iwould like to add to my licence but to get them Ihave to have another 5gs (+/_and another bunch of stuff dont require) so I have been doing a bit of research you can save sw parts out as igs and sats ect ect and Ihave found a free program for renderings called blender. I think once I get my head around how it works (not exactly windows standard interface)it will be a lot of fun to do renderings and animations of my sw creations.
As to hardware go for top end cpus (they do the grunt work) intel conroe dualies (6800ee would be the best at moment.) Intel currently has best performing cpus but dont knock a high end opteron system (i think pixar uses them from memory).
Memory as per above recomendations
Yep dell has good prices on 24" screens (as seen 2 months ago)
Cheers lads

 

[bvanhiel]

007bondy,

Are those dollars? Are you in the US? If so you need to change your reseller. My guess is that you're in Australia, in which case you're still paying almost twice as much as in the US.

-b

 

[007bondy]

bvanhiel
Close mate I am in New Zealand ;-) (we are not part of aussie ,they be 2000 clicks away! )
Part of the reason sw costs so much is our bad dollar vs American dollar + GST(12.5% Goods and Services Tax)
There is only one reseller in NZ so there happens to be a monopoly for them (MS anyone??)
The VAR actually is very good and I have no complaints about them and their service especially my account manager.
He has been very supportive.
Cheers lads

 

[Theophilus]

Intel stuff seems to trump AMD's offering as performance goes (for now), but check out how inexpensive that performance is coming from AMD--crazy! I paid $1,000 for my FX-60 chip in January (and it's since paid for itself several times), and look what it goes for now.

Multiple cores for rendering makes the time fly, particularly in animations when you've got so many frames to render.

Check out the Cadalyst.com reviews--recent stuff on multiple cores puts Xi Computer at the top of the value heap once again. Good stuff to read when considering what to buy for such a machine, whether building yourself or getting a system pre-built like I do with Xi.

If you're stuck with a practical but limited 32-bit OS, enable the /3GB switch in your boot.ini file and get up to 3GB of usable RAM. (Even with less RAM, the switch will work for you to limit the RAM allocated to the porky XP OS.)



Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.