the best coputer you could buy

[Anonymous]

Could anybody could help me, by telling me the best computer you could buy for 3d max 2008 users?
PLS
Roberto.

[DarrenP]

how much money are you willing to spend?

[Anonymous]

about 2,500 to 3,000

[Anonymous]

Whoa! If your willing to spend that much, you could buy a very powerful system. Cyberpower has some really good systems, that don't cost an awful lot.
For 3 grand you could probably get a QX9650 processor or a Q6700 processor, 4 GB RAM (you must have a 64-bit OS to use 4 GB), an Nvidia 8700M GT graphics card, or even a 8800 GT, and a pretty good case, cooling and all the extra components. Mainly for 3ds Max 2008, you'd want to have a good processor, lots of memory (the more the better) a 64-bit OS (if you want 4 GB of RAM or more), and a pretty good graphics card, your graphics card doesn't have to be extremely amazing though, unless you do lots of video compositing and editing.

[Tim_Wilbers]

What are you going to do with the system? What type of work?

One monitor or two, or three, or four; how much real-estate do you want to use (I have 2 19" FPD and things can get crowded).

Are you going to do high-resolution stills of high-polygon count scenes (>2million), or lower but material intensive?

Are you going to do complex animations and need to have a high FPS viewport playback?

How much file storage room do you anticipate?

Are you going to be doing any post editing work?

[Anonymous]

I`ll use it for complex 3d animation and some post ,
The storage should be large, 2 monitors
high resolution stills and material intensive

[eodeo]

This is repost from another page I replied to with some minor corrections:

Seams like you’ve got the money to get a decent system.

Get yourself:

CPU
Intel core 2 quad 6600, 2.4Ghz, 8mb L2 cache ~240$

GPU
AMD/ATi 3870 512mb graphic card ~200$. You cant beat its 3d performance, its up to 3x faster in vertex processing than nVidia’s 8800ultra and that one will handily beat any quadro you throw its way.

The rest:

Ram
8GB of ram ~220$ most manufacturers are just fine- kingston, patriot, transcend, corsair…

motherboard:
Asus P5E3 deluxe motherboard X38 ~350$
Asus p5k deluxe motherboard P35 ~220$
Gigabyte P35 DS3R ~150$ (my perference)

Both will do you just fine, X38 is newer and has a whole lot of useless stuff. P35 mobo has just plenty of usless stuff, but not as much. Both exelent mobos.

HDD
Western Digital WD Caviar SE16 – wd2500ks ~70$
Your system drive
Western Digital WD Caviar SE16 - wd7500aaks ~200$
Storage drive

Case
ATX Case: CoolerMaster CM690 - 70$

.
.
Total 1180$ (with the X38 motherboard)
.
.

Also consider this mouse:
Logitech MX 400 Corded Mouse +40$

Also get yourself a win xp x64, or even vista x64 and a monitor of your choosing and you’re good to go.

If you still have more money to burn, donate to a charity, intel/nvidia have enough. Although, you can get best processor to date c2qx 9775. That one is a bit over 1k$, and offers 10-20% faster speed at stock than c2q 6600. C2Q 6600 can be overclocked for "free" to 3.0ghz to match 9775 speed. Than again you can overclock 9775 to 4ghz with relative ease, but that’s another story.

[Anonymous]

eodeo
Thanks for your help I`ll do exactly what you are telling me.

And Austin Zago
It`s impresive that at your age you are doing those sences.



Robin

[Anonymous]

My office just picked up 2 of these...
All of the parts were ordered from www.newegg.com

Case: LIAN LI PC-A70B
Power Supply: FSP Group Everest 1010
CPU: 2 - Intel Xeon E5420 2.5 Ghz Quad Core
Motherboard: Ausu Z7S WS
RAM: Patriot Viper 12GB DDR2 6400 (2GBx6)
Video Card: BFG GeForce 9800GX2
Hard Drives: 2 -Segate 500GB SATAII Raid-0
CD: Lite Combo Drive

Win Vista x64

Grand Total with tax and S/H
$3,222

These computers tear it up!!!!

[Anonymous]

I'm configuring a new computer "server" just for rendering, and I would like to no if the video card does influence if we don’t do any creation just rendering on that server.

i've put an ASUS DSBV-DX DUAL XEON with an on board 32 mb do i need to get an other video card and if yes can some one orient me to a good one that fit on that board.

Thanks all.

[eodeo]

Get the cheapest PCI-E graphic card you can find. All of the PCI-E cards will fit your system. Graphics card is in no way responsible for final rendering. So, like I said, the cheapest one will do… But I assume you already have one since it’s a finished system, in which case u don’t need anything.

If you want the best 3d creation graphic card get ATi/AMD HD3870. That’s it.

I’m sorry i couldn’t understand perfectly what exactly are you asking, so I gave you both case scenarios as well I understood the question.

[Anonymous]

The computer is still at my dealer. The problem with that board is that it's not possible to put standard PCI-E. So i will need to find a PCI card between 200$ ans 500$. If i can use the onboard card at 32 mb i'll do it. Is there a minimum requirement for the video card when you install 3dsmax 2008

thanks

[eodeo]

I wasn’t aware that there are any new motherboards that don’t support PCI-E. The newest version 2.0 is backwards compatible (meaning you can plug in pcie 2 graphic card in pcie 1 motherboard)

32 mb

this is 2nd time you say this. I assumed its 32 gigabytes (gb) first time i read it, and now i have to ask. 32gb is huge amount for system ram (unnecessary imho) and 32mb for graphic card is insufficient today, even low end cards have at least 64mb, afaik.

Imo, 8gb is more than enough for most work. 16gb might be cool in some situations. I know top end productions must use huge amounts of ram, but I didn’t get to fully utilize my 8gb. And that really depends on what you do. If you have highly complex characters with hair or huge amounts of grass, than yes, you will need 8+gb. If not, even 8gb is more than enough.

So i will need to find a PCI card between 200$ ans 500$.

PCI graphic cards died some time before 1998. AGP took over about than and has ruled until 2004 when PCI-E was introduced. AGP is slowly but surely dying and PCI-E 1 is getting obsolete now too.

For less than 200$ you can buy THE best graphic card for 3d content creation, the aforementioned ATi/AMD HD3870. For rendering only system this is unnecessary, and you can get away with "HD2400pro" or less (if there is such thing as less expensive than that one (i think its 50$ or so)) since it has 0 impact on rendering times. Any graphic card will work with max. It only needs to be able to display video. It doesn’t even have to have to be able to accelerate 3d. That said, you’d be hard pressed to find such a card today.

Good luck. I hope this helps 🙂

[Anonymous]

the best PC will set you back a lot more than your budget i'm affraid.

i'd go with an intel skulltrail dual socket mainboard
2x intel QX9775 socket 771 quad chips
at least 8gb fb-ddr2-ram
nvidia gf9800gx2 card with 1gb ram
antec p180 case with decent PSU (+1000watt)

but like i said, a bit steep because of the 2x €1300 quadcore chips
you can however use 2 less expensive xeon chips which will lower the system price a lot

good luck
kurt

[eodeo]

9800gx2 is not so good in max since it has 2 GPUs on board and max can use only one. Additionally 9800gtx is very slightly overclocked 8800gts (512) with new name. 9800gx2 uses even lover clocks than 8800gts making it actually slower for max (as it uses only one of 2 gpus)

All of those nvida cards have effective 128 (9800gx2 has 2x128 but not in max) processors while ATi/AMD HD3870 has 320(!) that work more efficiently under 3d, so even though it has only 2.5x more processors it works up to 3x faster in max viewports.

If you game, nvidia line is much better, and 9800gx2 is the top dog now for games.

Skulltrail is ridiculously overpriced, but its better than server station i guess. For people wanting 8 cores on single system it’s the beset price/performance.

For sane/budget buyers performance gains of 2x c2q 9775 over overclocked c2q 6600 @ 3.6ghz is about 60%. So you pay about 13x more for 0.6x more performance. I call that… not good enough.
For reference, it's 120% faster if you use stock c2q 6600- making it 1.2x slower than 2x9775 on skulltrail -

default 2 default it’s 13x more $ for 1.2x speed. You could get another c2q 6600 machine and render in network. You save 1000% (yes, 1k percent) on processors alone.

[Anonymous]

i know, but he did ask for the best system not the most sane one 🙂
you can't build an 8 core with the q6600 though

ill have to look into the nvidia vs ati though, i have had very bad experiences with ati cards and only good ones with nvidia
maybe things have changed, thx for the info

[eodeo]

but he did ask for the best system not the most sane one

Skulltrail is ridiculously overpriced, but its better than server station i guess. For people wanting 8 cores on single system it’s the beset price/performance.

/

you can’t build an 8 core with the q6600 though

And the only reason you cant, is because Intel wants to cache in on the multi core users. It’s same for nvidia if you look at it. Most cards can do SLI today, but it was a privilege of the top end cards before. And even now, triple SLI can only be done on the GTX/Ultra line of the cards. Are those cards so much better than the rest? Heck no. Do they cost arm and the leg to get one? Yes. You pay 3x premium for 2x more speed, compared to a single card.

What I suggested with c2q 6600 was to get another separate system and use it for network rendering. Complete rendering ready satellite can be had for ~500$ based on c2q 6600. If room is not an issue, it easily beats anything else in price/performance. Than again, room is always an issue.

ill have to look into the nvidia vs ati though, i have had very bad experiences with ati cards and only good ones with nvidia
maybe things have changed, thx for the info

As far as I can tell, as bad as nvidia drivers are, they are still much better than ati’s. All the numbers I gave here are from other sites and reviews. I have not yet personally tried the ATI card I recommend so much. I own 8800gtx and its top notch for both Max AND games. ATi might be 3x faster in Max, but I already have 200fps+ in viewports on all of my scenes+ my games run 30% faster than the ati card would run them.

And another thing- you might feel that 9800gx2 is inadequate in some way since 3ds max utilizes only one core and those are clocked slower than 8800gts- that’s all true, but what I didn’t clearly say is that its 3ds max performance is stellar nonetheless, and game performance is second to none.