system specs

[Anonymous]

Hi, my employer is planning to buy a new Dell workstation, whose primary purpose will be for sculpting with Mudbox. I've read through the "certified hardware" PDFs, and through some old forum postings, and come up with two recommendations. I am hoping that someone here can take a look at the two systems below, and let me know:

1) given the price of the system, am I putting my money in the right place
2) are there significant gains to be made by spending a little bit more.

Option 1 (about $4200 US)

Dell Precision T5500 Workstation
Operating System: Genuine Window s® 7 Professional, No Media, 64-bit, English
Processor: Dual Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5630, 2.53GHz,12M L3, 5.86GT/s, turbo
Memory: 6GB, DDR3 RDIMM Memory, 1333MHz, ECC (6 DIMMS)
Graphics: 2GB NVIDIA® Quadro® 4000, DUAL MON, 2DP & 1DVI
Hard Drive Configuration: C1 All SATA or SSD drives, Non-RAID, 1 drive
Boot Hard Drive: 500GB SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ and 16MB DataBurst Cache™

option 2 (about $6500 US)

Dell Precision T7500 Workstation
Operating System: Genuine Window s® 7 Professional, No Media, 64-bit, English
Processor: Six Core Intel® Xeon® Processor X5670, 2.93GHz,12M L3, 6.4GT/s, turbo
Memory: 12GB, DDR3 RDIMM Memory, 1333MHz, ECC (6 DIMMS)
Graphics: 2.5GB NVIDIA® Quadro® 5000, DUAL MON, 2DP & 1DVI
Hard Drive Configuration: C1 All SATA or SSD drives, Non-RAID, 1 drive
Boot Hard Drive: 500GB SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ and 16MB DataBurst Cache™

I noticed that the six-core Xeon processor is not on the list of certified hardware. Should this cause concern?

Thanks for taking the time to look at this! Chris

[RobinBall6995]

One thing that I'd point out is that 6gig isn't all that much RAM, so the fact that the first one only has 6 gig and it's in 6 1 gig sticks is a bit cheap considering how much it costs. I guess that will fill all the slots on the mothboard meaning to upgrade you'll need to throw out some of that RAM. If those machines come with 12 slots that wouldn't be an issue. But I'd be looking for 2gig sticks. Something to check into.

It also seems a bit cheap that they don't come with windows disks. Having it on a DVD is good for emergencies such as hard disk failures. With my laptop there's a restore partition and it asks you to burn it to your own DVDs. I guess it's the same deal here. How cheap is that?

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your reply Robinball, It is helpful to know that 6GB is considered low. I agree that not including a DVD for the OS seems silly. Based on what I've learned, I have priced out another system, and I have a few specific questions regarding the configuration:

Dell Precision T7500 Workstation
Operating System: Genuine Windows® 7 Professional, No Media, 64-bit, English
Processor: Quad Core Intel® Xeon® Processor E5640, 2.66GHz,12M L3, 5.86GT/s, turbo
Memory: 12GB, DDR3 RDIMM Memory, 1333MHz, ECC (6 DIMMS)
2.5GB NVIDIA® Quadro® 5000, DUAL MON, 2DP & 1DVI
Graphics: C1 All SATA or SSD drives, Non-RAID, 1 drive total configuration
Boot Hard Drive: 500GB SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ and 16MB DataBurst Cache™

My Questions:

1) Is there any advantage in getting a dual-processor system?
2) Which would serve me better, a faster quad-core processor, or by a six-core processor?
3) Is the Nvidia, Tesla GPU something that Mudbox takes advantage of?

The GPU would cost about as much as an upgrade to 24GB RAM, or a processor upgrade, and I am curious as to which of these three options would be more helpful.

Thanks!

[a3dcreator]

i wouldnt upgrade the video card.
the only thing mudbox uses mainly from the video card is the Memory and bandwidth.

dont quote me on it though but i think the tesla might be a little too much.

the video card youve selected is good enough to do what you need to do.

[webbyeasy]

I'm having a lot of problems with the new Quadro 5000 and mudbox, tested with certified drivers and still having issues.

[Christoph_Schaedl]

and the issues are..?

[webbyeasy]

baking AO maps don't work, just comes out back. Same scene works on another computer with older card.

Crashing when stepping up or down on an existing scene sculpted on another computer.

[Anonymous]

No problems whatsoever with a quadro 580.. perf drop after multiple 4k layers on, thou 🙂

[BvC_Prod]

Hiya,

It's been a while since you've posted, asking for advice on specs for a Dell machine optimized for workflow in Mudbox. I'm curious how you came out, thanks for sharing specs if you will. I have two machines, neither of them behaving well with Mudbox (and Meshmixer), Maya and ZBrush work fine, just these two programs cause major issues locking up on fbx and obj files with just over 4 million polys, which I'm seeing is super low, should be able to handle that fine.

machine 1: Windows 7 Professional, Intel (CR) Core (TM) i7-3770K CPU @ 3.50 GHz 4.50 GHz, 16 GB RAM, 64-bit

machine 2: Mac Pro, Dual Intel Duo Core upgraded to 8-Core, 2.66 GHz, 16 GB RAM, OSX 10.7.5

Thanks, if you can share your specs and what's the max poly count you're working with effortlessly in Mudbox.

Best,

Benjy

[-MM-]

what is your graphics card ?

Mudbox requires a video card with solid opengl capabilities and high video memory.

Maya uses video card too but only for opengl compute.

Zbrush on the other hand has nothing to do with video cards, zbrush is completely dependent on CPU and RAM.

as for Mudbox, I have been using GTX 460 and works pretty well. It isnt the fastest but it is stable and all features in Mudbox works.

[BvC_Prod]

Hi. Thanks for your help.

My Mac Pro has ATI Radeon HD 5770 (BTW, running in 64-bit), Windows machine has NVidia Ge Force GTX-650Ti

I believe the NVidia has 2GB RAM, but Meshmixer will open but instantly locks up. I'd prefer to stay on the Mac side, my Maya and Mudbox licenses are there, could possibly switch over if that were the path of least resistance.

You indicate Mudbox is heavily dependent on openGL capabilities, I found this online:

Year Model GPU capable of supported in 10.7.4 Lion supported in 10.8.2 Mountain Lion






2012 MacPro ATI Radeon HD 5770 4.2 3.2 3.2

I'm concerned that my base model was Intel Duo Dual Core 2.66, which I upgraded to 8-core, so may I be running into gaps left in the wake of the upgrade?

Thanks for your time!
Benjy


??????????????????????????????
Benjamin von Cramon

http://www.bvcproductions.com

home studio 678.560.1805
cell 678.283.2557


2266 Old Sewell Road
Marietta, GA 30068-3451

[-MM-]

Radeon HD 5770 seems to support openGL 3.2 only and i am not sure whether that is the issue here.

all latest cards support openGL 4.3

check to see if you can update your card drivers to support latest opengl

[BvC_Prod]

Hi. I looked into upgrading openGL drivers, which led to a system update page, but this link suggests 8.3 is still only using openGL 3.2. And this link is Autodesk's hardware profiler that states Mudbox was tested and passed using Mac Pro Mid 2010 with my graphics card Radeon 5770, so wouldn't seem to be the choke.

I've got a 3-way call in an hour with a senior tech at Autodesk and a consultant, we'll look at this issue, maybe there's a clue in the log file.

thanks,

Benjy


??????????????????????????????
Benjamin von Cramon

http://www.bvcproductions.com

home studio 678.560.1805
cell 678.283.2557


2266 Old Sewell Road
Marietta, GA 30068-3451

[FalconCrest]

I know more VRam the better, is a Geforce Titan other then the price, really needed ?

[BvC_Prod]

I've discovered the issue, it's not polycount, rather the size and number of texture maps. I believe that would hinge on RAM, but perhaps VRAM also, have 2GB of it, you'd think that's plenty.



??????????????????????????????
Benjamin von Cramon

http://www.bvcproductions.com

home studio 678.560.1805
cell 678.283.2557


2266 Old Sewell Road
Marietta, GA 30068-3451