We want to buy a Rendering Computer

[Anonymous]

Hi guys our office would like to buy or have built a computer just for rendering our models.

I am wondering if you guys have any advice on what we should make sure we have to be as fast as possible.

We would also like to run Vista for this.

Thanks.

-Oh and our Z Corp 3D printer arrived and is being instaled today!

[Dwight]

Jesikuh123 wrote:
-Oh and our Z Corp 3D printer arrived and is being instaled today!

The bile of envy rises in my throat.

[Anonymous]

I suggest getting something that is Quad Core ready with 8 gigs of ram and the latest in graphics card... (perhaps something that is dx10 ready)...

I just described what I want for Christmas

Hope this helps.

[henrypootel]

Depends what your budget is, but i would go for a Core 2 Quad, 2 if possible. Make sure you Max out the RAM and a decent gamers graphics card. Unless it's going to be a workstation as well, in which case go for a Quadro(the 1400 is a good option).
Also, stick with Windows XP. It's is still much faster than Vista and is due for another Service pack in the New Year which has been shown to give another 10% speed increase. Make sure you use the 64-bit edition though so you can throw a bunch of RAM at it.

[Anonymous]

Hey,

What software are you going to render in? For example ArchiCAD, using Lightworks, can use one of the dual cores at a time and a max of 2 GB.

Other software is more optimized for dual, quad & 8 Cores, etc.

Now I use it for Lightworks and that lets me have 2 projects rendering while I use another ArchiCAD session to work on another project. This causes absolutely no slow down for me, which is great.

But like I said you need to look at what software you are going to use for rendering and then specify a computer that is optimized for that software.

Rules to live by in rendering, always get the fastest processors and lots of RAM to handle whatever you throw at it.

Dwight correct me if I'm wrong on the Dual Core thing and the RAM in ArchiCAD/Lightworks.

Hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

henrypootel wrote:
Also, stick with Windows XP.

Yes, I agree.
It will run much faster on Windows XP (Professional).
Windows Vista has to much of a Graphic interface which tends to slow things down as well.

[Karl Ottenstein]

If you use Artlantis, check out some of the benchmark results for different configurations here:
http://www.abvent.com/support/forum/read.php?fid=atl_general_us&mes=5486

Presumably, other multithreaded packages such as C4D would have similar results.

Rumors are that the Mac Pro (tower) will be upgraded to Intel's latest processors 'soon', including even faster bus speed. I really cannot recommend Vista (stick with XP Pro), but remember that you can buy a Mac and just boot it into Windows. So, don't let your requirement for a windows PC exclude Apple hardware. 😉

Karl

[Anonymous]

Rodrigo wrote:
What software are you going to render in? For example ArchiCAD, using Lightworks, can use one of the dual cores at a time and a max of 2 GB.

Try setting the the anti-alias slider bar to the notch below best. Magically Lightworks starts using all cores available!!

See these articles for further info - http://www.archicadwiki.com/LightWorks and http://www.archicadwiki.com/Multiprocessing

Jesikuh123 wrote:
I am wondering if you guys have any advice on what we should make sure we have to be as fast as possible.

I also agree with sticking with XPpro64. Vista is OTT for a rendering station currently.

The rendering process doesn't utilise any of the graphics cards power (yet) so there is no need to fit the best you can afford. Something around £60 mark will be more than adequate, IMHO, if all you are going to do is press the render button!

Processor wise you have two options. Either buy a single extremely fast quadcore processor - the Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 at 3.2Ghz is out soon. Coupled with watercooling, you can apparently overclock it to 4.2Ghz!

The other option is to go for twin quad-core Xeons - X5482 @ 3.2Ghz. I'm not so sure if they overclock or not but they will probably give the fastest rendering time overall.

Match either of these to a top of the range motherboard with lots of memory slots, add at least 8Gb of high speed RAM and it should fly!

Regarding the harddrive, I'm not sure anything spectacular is needed like RAID 0 or 5 setups or ultra fast access Solid State drives. As far as I can tell, the harddrive isn't used a great deal when rendering, so maybe save your money and just buy a single 10 or 15k rpm drive.

The sad thing is whatever you get, it will be overtaken by a midrange computer in a year or so!!

[Dwight]

Rodrigo wrote:
Now I use it for Lightworks and that lets me have 2 projects rendering while I use another ArchiCAD session to work on another project. This causes absolutely no slow down for me, which is great.

Yo, Rodrigo.

With adequate RAM and two processing channels, one can certainly render and work in separate Archicad sessions, but rendering WILL be slower unless you are using realistic sun or supreme anti-aliasing - routines limited to one processor.

[Bricklyne Clarence]

Jesikuh123 wrote:
Hi guys our office would like to buy or have built a computer just for rendering our models.

I am wondering if you guys have any advice on what we should make sure we have to be as fast as possible.

We would also like to run Vista for this.

Thanks.

-Oh and our Z Corp 3D printer arrived and is being instaled today!

Just make sure it's at least a quadcore and certainly multicore processor, since rendering is all CPU power, and the more cores you have the better.

Also make sure it's a 64 Bit system which will allow you to have oodles and oodles of RAM; you'll need that for large and polygon heavy scenes and general performance.

I would stay away from Vista at the moment ( until at least they release SP1 or SP2) - right now it's just going to be fighting with your programs for system resources and naturally hogging them. Get XP Pro 64 instead or Windows Server 2003 (64 Bit) <- which is the core that Vista was built on anyway, but way more stable and streamlined.

But just make sure you load up on CPU cores and RAM since those are them most important things in rendering.