I am looking to upgrade my computer so I can get EXCELLENT performance in 3D rendering. I currently have an Athlon 1.0 CPU, ASUS A7V133 MB, ATI Radeon 9500 PRO video card. What is suggested? I am tired of my pictures taking hours to render, if not days. I am getting into animations,3D Studio Max,Bryce etc... Bryce animations for me can take 3 days for a 10sec clip. I have been researhing things on the internet, this is what I found. Video Cards 3D Labs Wildcat VP 990 Pro-512mb ($800) 3D Labs Wildcat III Series- ($1000+) QUADRO4 900 XGL AGP4X - 128mb ($600) CPU's Xeon, Athlon, AMD Opteron, P4, Duron, Celeron, What are the AMD Clawhammer and Sledgehammer CPU's? I like the ASUS motherboards personally. Just looking for suggestions. Willing to invest in something good. What systems do you artist use out there use, and how long of a time do these AWESOME pictures take you to render? Thanx for ANY input!!

Most renderings are CPU dependant and not all programs can utilize multi processors. AMD makes the Athlon, Opteron and the Duron. Intel makes the others. (I have a AMD Athlon 2100+) Next most important is the amoutn of RAM you have. The more the better. (I'm runnin 1 Gig of PC 2700) The Quadro 4, If I am correct, is the Gforce FX with a different set of drivers than what ships with the FX card. Unless you're a graphics professional, spending that kind of money on a card doesn't make sense. The new Radeon 9700 and the recently released 9800 are excellent cards. The GForce FX was supposed to blow them away, but after reading the reviews, it's said to be a little bit of a let down. I'm running a 3D labs Annihalator 2 Ultra w/ 64 megs of DDR. Looking to upgrade to the 9800 which sells for just under $400. Asus motherboartds are good. When looking, see if it is upgradeable, how many PCI slots are on it, how much RAM it can handle and what type of RAM, PC2100, PC2700 and so on. If you are looking to spend a couple grand on a system, you will have a nice set up. Check out pricewatch.com They will list the prices for just about every component out there.

The Opteron I beleive is the new AMD 64 bit CPU that just came out.

whoa, there is no reason to ever spend over $600 on a video card (unless you are loaded that is) :-) why not just go with the geforce 4 64mb card..its a great card

Upgrade your Motherboard/CPU, that's basically all you can do. Your current video card is more than capable, and has nothing to do with rendering speed anyway. Go with a Pentium or Athlon cpu (IMO), do NOT get a Duron or Celeron. They are not made with graphics in mind at all. I'm not knowledgable of Xeon cpu's, so don't know about that. BUT...if you really want to invest a little money into doing 3D animation, I myself would build a 2nd PC, network it to the first, and start a little render farm. Another Athlon 1ghz cpu PC can be pretty inexpensive, and that would double your output speed. Render farms and faster cpu's are the true answers to producing animations faster. (note - only Bryce 5 can take advantage of network rendering) AgentSmith

I'd say your vid-card is fully up to date. I don't know how much 3DSMax uses the vidcard, but in bryce you won't notice to much difference in OpenGL mode and no difference in renderingspeed. The AMD's 64-bit processors can be faster if the software is optimized for 64-bit processing, unfortunately (but paradoxical enough also logically) bryce is not optimized fo 64-bit processing. So all the extra money spend on a 64-bit processor would be thrown away in terms of brycian renderspeed. Bryce can render with multiple computers at once. If you want to spend $1600 (you mentioned a $1000 vidcard and a fast CPU) you should consider spending it on upgrading your current system with new processor and then build a renderbox with the old parts of your current computer. A renderbox is usually stripped down to the strictly neccesary parts and just capable of running the software and render. You then work on your upgraded machine and do a the rendering with both your updated machine and the render-box with the networkrenderer.

Oh, another FYI fact (as far as I have heard); Bryce cannot take advantage of a PC with multiple cpu's. Right? (anyone else) AS

You must also realize that as you upgrade your system to the point where Bryce renders more quickly, you will increase the complexity of your scenes until they take about as long as before to render (but they'll look great). Or: rt = (s/c)*p or: Render time is equal to speed divided by complexity, multiplied by patience. So although the value of render time will vary from one individual to another dependent upon their level of patience, the render time for that individual will remain constant. :^)

Tjohn is absolutely right, it won't make any difference in the end. Patience is the key! I also agree with Rayraz, bulding a separate box completely will help you render much faster in Bryce than any sole upgrade. Also in 3DS, for certain! And, if you're going to actually spend $2k, you could probably build at LEAST three good machines. If not Five! That would effectively reduce your render times by 5, but also will cost you a lot in patience and upkeep!

Complex scenes will always take a long time to render. If you're waiting 10 hours for a scene on your PC then the best PC in the world would probably only do it in 4. Still no difference if you render overnight. That said, if you're going to upgrade, go for CPU and memory and go for the biggest / best on the market, otherwise they'll be out of date in 5 minutes flat. Having said that, last image "Treacle" took 7 minutes to render :) I went for a coffee, came back and it had finished. Because most of it is postworked then I figured there's no point waiting 10 hours for a few softer pixels or something, so I saved time by rendering on default. Of course you can't do this with animation but personally this is the way I intend to go, just using Bryce / Poser to produce a template image that I then procede to f*ck up with my mouse. :)))))))))

Very well put tjohn that is exactly what happens. A good motherboard, a fast CPU, and loads of ram. I've got 1Gb DDR ram and 1.8GHz Athlon CPU which I'm going to upgrade to 2.2GHz soon, this initially made a great improvement in render times but it still took 1 & 1/2 days to render this months challenge entry which came in at a staggering 500Mb Br5 file. So the more you got the more you use. Catlin

First of all, forget Duron and Celeron CPUs. Totally worthless for all graphics. XEON would be the best choice, but the pricetag is ridiculous (high)! That leaves you with either Athlon or Intel P4. Speaking for myself, i think Athlon is the best choice if you want a very good CPU for a good price. I use a P4 2.26 Ghz, with 512 MB RAMBUS and a Geforce 2 Ti. But my older PC, with a 1 Ghz Athlon chewed a lot less than this one. When i upgrade again, it will be to an Athlon.

With the help and counsel of the poeple here in the Forum, I recently upgraded to a system with Athlon 2400+, 512 RAM and ATI Radeon vcard with 128 videoRAM. Works wonderfully. So, as TJohn said, I begun to make scenes more and more complex, and at the end my rendertimes are exactly like before :) Rendertimes are only affected by CPU. Also, RAM helps you handle big files and, if you have another job like me, allows you to work and render at the same time. S.

Higher end programs might benefit from an expensive video card, but what you mention will not. That said, you might really benefit from building a small render farm, cause not only Bryce renders over a network, but 3DS, too. It has a network rendering client that can be installed on Linux machines. But, if you're going to use 3DS only for modelling, you don't need that. BTW, Xeon is Intel's CPU built for multi-processor machines. I know that Bryce can run its client on the second CPU, although taking the price difference and everything else into account, you're better off building another render machine than buying a multiprocessor one. 3DS can use multiple processors, though. Opteron is a 64-bit CPU, but we are still running 32-bit software. So, wait untill we get 64-bit Windows or something that will really be able to use the processor. Anything else, the advice you got is good: a strong CPU, LOTS of RAM and a usable video card, like GeForce 4600 or ATI Radeon 9700 Pro with 128 MB RAM.

As an example I have a 1.67 Ghz AMD Athlon(2000+) and a 900 Mhz Athlon setup as a renderfarm An animation I did with just the 900 Mhz took about 10 hours to render, with both it only took 5. So definitely I'd say that AMD's are better chips for much lower price although they tend to run hotter than Intel chips of the same speed. That's easily fixed by proper ventilation. As everyone has said if you are going to spend that kind of money it's best to build another computer. If you do some serious gaming those high priced accessories may help but then most games don't even use all the features of the top of the line cards.

FYI fact: "Bryce cannot take advantage of a PC with multiple cpu's." Counter FYI fact: "If you launch both Bryce and Bryce lightning and set your dual CPU computer to both server and client Bryce uses one CPU and Bryce Lightning uses the other.? Wich FYI fact is true. Does anyone know?

THis thread looks similar to one in the Max forum..... I'll repeat my thoughts though.. I'd go with the new quadroFX 2000 - an absolutely stonking graphics card. Dual AMDs, bags of RAM preferably Crucial Hadn't thought of using lightning on my dualie to use both procs though thanks for that one Rayraz will have to have a try.(Max has a nice little tick box for using two procs) FWIW my current machine is dual PIII 1G, 1G RAM, Quadro 2. (State of the art 2 years ago :-))

just a quick post here. i'm currently editing and 3D-ing with asus a7n8x deluxe amd2200+ 2g 400mhz dual-ddr and 150gb 7200rpm hd radeon 9000 pro not sure about the effiency with 3d, but when it comes to editing, mobo and ram are the keywords. underestimating the meaning of motherboard is not recommended (how fast it delivers stuff from A to B is essential. IMHO, a7n8x doesnt have any bottle-necks in it-that i'm aware of yet) when rendering, one simply cant have enough powerful computer:)

Those video cards will be a complete waste in bryce. Unless your using max etc you wont even notice and even then they are for the moving huge numbers of triangles PRIOR to hitting the render button. Best thing you can do is buy a 2nd comp with a most basic of video card, small harddrive and even a cheap video switch for display. Let that one do the final renders so your main is still usuable for other projects. Best you can do is the top end cpu and even then youll see only a 3x improvement. Sadly, as ive seen from back on my old p2-400mhz, every time ive upgrade, the scene got more complex until we are back into a 3-4 day range worse case picture. If you got a fantasy pc 100x faster then anything on the market now.... in the end all most would do is turn on volumetric render etc and bang youd still be 3-4 days haha.

The system I use is whatever will run the program. I've had Bryce work fine on some pretty crappy computers... But if you're trying to do something fast (at least fast enought to save your sanity), then processor power is what you need. Something runing with an Athlon 2100 and Nvidea GeForce with 64Mb would work nicely for most purposes. Speaking of renderfarms... Is there a such thing as a renderfarm in a box? Something with a master motherboard with all the slots and stuff for video,etc., and then a couple of simplified (stripped down) motherboards to throw extra processors on. It'd be neat if such a thing existed.

Here you go...that 9500 video will do, as it is one of the better ones out there..if you read reviews, it even beats some of the bench's on the 9700pro..it all depends on what is going on.... You can buy an AMD 2400+ at Newegg for...drum roll...$107 Retail version with FREE shipping... OR BETTER YET the new AMD 2500 Barton RETAIL for $133 Then buy the Asus atn8x Deluxe mentioned above--its about $140... Ram is going for $75/512meg So, for less than $450 you can be screaming pretty darn good...hell, build 4 render machines for that price..all you would need is small hard drive, a crappy video card for $50...the mb comes with built in ethernet...you could have 4 systems for around $2000...get a switch to hook all the systems to your 1 monitor...

oh..some cases wirth good power supply..so $2500... someone lend me some cash !!!

Aye, but you can't even GET a crappy video card for 50 bucks, these days! GeForce 4 MX440's, with 64MB DDR RAM, are about that price, and they rock for most purposes... Thanks, though, for the pricing work Dave-So....!

AMD just had a big price drop on the 22nd... so its a great time to buy...wish I had some money :(

Attached Link: http://www.rendercube.com/index.htm

Just for fun FYI. (If I ever won the lottery, I'd get one of these.... It's called the Rendercube, it houses; 8 AMD Athlon 2000+ MP CPUs (up 2400+ now available) Up to 4GB of memory/board - 16GB total RAM built-in 100Mbps network with Integrated 100Mbps Switch Integrated KVM (control of all CPUs from one keyboard, monitor and mouse. Etc, etc. Specs look really great. It's really small for having a lot of stuff in it(16"-24"). Available in black. They don't even list the price... AS

Attached Link: http://www.tweakers.net/nieuws/16646?highlight=rendercube

Somebody did the calculation (In Dutch). About $8000 for motherboards with 256MB RAM, 8 PIII processors and so on.

I use two cardboard boxes that contain the salvaged bits of old BBC Micros and Acorn electrons, and an old Black & White portable tv. THe mouse is made from and old Etch-a-sketch wired to the system with old curly-cord phone wire. I use an old olympia typewriter for a keyboard.....and I get along fine thanks!

$7,850 US Dollars for that setup... I wouldn't go with a PIII, myself. That's what my girlfriend has and my AMD Athlon leaves her behind.

Okay. For the non-dutch speaking people here here's the translation of the dutch site: RenderCube: 8 CPU's in a box. By Renvan den Berg - saturday 21 april 2001 - 15:20 - Information source: RenderCube RenderCube is the name of a really striking computer. Build out of standard components, this little monster in a case of 42x42 cm and a hight of just 48 cm, has eight Pentium III Processors working together intensively. The RenderCube is build out of four dual-processor motherboards wich communicate with each other via a build-in 100MBit Network-switch. The system is run by an also build-in KVM (whatever that is) wich allows you to use the system using only one keyboard, one mouse and one monitor. At the moment the boards used are Abit VP6 and Tyan Tiger 200, but since the RenderCube is custom build this can change. As it's name implies the RenderCube is meant for using aniumation-software, but the system can also be used for Beowulf-like tasks and with a bit of luck you'll have plenty of processortime left. In a compact cube-shaped aluminum case, we packed four dual ATX-style PIII motherboards, four 300 Watt power supplies, four hard drives, a 100Mbps switch, a CD-ROM Drive and a 4 port KVM switch. Capable of holding eight, 1.0 GHz processors and 4 Gbytes of memory, this cube can tackle your toughest rendering requirements. The RenderCube is adaptable to any animation software that supports network rendering. And since its a miniature "Cluster" computer, you could use it for a variety of other applications that require parallel processing. Its so compact we've also nicknamed it a "Personal Parallel Processing Platform".

You could play a hell of a game of Freecell on it, or even hearts, take your pick. ;o) AS

KVM stands for Keyboard, video, mouse. I have one and ScreenSavers on TechTV uses them all the time. You hook up several computers to the switch and it allows you to use one monitor, keyboard and mouse to control all the computers. Of course you can only have one computer up on the screen and getting input at one time.

AS, the thing is, no P4 will work on a dual-processor motherboard. Simply not designed for that. I talked to an Intel guy last year and he said they didn't intend to create a P4 multiprocessor m/b. And do not impugn PIII that easily. :-) A friend of mine has a computer editing suite on a dual PII machine. It does editing on the fly, although effects do take time to render, but not much. A couple of minutes for 5-10 seconds of an effect like colour correction. That's 5-10 times 25 frames of 720x576.

Just one thing: there's absolutely no way that the speed of Mac processors is the double of their PC counterparts. (And since a Mac is also a personal computer ...) The way they do things in Mac and PC, there's even no way to directly compare the things, except in the task comparison tests. But that's something else. The reason PC fanatics won't even consider a Mac is not just the price (at least four PCs for that kind of money) but als the closed architecture. the situation is better about that than it used to be, but it's still closed and you cannot mix and match cheaper/better parts much.

"blue screen of death" Since I started using Win XP Pro this hasn't been an issue at all, not once has this happened. Don't get me wrong I'm not a great lover of Murkysoft but their OS has been getting more reliable and stable as time goes on. Catlin

I have now worked on my WinME system for 3 weeks without even one errormessage. I also used my mothers laptop running under WinXP for 12 minutes today and I got 2 error messages and one reboot. "And while you're building, I'll be rendering." For $3200 I can get one MAC or 2 fast PC's. Setting up a readymade system including installing bryce can take as little as one hour for both MAC and PC. That means that the buildingtime of 2 PC's is one hour longer then that of one MAC. However those Two PC's will be faster then the one MAC and they will have caught up really soon with that extra one hour building time.

"For $3200 I can get one MAC or 2 fast PC's" For that price I could build 4 or 5 super graphics computers with top specs and hardware. If you know where to buy the components, (and the net does not always give the best prices), you can build amazing machines. This is the main reason I wouldn't buy a Mac, this way my cash can go further and do better. Catlin

Attached Link: http://calyxa.pandromeda.com/benchmark.html

Aye, Bulldawg you really need to research this kind of thing before bringing it up in a greoup of super-geeks like us. Opinions are one thing, but I'm afraid what we're talking about here is fact-based information. NO Mac can even come close to comparing with a home-built PC. Price-wise, or performance-wise. You don't have to believe me, and I'm definitely not personally attacking you, but you DO have to believe Calyxa! Here's the benchmark link for Mojoworld, which isn't the ONLY benchmark test out there, but you'll notice how very far down the line Macs are, and although Clay rocks, his fruit-based computer totally doesn't. It's like cars. You could go spend $250,000 on a Ferrari, only to be smoked by some dorky kid in a pimped-out Honda Civic/Integra hybrid. Not to mention the Nissan Skyline... Only, in this case it's much more exaggerated. Mac's aren't anywhere CLOSE to being the Ferrari's of the copmuter world. More like Pinto's with a nice paint job. They are toys, like a shiny toaster oven. Sure it cooks food, but would never compare to a full-size oven. (shrugs)

Very well put shadow............8)

Also notice the AMD 1.6 Ghz chips are kicking the @ss of the P4 2.5 Ghz chips and cost a hell of a lot less.

"For $3200 I can get one MAC or 2 fast PC's" For that price I could build 4 or 5 super graphics computers with top specs and hardware. Please tell me where I can buy super graphics systems that cheap. I've been looking to buy a second PC, but I also want to be able to buy an MP3-player and a DVD-burner and that means my budget for the second PC is as little as $1200.

Try http://www.pricewatch.com though I'm sure a lot of those companies don't ship international unfortunately.

I get all my components from a shop in Glasgow UK but unfortunately they don't ship internationally. Another great place for components is EBay, I was bought an ASUS motherboard for xmas and it came from ebay at a massive reduction in price. Of course Rayraz if you had transport you could come over the North Sea, pick up the goodies, and go home again, but you would also have to come meet me for a coffee before you go back. 8) Catlin

Traveling from the Netherlands to the UK isn't really expensive these days. Wasn't it $30 to travel by airplane from schiphol to london airport? I seem to remember that from a commercial. Maybe I can arrange something sometime.

I got told today Rayraz that the lowest prices for PC components in Europe are to be found in Belgium. People from here order in components from Belgium and sell them in the UK at a massive price cut. Which is great because places like PC World charge a fortune for parts and it's a total rip off. In fact the UK is the most expensive place to live in Europe...............Bummer. Catlin