Hi everyone, I'm getting ready to put a new computer together and I'm looking for a little advice. It's finally time to replace the old PIII but I find that there is so much new technology that I'm a little in the dark. Here's what I got so far: an Asus SLI motherboard, an AMD 64 3500 processor and 1 GB of RAM. Can't decided on a graphics card so I figured who better to ask. The budget is around $200 for the card and it needs to have a VGA output and fit in a PCI express x16 slot. Would I be better off spending the extra money for a 7800 series card or is a 6800 adequate for what we do? I'm not going to be doing any video editing at the moment. Also how many pixel pipelines do you recommend and is 256 RAM really that much of an improvement over 128? The final thing I'm looking for is something that is relatively quiet and cool running. Any help or shared experiences would be appreciated. Thanks, Jack

Well, on my 2 primary machines, I'm running basic ATI Radeon 9250 (128mb) and nVidia GF4 MX440 (128mb). On the machine I use at work, it has an Intel Extreme chip on the motherboard (64 mb shared ram)... I've actually found that the cheaper cards work very nicely with Apophysis, and the more expensive ones seem to have the odd problem... go figure? I'm hopeless at UF and various other fractal apps - so I can't tell you whether the results I've gotten with those are due to me being really bad at it, or the video card... lol! (Most likely me actually) T.

Hey, I just put that same system together. Cool. I know that this isn't what you asked about, but you should check out the price of an X2 processor at newegg. I think that they have one there for around $320, which is expensive, but it's the cheapest that I have seen for an X2. Ultrafractal is one of the few applications that is capable of taking advantage of multi-thread processing, which is why the X2s are attractive to me. They're socket 939 so I can try one later. I picked the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe MB because it has 4 slots for RAM. It has slots for 2 video cards which is pretty much overkill, but I'm still glad that I have it. Flames are memory hogs. I don't know how much RAM that apo can address but I do know that UF can address 2 gigs, so I figure 2 for UF and 1 for the OS and other apps for a total of 3 would be about right. I have a 512 in there now but soon it will be 2 512s, then I'll add 2 1 gig sticks. Windows XP can see 3 gigs. I have heard that it can even take advantage of 4, but it will only show 3 in the system panel. From what I have been able to gather, fractals don't depend a lot on video cards (but I don't know anything about XD). They don't render in real time like games do. I picked the cheapest PCI express card that I could find that didn't share system memory, ASUS extreme AX700 LE. I think it was around $120. There are cheaper ones for around $50 but they use system memory. The system came together without a hitch. I was expecting it to be almost instantaneously, lightning fast for fractals, but no, it still takes a few seconds ;-) It is lightning fast compared to my Athlon 1700+. Like I said, the MB is overkill with the RAID controller and the other one that I don't even remember - ATA I think, and the 2 PCI express slots, but it does have those 4 slots for RAM and I can stuff an X2 processor in there in the future. I'm happy with it. It's even quieter than my old system and the case has fans all over it. Let me know what you end up with and what you think of it. Keith

Been talking to Kalli about it Jack and he offers this:- "The amount of memory is more important than the speed - we're talking about working with static pictures and not high-speed gaming, and 256 MBs is definitely an improvement over 128 MB - more so if you render pictures at larger sizes. So a 256 Mb 6800 or comparable Radeon card like x600 - I'd even say an older type - will be completely sufficient, as long as the emory is not under 256 MBs. I use a GF 6200 8x AGP card with 512 MBs myself. Before that I used a Radeon 9800 Pro with 256 MBs, until both fans on that one failed. Many cards come with plastic fans and these have a nasty habit of failing after a while, depending on usage. So a card with a static heatsink is to be preferred IMHO. In case video editing is something to be considered for the future, then he might consider a card with VIVO (Video-in, Video-out) capability, although capture cards are an alternative. Should I get a PCI express card myself today for fractal and graphic work, I'd pick a Sapphire x700 LE or x1300 LE (fan-less, I think) with 512 MBs ram. And these don't cost a fortune..."

I think your major concern for fractal number crunching is going to be the "system" RAM and processor clock rate. I'm not sure that "video" RAM matters much unless you are also into gaming - like me b4 I rediscovered fractals! :-) Though Frederik recommends an accelerated video card, so maybe there's more to it. The SLI configuration is for using 2 video cards simultaneously to, again, enhance frame rate when playing pc games at high resolution. Sort of a RAID array-like setup, I think, like servers use. Ultrafractal can support dual-processor setups and a max of 2Gb of RAM in it's current version. Fast/high memory video cards are mainly intended for gaming to allow high screen resolutions without sacrificing frame-rate so that the movements on the screen are smooth and not jerky. Fractals involve a fairly static video display but are VERY processor intensive due to the incredible number of calculations involved in coloring each pixel and in rendering to disk of large sized files for printing. So, I think the things you want to focus on are raw processor speed like the 3.4GHz monsters and get yourself 2Gb of fast system RAM. Good luck - I'm jealous! lol Rick (moseying along at 2.53GHZ and 1GB RAM - lol)