There comes a time in every digital artist's  life when the inevitable happens. Must build new system. I know there are lots of other threads on this but I also know things change so I am asking for your help. What are the best components for a new system?

Software I use:

Poser6, Cinema4d, Bodypaint and Vue Infinite plus the new Hexagon2 and of course Photoshop. I do a lot of texture work so the open GL is important. Hope I have stated this properly. As you can tell, I am not too knowledgable with the hardware side.

Thank you for your help.

cheerio   lululee

Hi,

What's your budget?   I personally would stay away from Dell's and other name brand systems as they're usually a lot more expensive and suck for support.  You should try www.tigerdirect.ca if you're not adverse to ordering online and they have great prices! 

For 3d work I'd reccomend an AMD Athlon based processor and of course LOTS o ram!!  As much as the mainboard will allow!!  Also go hyper threading even though Poser doesn't take advantage of it, lots of other programs do!!  And you'll be able to have Poser & C4D etc going at the same time and not experience much slowdown or unresponsiveness!!

That's my two cents!!

Gerard

How technically competent are you?  Can you put a system together from separate components, or are you looking for ready made system that encompasses components that us "experts" recommend?  I can tell you that OpenGL will have no impact on your 2D performance, so don't spend a lot of money on an OpenGL Video Card, unless you do your texture work in 3D.  I'm not sure about your 3D apps.

If your new computer is your only computer, I recommend that you buy a system with 2 large Hard Drives in RAID 1 Configuration.  A large External Hard Drive for backup is also recommended.  Nothing is more important than your work!!

I plan to upgrade the motherboard, processor, and possibly the video card of my present system.  Right now my new component choices are: Athlon 64x2 4200 Processor and ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 Motherboard.  I plan to re-use these components in my present system:

1GB Corsair PC400 DDR Memory, LG Electronics GSA-4163B DVD RW Drive, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro Video Card, Hauppauge PVR-150 TV Card, 2 Maxtor 120GB Harddrives in RAID 1 Configuration. 

Vue Infinite definitely likes a good OpenGL graphics card. Don't shell out money for the latest nVidia or ATI consumer cards, they're great with DirectX but the OpenGL performance is lacking. I bought an 7800GTX and frankly I regret the choice. The older 6800LE in my other desktop could be tweaked into a QuadroFX and performs twice as fast under OpenGL as the far more expensive 7800GTX.

For Vue Infinite you definitely want a dual core CPU. And you will definitely want an AMD. The best Vue performance I've ever seen was on dual Opteron dual core, second best are the Athlon64x2 machines, after them come the higher end Intel dual cores. The lower end Intel dual cores are about as fast as a single core Athlon64.

If you have the budget, I'd recommend the following components:

Mainboard: MSI or ASUS with nForce4 chipset
CPU: Athlon64x2
Graphics card: 3DLabs Wildcat Realizm 200 PCI-e
Disks: WD Raptor 10,000 RPM SATA for OS, if you can afford it, a second WD Raptor 10,000 RPM for applications, and a large SATA2 disk 7200 RPM for storage
Memory: 4 x 1 GB DDR400 or DDR2 533 - depends on the mainboard and the price which one is best for you. DDR2 533 is not faster than DDR 400. DDR2 667 will be faster, but few mainboards/chipsets support it - and it will be way more expensive than DDR400 or DDR2 533.
An important advantage of DDR2 is that the modules will be available in larger sizes - I've already seen 2 GB modules (which would mean a maximum of 8 GB of RAM). Still far too expensive to be of any use now, but I expect prices will go down in the near future. And with the rise of the 64bit operating systems you can put that memory to good use.
Optical: NEC Dual Layer DVD burner. Again, dual layer recordable DVDs are still way too expensive, but the prices are already coming down. In a few months the cost per gigabyte of dual layer DVD recordables will probably dip under the cost per gigabyte of the current standard DVD recordables.
A GOOD power supply unit, at least 450 W. Zalman, Papst, Fortron are some good brands.
A decent solid case. Antec, Zalman, Chieftec, Coolermaster.

The components above won't be cheap. I estimate it'll be around $2500. But it'll be VERY fast. And you can run a 64bit operating system on it -  the next version of Vue will be 64bit. A system like this will last you a couple of years.

Agreeing with svdl, again. :)

To add, Cinema 4D also loves multiprocessors and will readily put them to use during render.

Don't forget good cooling and possibly filtering.  My dual Xeon was sucking up dust like a vacuum cleaner (out here in dusty Colorado).  Once the graphics card and cpu fans were impacted (despite occassionally opening up and airspraying the interior), my system would no longer start - that was scary while in the middle of development.  Now I filter the front face where the intake fans are with 'el cheapo' 3M Filtrete.  Does an excellent job for nearly nothing!

Thanks everyone for your valuable info.

I have a very technically experienced gentleman who will build the computer for me. He just needs to know the best components. Since I make my living with the puter quality (within reason) is more important than price.

I will pass this link along to him.

A truly appreciate all of your help.

cheerio  lululee

Thanks everyone for your valuable info.

I have a very technically experienced gentleman who will build the computer for me. He just needs to know the best components. Since I make my living with the puter quality (within reason) is more important than price.

I will pass this link along to him.

A truly appreciate all of your help.

cheerio  lululee

Try to stay away from Intel Processors, unless they're the new Core-Duo.  They use too much power and don't perform as well as AMD.  I have a 2.8Ghz Intel Pentium Norwood, but that's from three years ago -- when AMD's were the power hogs.

If you don't have a good, hi-resolution monitor, you should invest in one.  I use a 22" NEC MultiSync FP2141SB CRT.  When I got it three years ago, LCDs couldn't touch it.  Maybe that's changed now, but what I have is still state-of-the-art, or close to it.  The point is: a good monitor should last across several new systems.  The monitor makes a big difference in the enjoyment you get from your computer.

Good luck!!

I am running Cinema 4d on my Dell l2.0 gig laptop that is a deskop replacement type with mobile graphics. It works well with Poser, also. My main 3d PC is a Gateway I bought stripped down at BestBuy (in USA) - it is a 3.4 gig P4 with the BTX motherboard and came with a gig of RAM and a 250 gig harddrive, good onboard sound, and a 128 Radeon PCI express graphics card with open GL. I have updgraded this PC with twpomore 250 gig hard drives, a five port USB card, and another gig of PC3200 RAM from Zipzoomfly.com - the cheapest at the time. Computers are easy to build or update yourself. Everything is Plug and Play and snap in. Not like computers of yore. Dual processors and AMD are also very good,  but not for Poser. For games. Ask Awadsk. He has a dual core AMD 4400, and Poser is still slow. I suggest getting a PC that is a full tower (big) and has plenty of room for expansion. Lots of open PCI slots, the new BTX motherboard. Room for more hard drives and so on. That way you can uypgrade it as you get the money. I am very happy with my PC, even though I have the horrible polipos virus riught now.  Good luck. I am a PC tech and web designer in the real world so IM me with any questions!!!!! Hugz, Sherrie

A single fast processor is better than a slower dual-core for Poser and most games.  Neither can utilize multiple processors.    Multiple processors will shine when you want to run Poser and other programs concurrently.  Having plenty of memory is always good, especially for Poser.

To do a really fair comparison between processors you need to have the same memory, disk, video, and operating system setups in the systems being compared.  Also, you need to run the same "benchmark" programs.  Most of us can't afford to do this, so we have to rely on magazine reviews.    Many benchmarks are gaming benchmarks.  www.Anandtech,com is good, because they include  a 3DS MAX benchmark in their tests.  Gaming is very CPU/Video intensive, so gaming performance can give you a pretty good idea of how a system will perform in 3D Graphics Applications.  

I have both an Athlon64 3500+ single core system and an Athlon64x2 4400 dual core system. Both CPUs run at 2.2 Ghz. The disk systems are identical (both have dual 73 Gb WD Raptor 10,000 RPM disks), memory is almost identical (both have 4 GB DDR400 at dual channel, the 4400 system has Kingston HyperX RAM running at slightly faster timings than the Transcend memory in the 3500+).

Poser performance on the 4400 tends to be slightly better than on the 3500+, probably due to the faster RAM. The difference is in the order of 2-3 percent.

Photoshop performance - hard to tell. I don't use Photoshop all that much, only for some simple tasks like resizing and saving for Web.

Vue 5 Infinite performance: the 4400 renders almost exactly twice as fast as the 3500+. Compositing scenes also is much snappier than on the 3500+.

3DS Max performance: the 4400 is significantly faster than the 3500+. Not twice as fast, which has to do with the graphics card: the 3500+ has a Geforce 6800LE tweaked into a QuadroFX4000, the 4400 has a Geforce 7800GTX. The 6800 LE performs significantly better with OpenGL - SpecViewPerf says about twice as fast as the 7800GTX. The lower OpenGL performace of the 7800GTX can also be felt when using Vue - one of these days I'll get a good OpenGL card, probably a 3DLabs Wildcat Realizm.

I don't have Cinema4D, so I don't know how it would perform on my machines.

Games - I wouldn't know. The games I play (mostly Warcraft III) run very well on both machines.

svdl,

How do your systems compare when you render in Poser and run Tailor at the same time?

Haven't tried really CPU intensive stuff like that. But I do know that doing something else (like browsing) during a render is awfully slow on the single core machine, and performs just fine on the dual core machine.

My (ahem) "artistic" work consists of scene elements set up in Poser, converting those elements to Vue 5 .VOBs and rendering the final scene in Vue Infinite. I make the scene elements on the single core machine and do the Vue stuff on the dual core machine. Scenes consisting of easily a dozen human figures, plus a complex environment, that's something Poser just can't handle. Vue 5 Infinite can. But even on the dual core machine the render usually takes several hours.

For c4D, this amd/pentium shoot-out is interesting.

http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/processorsmemory/0,39024015,39233885-6,00.htm

Poser is (still) a disaster when it comes to ram usage etc. So don't count it.
Photoshop prefers to have its scratch file on a second hard disk, so get two.

Best data for Cinema can be found on Mash' site:
http://forum.3dfluff.com/forumdisplay.php?f=12

he knows what he talks about when it comes to cinema.

fireGL, quadro and wildcat are only good for dedicated apps (maya) and cad work (autocad,...) not for cinema.