I'm thinking of buying this computer to work with Vue Pro. I'm crashing all the time and it's driving me crazy so I guess it's time to upgrade... Specifically, I'm wondering about video cards...which would you recommend... Thanks for your help, I've made bad choices before when buying computers and would like this to be a good decision...Dawn The prices are Canadian...The price with my options is $1989.00, original price was $1149.95 Canadian Processor: Intel Pentium 4 3.06GHz 533MHz Processor (Add $129.95) Memory: 2GB PC333 DDR Memory (Add $449.95) Monitor: none Motherboard:Asus P4P800 Deluxe Intel865PE H-Threading 800MHz (Add $139.95) Sound Card: Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live 5.1 (Add $49.95) Case: AOpen ATX 350W Mid-Tower Case (Add $19.95) Hard Drives: Maxtor 120GB Hard Drive 7200rpm (Add $29.95) 2nd Hard Drive: Maxtor 80GB Hard Drive 7200rpm (Add $109.95) CD/DVD/RW: LG 52x32x52 CD-RW Drive w/CD Burning software Video Card: GeForce GF FX5600 8X AGP 256MB DDR (Add $239.95) or ATI Radeon 9000 All-in-Wonder AGP 64MBDDR w/TV (Add $239.95)or GeForce GF FX5900 8X AGP 128MB DDR + DVI (Add $449.95)or ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB DDR AGP 8X w/TV Out+DVI (Add $499.95)or ATI Radeon 9700 All-In-Wonder Pro 128MB AGP8X w/TV (Add $534.95)or GeForce GF FX5900 8X AGP 256MB DDR + DVI (Add $549.95)or ATI Radeon 9800 All-In-Wonder Pro 128MB AGP8X w/TV (Add $634.95)or ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB DDR AGP 8X - TV Out+DVI (Add $694.95) or Speakers: RW695 Stereo speakers Modem: none Keyboard: Logitech Cordless Access Duo Keyboard + Mouse PS2 (Add $89.95) Floppy Drive: Panasonic 1.44 MB Floppy Drive Operating System: none Warranty: 2 Year Parts & Labour

That's quite a system, two things I'd suggest. 1) a higher wattage of PSU, at least 400W, mebbe 450W poss as much as a 500W, with those power hungry components you're better with a beefier PSU. 2) I think one of the ATI cards would be a better bet, the nVidea cards are designed for games, where as the ATI cards are more all round cards, if you are able to afford it I'd go for the Radeon 9800 Pro 256MB one. Hope this helps.

Quite a machine. I agree with Nevermore - for all that, you'll need a bigger power supply. But I might disagree about the video card. For one thing, all the cards you are listing here are a little bit old. You might ask your dealer about acquiring a NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700. It should only cost around $200 USD. It has 128 MB of memory and is extremely stable. Otherwise, the ATI cards are all OK and pretty reliable. Very nice motherboard, by the way!

Attached Link: http://www.cancomputer.com/

IMHO You must have money to burn. Your paying way to much. There is no need to have top of the line when it's only very slightly faster, Your paying hunderds extra just to save a few seconds if any off rendering time. Why would you need 200 gig of hard drives? Well go here then tell me your not paying to much then... This place is closed till later in the month but will be open again soon and expect the prices then to drop even further. If you do buy from here though they expect you to know what your doing. Same parts though. What you do is maybe get a quote from these guys then show the quote to where ever you got the one above and get that 1000 extra dollars there soaking you knocked off or buy it somewhere else. Even here. As soon as they open up again I'm going to pick up a bunch of em.

Remember thought they charged you $1149.95 for a bare bones system then charged you again to upgrade that system. Comparing prices and some look higher but your forgetting you already paid them $1149.95 extra... See my point? Remember these are last years prices... 2003. They will be even less when they open up again on the 26th.

Mighty Pete has an important point. COMDEX is still going on in Las Vegas. About one week after the show is over, most dealers start dropping their prices because they need to acquire the new hardware. I'm upgrading too, but I always wait until February. Got my eye on the AMD 64 FX chip, and can't help noticing that the price has dropped $7.00 every week for the last three weeks. Same with RAM and such. Might be better to wait just a little, and then shop around again for what you need.

I'll side with forester and Pete on that advice. The next few months are going to see a -massive- drop in prices, mainly due to the new technologies coming out (PCI-Express, total conversion to SATA, DDR-2, AGP being phased out, the CPU socket shuffle both Intel and AMD are getting ready to do, the BTX motherboard redesign, which with force new cases, power supplies, etc). Just about everything out there is due to be obsoleted (yes, that includes the current incarations of the Athlon 64 and Opteron; the socket 754 is going to socket 939, and they don't know -what- is going to happen to Socket940). If you want blistering, but not bleeding edge, sit tight and watch the prices.

And I'm looking with lust at the Athlon 64's as well. I've already found the perfect case; the Lian Li full tower. 636 drive bays, brushed aluminum, comes with 4 fans (2 on the back plane above the card slots, 2 in front, blowing over the 6 HDD internal mounts) and room for at least 2 more. Even -I- will have trouble filling that one up!

Yes, I've seen that beautiful, magnificent case. Perfect for a SCSI rig. I genuinely lust after it also, and I'll be jealous as hell if you get it. (My husband points out that I already have about 4 spare towers and my current box is just fine. It is no fun having two techies married to each other!) However, I've decided to not follow the standard tech advice I give everyone else. I'm just going to go spend a bunch on the Athlon and the Asus SK8V next month, andd the Devil take the hindmost! (It will be April before we see the Socket 939 boards and chip, according to my sources, and then the motherboards will still be hard to come by for an additional month or so. Too long a wait for us techies with lust in our hearts.) But Dawn, you really should wait until February, and then shop around. You are doing the right thing in getting the highest clocking CPU you can, because this makes all the difference in the world to Vue - especially to rendering processes.

I'm following this thread with much interest as I'm considering upgrading soon. The comments about timing are useful, thanks. One thing I am looking for is a dual processor motherboard, anyone out there have any recommendations?

If you can find a reseller, then for stability, you want to consider Tyan. I've got two (Tomcat IV from early 97 and the S-1590 from a couple of years later) that still perform flawlessly. Tyan made their business in the serverworkstation market; you don't get all the nifty BIOS tricks that most other manufacturers offer, but you -do- get high quality parts and rigid specifications. If lust overcomes wisdom (which it will; only ethics prodded me to point out all the new goodies; from a practical standpoint, it will be at least 2 years, more likely 3, before those new technologies have really penetrated the market. Just like when PCI first came out; you could still find ISA cards selling well a year later. Same with AGP. And there will be the problems inherent with new deployments, driver issues, -speed- issues akin to what happened to 98 when the Athlons came out, etc. Bleeding edge in the next 6 months will still be bleeding edge after....and there are a lot of steps between bleeding and Geritol-infused). And as I'm the toy-slut in the family, my wife just sighs and expects me to save up for it outside the budget...

Asus has issued a few motherboards in the last year for dual processors - notably for the existing Opteron line of CPU's. These are basically workstation boards, but they are extremely stable , nice boards and currently well-priced (that is, cheap). You can look on the Asus web site for descriptions, and Tiger Direct has some in stock, I believe. I've always used duals and currently have a Tyan, as Dale B says. Jinco,com may have some dual boards in stock. My dual 800 board currently is keeping up with most everything. However, the new 64 bit systems will finally, easily out-perform it. And wireless has gotten so inexpensive that it makes economic sense to keep your old system, buy a new single processor system and set up a wireless rendering network across your old and new systems. (Basically, you can do this for the price of the new motherboard, cpu and ram, and another $150 USD. Plus about a half day of tinkering time, of course.) Just make sure you are buying NEW wireless devices with the international encryptation standards built in at the device level. In the second half of this year, a whole new generation of motherboard architecture will start hitting the market. This is called PCI Express, I believe. It will have very, very significant advantages over the old boards in terms of speed and functionality. It will be backward-compatible, so your existing CPUs and PCI devices will work in it. If you can wait this long to upgrade, you should wait and invest in the new technology. For anyone wanting a good set of hardware tech reviews in plain language, or to purchase used and new equipment from tech professionals, try AnadTech.com. People like myself sell off our old equipment to other professionals there when we upgrade. Often, people are selling new stuff they were given as a reward at work, or some other pro gave them as a gift or as a comp. The older hardware still is in excellent working order, or the seller will tell you. Since most of the sellers are techs who know the value of their stuff, they don't give it away too cheaply. But you will find fair prices from mostly reliable people there. The reviews of hardware are usually quite good and without hype.

Oh yes, when I said a "half day of tinkering time" for wireless set up, I don't mean anything excessively technical, or only for the ability of a professional. Setting up a wireless network is extremely easy now, although you should purchase one of the PCWorld Mags or equivalent on the subject and read a bit before making a purchase and setting up a system. Basically, a beginner can set up a wireless system in a very short time. But establishing a rendering system across your network with a product like Vue's Rendercow takes some tinkering. This is true, regardless of whether the network is wired or wireless. But for those upgrading their systems simply to get faster rendering times for Vue or Vue Pro, the cheapest, smartest, best thing that you can do is to buy a new (known to be stable) motherboard-cpu-ram rig that is one step back from the impending or current bleeding edge, buy wireless equipment, and lash your old and new stuff together via wireless. You will save something on the order of $1000 USD, doing so, and have a good system to carry you for about two years - into the time when the new PCI and cpu technologies are cheap and commonplace.

Thanks for the replies, some of the boards I've seen over the past week have been specifically server boards and so have no AGP. I'll have a look see over the next weeks and make a decision. Regarding wireless networking, I've got the whole house wired with cat5, sockets in virtually every room, so I'll have no need for wireless. Better get out of this thread before Guitta pops along with her OT stick :) Once again, many thanks.

Wireless sucks cause it's on the wrong side of the firewall. Hey this is Vue, building the dream Vue machine. She'll leave us alone. Two computers are faster than a dual, Keep that in mind. I think I'd go with more boxes personally and network them togeather. Pick your pain though. Everyone going to go what? Think about it... 6 2 gig machines rendering all at once.. You can pick up boxes like that right now for $300 dollars new. You don't need monitors, you can use VNC. You only need a monitor to start them up. Once there running you can unplug it and use it on the next setup.

Considering networking and monitors I agree MP, I do that already. But it's nice to have a good powerful workstation. Not just for Vue, photoshop which I use alot can use dual processors, although concerning vue, previewing renders at a higher level of detail before I send them to the farm would be good. The fact is that I need a more powerful machine, I've got 1gb mem now and it's fully populated, the threads I see here talk of some scenes requiring 2gb. The processor is 1.7ghz, slow by todays standards. The graphics card is a gforce4 of some model that I can't remember as I type this, so that needs upgrading as indesign (which I also use alot) can display on multiple monitors and I want that functionallity. So in all my thinking is, if I'm going to go get/build a new machine then I may as well go for something that does all, or as much, as I forsee me requiring before my next upgrade cycle. Sorry to ramble, but I'll be taking a great interest in all those computer, graphics card, processor threads in here and elsewhere over the next few weeks. regards Sentinal

Well we are up against the wall reguardles,s 32 bit machines can only handle 4 gig mem including swap file. We are already hitting that limit. The swap files are growing that big on some renders. 64 bit will solve that but in the mean time there is a good opertunity here to buld a 32 bit cluster and wait for the programs and stuff to catch up in the 64 bit world. Time it's ready it will be way cheaper than it is right now. Hey now if your really on the ball and look at the tutorials I've wrote then there is a solution there to get round the 4 gig single render problem. Hey it's years old but it's more important than ever. No single computer can solve this 4 gig problem unless it's 64 bit or you read my tutorials. Hint: Read between the lines on the tutorial.... See the Mighty Pete always thinking of the future.

MP: Is that the tile rendering one? Or are you on about another?

Hmmmm that could be it.

Thanks to all who responded, lots of great advice! I will wait until Feb and take a good look around before buying...thanks Mighty Pete for the link, I'll check out their pricing when they reopen :)

Have to add a note to those that are wanting a Lian Li Tower. I have one and if I ever built another custom computer it would be in another Lian Li Tower. You will not go wrong by getting one even though they are more exspensive than most towers. I think you have made right decision on waiting till february with buying the computer dawn. :o) Interesting thread and lots of good advice from all. :o)