Which is more critical for rendering in Carrara, the graphics card or the CPU/ram? I'm going to be building a modestly priced computer - does anyone have any card recommendations. Will probably get 4 to 8 GB ram and Win 7 64 bit, upgrading to C8 when available.

Thanks,
Mike

 Graphics cards have nothing to do with rendering - only on-screen presentation. As always, when it comes to CPU speed and RAM, more is always better. 

You want as fast a CPU as you can get.  I always use AMD CPUs.  They tend to be faster and a lot less expensive.  Also get as much RAM as you can possibly afford (up to the max supported by your motherboard.)  And make sure it is the fastest your MB can handle.  Oh yeh.  A multicore CPU really does speed things up quite a bit.  AMD has up to 6 cores now on their Phenom II 64Bit chips.  As for the graphics card.  That has nothing to do with rendering.  But you always want to get a decent card.  I use a Sapphire ATI 4870X2 HD 2GB PCIE card and it looks great. 

I use an MSI 790FX-GD70 Motherboard with a Phenom II X4 X64 CPU, and a full 8GB of system memory (Corsair).  A system like mine is not top of the line, but it is a very respectable rig for 3D work.  And you could probably put one like mine together for a pretty low price now.

Hope this helps.

Quote - Which is more critical for rendering in Carrara, the graphics card or the CPU/ram? I'm going to be building a modestly priced computer - does anyone have any card recommendations. Will probably get 4 to 8 GB ram and Win 7 64 bit, upgrading to C8 when available.

Thanks,
Mike

Thanks for the quick replies!

I'm not going top of the line either, but I am going to pack as much ram into the new machine as I can.

Thanks again,
Mike

There are two AMD 6 cores the slower 2.8 ghz is $100 dollars cheaper.  I would spend the extra money on ram.

Just my 2 cents

Amd doesn't currently have a hyperthreading equivalent  so some loss there. But that is always weighed against cost and performance. Ram on video doesn't help unless you are using cuda or opencl, so 512mb would be good, this would make previews a bit better. Get at least opengl 2.0 compliant. Get at least 4gb of ram, more if you want.

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    Just make it invisible.

Went with a Core 2 Quad core and 8 GB ram (only 6 GB working, that last stick gets me a blank screen, may be bad) and Windows 7 64-bit. Only things I kept from the old machine are the hard drive (brand new anyway) and the GeForce 9500 1 GB card, which should do just fine.

Again, not top-o-the-line, but will blow away my old system. My first build, lots of fun, learned a lot, and most importantly - it works!

Haven't had time yet to see how C7 Pro works on it, but I'll get to that. Still deciding when to upgrade to C8 Pro.

Thanks all,
Mike

Good to know. All ram should be same specs, works best, especially if doing any kinda dual channel. However, If you tried different configs of the ram and test w/ memT  that can tell you better what is going on. Depending on setup options you don't always have control in bios over timing/voltage tweaks so you get stuck w/ defaults. Certain ram just doesn't do well w/ certain mb's. Better quality ram in gen is more compatible. Dual channel kits can actually be headache savers.

No need to think outside the box....
    Just make it invisible.