ZBrushCentral

7900gt or xfx 8600gt fatality

ZBrush Usage Questions
#1

Plz help me to choose Which one of following two cards will a good choice for 3d sculpting. I’ve asked this question somewhere but got no answer

7900gt or xfx 8600gt fatality I was willing to purchase 7900gt but some 86xx series card are somewhat cheaper than 79xx I'm wondering if this new card(xfx 8600gt fatality) which is quite cheaper is better or not...or if someone can suggest me if there is something else as preference to improve in hardware for performance(still good to do general work with Zb3)

My Specs–
AMD Athlon X2 on WinXP sp2(32 bit)
2 GB ram and …
Onboard nforce 6600 graphics :stuck_out_tongue:

#2

7900gt is way better in dx9 but of course you dont have dx10 support. but i hope you know it makes no difference for zbrush coz it doesnt use your 3d graphic card.

#3

Oh :idea: …I’m sorry but it doubts me even furthur.

Zbrush doesn’t use Graphics Card? :o
I thought it does as someone told me that his upgrading to a powerful card made his app(mudbox) handle dense meshes better.Much better than just adding more memory. Maybe there is such a big difference in both applications architerture.

Plz someone clear me on this and if its true…than what can I do more if I intend to raise the performance. More RAM? And I’m not so concerned about playing games…so DX is no issue?

#4

It depends on the app.

ZBrush uses software rendering rather than hardware rendering. Therefore, it’s your system RAM and CPU that make the biggest difference in performance.

Some other apps use hardware rendering, and for those a better graphics card makes a difference.

#5

I’m clear of it…it’ll be better to ask waht I doubt(still) here only.

I’ve searched about the limit to which I can upgrade RAM on xp 32bit. My MB can have more of it. Too much talk… :roll_eyes:

So I want another answer from those u actually run zbrush…

Should I upgrade my 2gb to 3gb for Zbrush3 on 32bitxp ?


Thankyou and sorry guys:+1:. I searched and found this topic already discussed
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=32177

I guess it was before z3. If there are any changes then plz answer

#6

You’re probably better off with 2 GB of the fastest RAM that your motherboard can support rather than 3 GB or 4 GB of average RAM. For some users, the extra RAM has seen a performance boost. Other users have seen performance deteriorate on their 32-bit machine after upgrading past 2 GB of RAM.

So if you go with 2 GB of fast RAM you’re guaranteed better performance. If you go with 3 GB or 4 GB of RAM, you’re playing craps. :slight_smile:

#7

Aurick, you can probably answer my question very easily then. I just built a new PC and Im using a 8 gigs of Corsair XMS2 DDR2 Ram (4 x 2 gig sticks) an Intel QX8600 Quad Core, and Windows Vista Home Premium x64.

Im definately seeing an increase in performance over my last computer (Windows XP x32, 2.5 gigs of ram, Pentium4 3.2ghz) but not exactly what I was expecting. I also noticed in my task manager that when ZBrush is running it comes up as “ZBrush3.exe *32”

I played around a little by dividing the 4096 polygon plane up to 16,777,216 faces. The extra ram helps there, but I also noticed that ZBrush is still sucking up around 2.7 gigs of ram even with a huge portion of the mesh hidden.

I guess what Im getting at is, how much memory can be allocated to ZBrush 3.1, and is it a true 64 bit application?

#8

They never come right out and say it but I don’t think ZB3 is full 64 bits because I’m running 8GB of ram and can only use 4 of it. It’s definately a very fast machine for all apps, but once you get to like 6 -10 million polys it still starts compressing the memory which is annoying because I know I have a ton more of it to work with. Probably not till ZB4 will this change.