I had a chat with a couple of people online the other night about getting a new machine. After a few days thought I decided to upgrade mine instead. I almost never play games on my main machine so 3D power was never an issue for me.
I have a 1GIG AMD on a KT7RAID motherboard that will only take upto a 1.2 gig chip (So the book says) so I thought I would leave the chip alone. The system has overheated recently when the fan on the NorthBridge failed. I replaced that but also decided to get a case-front fan. As I have a server tower there was space for it in one of the bays.
I have a bank of HD racks with 3x30 gig drivers and a CD writers so storage is fine. I think a couple more HD’s will be needed in coming months.
I have a GeForce 2 TI 64 meg and from talking to people this still seems fine for the 2D stuff I do. As ZBrush needs no acceleration I decided to leave that alone. Although the thought of a GeForce 4 Ti 128 was nice (I really don’t need it). What I did do was upgrade my NVIdia Drivers from their site.
21" HP monitor still cuts the mustard. No change.
So what else??? Oh yes memory!!!
I took it up from 512meg to 1.5gig (three sticks of 512). Although not as fast as DDR (I’m told) I can say that I have a new machine on my desk! I use Windows 2000 and the change is amazing. ZBrush models rotate, scale and move a lot smoother. Adding new layers takes a second instead of 5-7 seconds. Rendering is now even faster. Photoshop can handle mssive documents now with ease. I re-worked my ZBrush Masai image by resizing it to 3000x6000 and used the unsharp mask on it. It works like a dream.
I was really happy. Until it blew up 2 hours later!!!
TO BE CONTINUED…This was typed on my Sony VIAO at work 