ZBrushCentral

Computer Upgrade Advice

Community
#1

Ok fellow Zbrush fans I am currently upgrading my work rig at home and love some impute from my fellow artist.
Here is the budget: $5,000
Here is the motherboard: Supermicro X7DA8

I am thinking upgrade my 2 2.0 Ghz duel cores to quad cores and max the RAM out to 32 gigs but for the graphic cards I do not rly know what I want to do I am running a Nvidia 8800 GTS and 8500 to set up 3 20" monitors. Though I figured I will have to nock my self back down to one Video card if I upgrade.

Love to here what you guys think! I am targeting to use this machine only for 3DS Max 2009, Adobe suit CS4, and ZBrush.

#2

Someone else is getting themselves a new rig. Bicc got his for under $2000, pre-built, from HP. I honestly think that if you spend over $2000, you’re getting ripped off, or simply paying for bleeding edge, which you really don’t need.

Anyways, the link, hope it helps: Topic: New Computer on the way!!!

P.S. For the video cards, I wouldn’t recommend going with an Nvidia 8000 series card, they’re three years behind. Get at least a 9000, and I think many of the 200 series cards are affordable now, so if you can spring for those, do so. Newegg always has great deals.

#3

do not want to mislead.

Did not take monitor(s), have a few good ones.
No speakers ( have Bose, purchased separately with a sub woofer)
No add on software ( you must be joking, I spend most of my time
with a new computer taking the new stuff off)
In other words the box ( one additional feature which I liked, built
in wireless, no antenna wires)

2093, including tax (NY),shipping was free
Actual model to start with was HP Pavillion Elite m9600t PC

#4

I was originally thinking of only getting a Nvidia 200 serise card but then I found a rather interesting PDF outlining the difference from the Geforce family vs the Quadro family for grafics cards. And I have to say there is a tone of things that Geforce dose not support that Quadros dose.

For those that are interested in reading on these points here is a link to the PDF I read:
http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&attid=0.1&thid=1204a6a0f34bf718&mt=application%2Fpdf&pli=1

Your deffinetly right that if you still want to use your machine for gameing and 3D to go the rout of the Nvidea Geforce 295 for a scaleing $500 but if I whent the rout of pure 3D art then I think I be looking to the Quadros cards which sadly COST a tone more. But thats why we have jobs right :smiley:

I also have had my eye on this for some time:
The Cintiz by wecom
http://www.wacom.com/cintiq/cintiq-21ux.php

I don’t no about you guys but my artest inside just gets all big eyes when I see this puppy online… want… want so bad… :o

#5

Thanks for the clarification, Bicc.

Personally, I still wouldn’t spend the extra money on the Quadro. I dropped a pretty chunk of change on a Quadro for my first workstation, and to be honest, I’m still not sure it was worth it. Not to mention the speed at which video cards are outdated. If you need to replace it every two or three years, I’d rather spend $300 for a good consumer card than $600 or $1000 for a workstation card that preforms only slightly better. And either way, the video card doesn’t have any effect on Zbrush, and I don’t think any effect on Photoshop either. It’s really just Max/Maya/CAD that will benefit from the aditional hardware overlays. And that pretty much means that in Max, the video card can only actively draw one viewport at a time, only the active one, which isn’t such a big deal.

If you can afford the workstation cards, go for it. But avoid the ATI ones, ATI and most content creation apps don’t agree.

Anyways, that’s my cheap 1.5 cents.

#6

edit: double post, sorry

#7

Thank you for that info there Andrew that was just what I was looking for. Yes the Quadro series boast powerful card but in the end if some one all ready owns one of these and on there own they see little to no difference then I personaly would not want to spend that kind of money. I could always use it towards something ells.

I was origonaly aiming to get one of the 200 x series for the Nvidea and if this works great for 3DS Max and Zbrush then I will save my money ^.^ again thank you guys for all the imput you rly helped me in a rather $$$ choice here.

#8

Be a little bit careful. Hp is known to be skimpy on there power supply. If i where u i would see what i got, then i would look into upgrading it right away.

#9

I would agree its cheaper to simply upgrade the rig I have before hopping into a hole new system. I just got 32 gigs of RAM (man is RAM cheap now 99.99 for one 4 gig stick of DDR2 ram) and got me two Xeon quad core 2.3 that I can over clock to 2.9 Ghz. All that is left is the graphics card as I do not know if I realy want to attempt to RAID my hard drives. How much of a prefomrance boost is RAIDING your hard drives on a server board for 3d work?

So guys what Graphic card would you recomend I blow my cash on :wink: So fare the Nvidia 295 is looking nice sense it supports 3 montor set up and I love my exstra desk space for referanceing and swapping between photoshop and Z Brush real quick.

#10

perhaps a Commodore 64?:smiley: