Is my computer good enough?

Stu2Prof

Hi guys I have been getting into Mudbox over the last couple of months but am noticing alot of lag on it when I get up to around a half million polys. I would really like to go up to higher levels but it seems like my computer isn't good enough. Could someone tell me where the flaws are in my computer setup and what I could do to upgrade it?

My computer info:

Acer Inspire 5551
4gb ram
Windows 7 professional 64bit
AMD Phenom II N830 Triple-Core Processor ~2GHZ
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250

Thanks for any help you can offer.

Joshua Stubbles

The biggest thing with sculpting programs is RAM. I would say that you want at least 8GB, if not 12GB. Having only 4, you're not going to have the best time with dense meshes.

Scruples

Looking at your graphics card, it uses shared memory which is bad as it is much slower than dedicated Video Memory and it will leach from your system memory, dual ddr3 bandwidth is about 13Gb vs hd6850's 128Gb bandwidth, which is only mid-end. So fill your memory slots with some decent crapola....I am going to mention Zbrush would run far better on your system as it is less GPU dependent, in fact it doesn't use it at all.

Stu2Prof

Thanks for the advice guys!. I only have 2 memory slots on my pc so the maximum I can get is 8gb ram. Also Scruples are you suggesting I get a new graphics card? I'm sorry but I dont understand what you mean when you are talking about ddr 3 bandwidth. Could you elaborate a bit more?

the_Adri

I have 16gigs of ram and it lags when it comes time to packing the uv. No, 4gigs is not enough.

Scruples

99% of laptops can't be upgraded with a videocard, my point was that because your videocard uses shared memory, to not skimp and buy bulk, slow timing memory as it will hurt performance even more than if you had a dedicated videocard. Does mudbox actually use insane amounts of system memory? I know Zbrush is capped at 8gb, but its not x64, only LAA.