Building new rig, what do you guys use?

gbenchar · Nov 2006

Howdy, Im currently looking into getting a new system here for modeling and rendering, and I have mixed responses from people.

What kind of system do you guys have?

Will applications such as Photoshop CS.2, Maya 8.0, Zbrush, 3DS, recognize 4gigs of RAM? Or is that a waste?

gamedev · Nov 2006

4 Gigs is a sweet spot. Are you looking for a desktop or laptop? I'd say go dual-core or quad-core w/ 4 gigs of ram and an Nvidia graphics card. GeForce if you like to play games, Quatto if all you will be doing is 3d work.

Psyk0 · Nov 2006

I'll certainly go for quad core and 2+ Gig of ram and most likely Nvidia card, mainly for high poly modeling tho.

I'm pretty sure most applications will "recognize" 4 gig of ram, because when you run out of ram, the OS uses virtual memory (stores data on hard drive which is much slower).

gbenchar · Nov 2006

I spoke to a number of tech guys, all of whom build computers for a living. If the program is 32bit it will only recognize the 2gigs of ram. Also, if you dont have windows x64 nothing will be able to pick up the extra 2 gigs.

However, windows x64 is basically a beta of vista, and both are unreliable and unstable.

I ended up getting 6700 dual core, 4 gigs of 6400 ram (going to upg anyways in the future why not, right? :P) and the new GeForce 8800 GTX. Im not running a server board, so i think this will be alright for a workstation.

Rick Stirling · Nov 2006

Max picks up more that 2megs with a tricky software switch. Or something.

Building new rig, what do you guys use?

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