[build] A PC primarily for 3D design,rendering

techguy101

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Hi There,

I'm currently looking into buidling a PC for a friend who designs/builds kitchens. He is using Planit Fusion (like 3DS max) on a standard dell desktop which takes a while to render works.

I'm thinking of buliding a Core i7 rig.

A couple of questions with regards 3D rendering, Is more RAM better and what effect does the CPU have on render times. Would the likes of a graphics card have something to offer here? If so, a standard gaming card GTX or something along the lines of a Quadra???

Here are my current thoughts on what I would use:

Intel Core i7 920 (possibly 940)
About 12-16 GB DDR3 RAM - Whats this about CLx?? and speed ?
I think these are the main components, and possibly a highend GPU if it would help.

Also, what effect would an SSD have on render times? I think it would be fairly positive, yes?

Would the improvement in render times over his current rig justify building a computer like this.

Has anybody here any experience with render farms? My friend has a few pcs that could be used to build one. I'm guessing that a render farm has to be supported by the design software

Thanks for any insight..
 
Yes, more RAM is better, though only if the OS/App can utilize it. Typically, more CPU threads would make rendering much faster, since portions can be done in parallel.
Yes, Quadro/FireGL will offer faster render times if the software is OpenGL based.
The bottleneck in most render sessions is the processing, not the disk speed. However, yes, faster I/O speeds will help. How big are the files he works with?
That depends on his old rig's specs.
Indeed.

BTW, these are the recommended system specs:
Desktop PC Recommendations
CPU: Dual Core Or Quad Core Processor @ 2.0 Ghz or above
RAM: 1024MB PC2700 (or 2x512MB); 2GB if running Vista
HARD DISK: 80GB IDE or above
DVD ROM: Software installers will be sent on DVD.
NETWORK CARD: On board 10/100 LAN
INTERNET: Broadband recommended 1mb
VIDEO CARD: GeForce 8 Series 256MB/ATI X Series 256MB
 
If you're looking for build help, please answer the questions in this thread. Now...

Hi There,

I'm currently looking into buidling a PC for a friend who designs/builds kitchens. He is using Planit Fusion (like 3DS max) on a standard dell desktop which takes a while to render works.

I'm thinking of buliding a Core i7 rig.

Good choice. The quad-core i7 with 8 threads should significantly benefit 3D design/rendering.

A couple of questions with regards 3D rendering, Is more RAM better and what effect does the CPU have on render times. Would the likes of a graphics card have something to offer here? If so, a standard gaming card GTX or something along the lines of a Quadra???

More RAM is better. I would suggest 12GB and it would benefit him if the program can use some of the ram as ramdisk.
A graphics card shouldn't have too much of an impact in this case as long as you're selecting from the upper-mid-tier range. I'd probably go with the GTX260 Core 216 or ATI 4890 1GB depending on his budget. It also depends on whether or not he's planning to use several monitors.

Here are my current thoughts on what I would use:

Intel Core i7 920 (possibly 940)
About 12-16 GB DDR3 RAM - Whats this about CLx?? and speed ?
I think these are the main components, and possibly a highend GPU if it would help.

CPU: i7 920. The i7 940 is $300 more and only 300MHz faster. Certainly not worth it IMHO.

12GB of DDR3 1600 would be where I would start. DDR3 has become noticeably cheaper as of late, so if he feels that performance is still not up to par and his budget permits, he can go with 24GB. I would probably go with 2 of the cheapest 6GB DDR3 1600 kits. In my opinion, it's better to have it run at a lower voltage (1.5-1.6v) relative to the average kits (1.65v). This is more of an advantage than tighter timings because timings don't make a real-world difference and are less important than frequency with DDR3 RAM. That being said, your friend will not notice a real-world difference between DDR3 1600 ram with 8-8-8-21 and 9-9-9-24. But this 6GB G.Skill DDR3 1600 is a good place to start since it runs at 1.5v.

As far as the GPU, I would probably say that the Radeon 4890 or GTX260 Core 216 would be fine. I'm too familiar with the type of rendering he's doing so I can't say for sure, but it also depends on his budget. If possible, it might prove slightly beneficial to upgrade to a GTX285 or 4870x2.

Also, what effect would an SSD have on render times? I think it would be fairly positive, yes?

SSD may improve it by 10-15% but I don't know if that is justified by the price premium.

Would the improvement in render times over his current rig justify building a computer like this.

What's his current rig?
 
Are those recommended specs for planit fusion?

The package he uses is Planit Fusion which cost about €4 to 5k. I can't find any technical info on this software on the net but i'm sure it is pretty good for that price.

I have yet to check out his system, current render times and size of work files. From what I remember it was a run of the mill Dell desktop.

Just a question on render farms as this guy has two other medium spec computers that could be used. I am aware of software like Dr Queue etc that are used with popular software like Blender and 3DS max etc. From what I gather Dr Queue takes instruction file(scripts) from the 3d software then delegates the rendering to other systems. Do most 3d packages output these instruction files and it's just a matter of converting them to scripts that Dr Queue can use.? Is there any web atricles on this subject?

-----

If you're looking for build help, please answer the questions in this thread. Now...
Thanks for the pointer but i'm not necessarily looking for build help because I have experience building PCs. I am just looking for general guidance on what hardware is best for 3D graphics design and rendering.

This is great input so far guys..It seems like I am thinking along the same lines so. I think his budget would be around $2429 ex monitors. I think this would allow for a 32GB SSD..would that suffice for a 3D render. How does that work? It renders to the SSD and then I can store the result on a regular hard drive?

I think thats kind of it for the moment. After my exams I will checkout his current rig,render times,work size etc. I will also contact the manufacturers of the software package to see what they recommend.

Again, thanks for the input and any more suggestions welcome :)
 
Yup... went to their site, clicked on support site, then clicked on system requirements:
http://194.72.48.204/default.asp?menu=SystemRequirements

I have no idea about render farms, sorry. When you call the software company, ask them. ;)

With the SSDs, if his files are smaller than 6GB, then he can setup a RAMdisk, which would be much quicker than an SSD. If the files are larger, then yes, SSDs would be faster. Though, they are flash, so how long do you expect them to last? I'm not sure they'd be your best choice. Depending on how much he renders, I may suggest some fast HDDs in RAID0 instead, like the WD6400AAKS or WD6401AALS.
 
Thats odd, I couldn't find any fusion related sites.. Is there a reason the ip is displayed and not a domain?

I'll ask them about render farms but I think it may be overkill.

The best solution would probably be RAM if filesize permits it.
 
Ok,

I just got off the phone with a guy from Planit and he just quoted the minimum specs to me again.

He wasn't really that much help to be honest. He just said to build a fairly high end system and Fusion will use it.

He did say however, that I should get a Quadro card as opposed to a GTX/GeForce card.. This is going to be a problem for me as they are seriously priced.

My Options:
Could I settle for a cheapish Quadro with ~ 256MB RAM ??
Get a highend game card like a GTX 295 or probably a 4870X2 ?
Use a second hand 9800GT 512MB..?

I'm just wondering how a GPU will effect render times for a rig that has an i7 cpu? I'm pretty sure a Quadro is the way to go but probably too expensive. I am aware that gaming cards are for rendering graphics with prerendered textures and the quadro does everything on the fly.

Will a gaming card provide sufficient processing??

Also: The tech support guy didn't provide much in the way of benchmark details. My friend who wants to use the system has render times of about 30-60 secs for a fairly basic design and this steadily increases as design get more complex. I'm aiming to bring this as close to realtime as possible. Is this a realistic aim?

His current specs are:

Windows XP Pro 32Bit
Core2Duo E6800 2.13Ghz
3GB RAM
Integrated graphics as far as I know..

Golden Question:
will upgrading to the system I am talking about give a drastic increase in performance thats worth the money?

Also note that Fusion will release a new version in the end of June that will fully utilise 64Bit memory addressing..

I am also thinking of putting to VelociRaptors into RAID0 for OS/Apps and then another 2 drives in RAID1 for storage.(Whatever size is required)

Thanks..
 
don't waste your money on the raptors get 3 x Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB run them in Raid 5 (Striped w/parity)

You'll get the preformance benefits from striping the raid set as well as the fault protection from the parity bit. One drive dies the machine keeps on kicking and all you have to do is replace the drive and the raid set will rebuild the data back onto it.

and all 3 drives cost less than one Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 300GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache and when striped should offer performance on par with or exceeding the raptor
 
http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=539
This is a soft mod guide.
Geforce cards and Quadro cards use the same hardware basically. You can turn a Geforce into a Quadro. Maybe you can flash the bios for better results or something. I don't know, go search around to see what you can do.
Also, have you thought about using 2xCPUs?
 
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don't waste your money on the raptors get 3 x Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB run them in Raid 5 (Striped w/parity)
The problem is that if you're planning on using the mobo's onboard fakeRAID the write performance will be poor and that the OP will see roughly 10 to 50% CPU usage at all times as the onboard raid controller uses the CPU to do all of the parity calculations.

So I would only recommend RAID 5 with performance in mind if you plan on getting a true hardware RAID controller.

HDD wise, I recommend taking a look at this post:
http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1034146721&postcount=70
 
well since he was gonna buy 2 raptors he can take the other $229.99 and buy a pretty darn nice hardware raid controller then right?

:cool:

Thanks for the info danny.

One of these days i'm just gonna pick your brain until you're sick of hearing me.......
 
One of these days i'm just gonna pick your brain until you're sick of hearing me.......

LOL!

Just some more info: For a true hardware RAID controller, you're looking at around $300 minimum. If you don't mind used, no warranty, and some hardware ficklness, you could probably pick up the PCer 5/i true hardware raid controller on ebay for under $200.
 
Danny meant Perc5/i.

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=539
This is a soft mod guide.
Geforce cards and Quadro cards use the same hardware basically. You can turn a Geforce into a Quadro. Maybe you can flash the bios for better results or something. I don't know, go search around to see what you can do.
Also, have you thought about using 2xCPUs?

Nice to see you can softmod GeForce cards again. For a while, it was only Radeons, IIRC (after the GeForce 6 series).

@OP, definitely look into softmodding a GeForce. Also, Tom's has some workstation graphics charts you should check out, too. ;)
 
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