Computing Needs for 3D rendering
Anhedonia_79
Posts: 6
Hello,
I was curious if the community could point me towards a computer that is built for 3D Rendering and Modeling? I'm thinking about purchasing a new computer (my current computer is slower than slow) and want to make sure that I get one that can handle the task for years to come. I'm looking for a laptop because I need something portable. I may be willing to spend up to about $5000 but would prefer to spend about $2000-$2500.
I've followed a few suggestions online but I wanted to check with the DAZ community because I trust them.
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Say hello to my little friend http://www.newegg.com ;-)
Try an i5 laptop for $700-1000. Go for the one with the biggest memory. But being that I like the power of a tower, and if I'm mobile it's to get away from the comp :lol: That is about as much help as I can be. But I tend to be rather frugal. You say $2000-2500 and I think new car :-)
I buy at Newegg for cheaper, but in that price range you can afford a Sager: http://www.xoticpc.com/custom-gaming-laptops-notebooks-clevo-sager-notebooks-ct-95_51_162.html
They let you choose your build and you can even have them leave the logo off the machine (so that it will not encourage thieves). The most important thing for rendering in 3delight is that you get a quad core or bigger (since it uses mainly the CPU).
Um... for $4700 you can have this BUILT. I am.
EDIT: Okay closer to $4800 but...
EDIT #2: This is built for Animation so...
just rub it in for poor ManStan Jader! :snake:
( his friend is beyond his budget at moment)
For that price I could put together a render farm ;-) 5, i7's would be awesome. :ohh:
Thanks gang, I appreciate the swift reply. I'm definately going for an i7. With reference to the i7, I've read a little about "multi-core" or "Quad-core" with regards to the i7. Are all i7 processors multi-core (quad-core)? And if not, is there a way to know the difference (assuming that it isn't always simply spelled out - for those of us who aren't quite as tech savy yet)?
I've also seen that the two major types of video cards tend to be the NVIDIA Geforce and the AMD Radeon. Does one happen to be superior to the other?
Are there other specs that I should really be taking into account? I'm curious to know what the most important components are for a computer designed for these purposes.
And lastly, the consensus seems to be that a desktop really is better than a laptop for 3D Rendering/Modelling/Animation. Is this because they can offer more processing power for a cheaper price? I'm not clear on what the advantage truly is.
I'm sure that I have a billion other questions, but I suppose that this will suffice for now. Thanks DAZ community. You guys rock!!!
They aren't, some i7's are duo. The only way to tell is to google the specific model number. Some i5's are quad, too. This drove me crazy when I was initially hunting for the laptop I hope to buy next month (I need the portable option for visiting family, etc. so I can keep working).
I actually have an Intel chipset and a Radeon graphics card right now. Mainly because it was cheaper. While Intel has pulled ahead of AMD on CPU chipsets, AMD/Radeon's graphics cards are still pretty competitive. People have different opinions on that. It's best to google the graphics card you are thinking about buying. Bear in mind that any piece of hardware you can imagine, someone has reviewed it and compared it with its major competitors. There's very good information on these things most of the time.
A desktop does sometimes offer better specs for cheaper - my main income is from my digital work and I've always built my own machines. There's also the issue of cooling. I have people claim time and again that their laptop has no heating issues, but my experience with that has been different, I'll just put it that way.
The gap between desktop and laptop pricing has narrowed somewhat, but it's still cheaper to build a quad desktop than buy a quad laptop if you want a big hard drive and lots of RAM to go with that processor. (And by "big" I do NOT mean 500 gb. That wouldn't even hold my content library.) There's also the fact that if you do a lot of rendering, gaming, or both, you put more stress on components and may need to replace them at some point, and replacing desktop components yourself is both easier and cheaper.
This also lets you upgrade yourself over time, adding more RAM and hard drives than you might be able to afford on the initial build, and that's not very possible with laptops. And of course there's theft and damage, but I don't think that deters many people. I've dropped my current laptop like ten times and it still works, and my home has not yet been broken into either (nor have I been foolish enough to leave the laptop's bag visible in a car).
So far the only real, yet weird issue with AMD vs Nvidia is for some strange reason AMD cards don't get along with second life :ohh:
Other then that I haven't seen any performance issues between the two.
Yes ram is what makes the difference in rendering. An i9 and 32gig is a hell of a render machine ;-) The thought of 5 of them just makes me drool ;-P
And I agree about the HDD. My fried comp had a Tbite divided in to 2, 500 meg sectors{?}. It took some judicious clean up and uninstalling games I wasn't playing to have 250meg free. Which is hilarious because this comp; the gatewayasaures, came with a 40gig HDD :lol:
I have a 250gig slave drive on it now, but.......
My next comp will come with a Tbite and I'll add this other Tbite to it. But I am looking at an i5 with 8gig ram with my budget. I'm hoping for one with 4 card slots and 1 8gig card because I have the 2gig cars from my last comp; DDR3.
Again thanks for assisting me with navigating through this process of choosing a computer that will suite my needs. In trying to stay around my desired price of $2,000 to $2,500 I've come up with something like this:
■Intel® Core™ i7-4700MQ Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.40 GHz) with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology
■Windows 8
■32GB DDR3L 1600MHz SDRAM (8GB + 8GB + 8GB + 8GB)
■1TB (5400rpm, Serial ATA)
■256GB mSATA solid state drive (SSD)
■750GB 2nd HDD (5400rpm, Serial-ATA)
■3GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 770M w/NVIDIA® Optimus™ Technology
■DVD SuperMulti (+/-R double layer) drive
■Premium Frameless LED Backlit Raised Tile Keyboard with 10-Keypad (black)
■17.3" FHD TruBrite® LED Backlit Display (1920 x 1080)
■Quad harmon/kardon® Speakers
■Wi-Fi® Wireless networking (802.11b/g/n)+ Bluetooth 4.0
■1 month trial for new Office 365 customers
■Norton™ Internet Security 2013 (30-day trial subscription)
■1 Year Standard Limited Warranty (1 Year on Battery)
This is on a Toshiba Qosmio X70-ABT2G22 Laptop (I currently own a Toshiba - i3 processor with on 4GB of memory - which has been awesome for everything else except 3D animation/rendering - It even survived a motorcycle accident I got into at 55mph!). So I thought to look there (after looking at the sites suggested in this thread) because I trust the brand. Does this seem like it's worth the $2,209.99 that Toshiba wants to charge me? I believe that it lives up the the specs suggested earlier (and I checked, the i7 Processor is a quadcore).
Thanks guys. I must admit that I am humbled to be recieving help from some BIG names that I've seen on the forums and in the Marketplace (ManStan and SickleYield) :-)
LOL! I'm not really a big name around here, I'm just a chatty one. ;)
1. Why in the world would you want trial versions of Norton and Office? Isn't that just shovelware?
2. I've had good experiences with Toshiba laptops. Better than with this Acer netbook I'm on right now, you betcha (although again, dropped ten times). Lenovo is hit and miss. There are some other brands I've never heard of on Newegg that I just wouldn't risk. Dell is not a bad brand if you look closely at the actual hardware and are willing to basically wipe and reinstall the OS because of the crap they're going to bundle with it.
3. Many tech reviewers recommend skipping Windows 8 and sticking with 7 until the next OS comes along that is better optimized for regular computers (i.e., ones without touch screens). When I get my new laptop I will be reinstalling Windows 7 on it. This is another $100 to $150 but I consider it well worth it. If you've already used Win8 in a rendering workflow and are comfortable with it, feel free to ignore this advice; what OS a person prefers can be very subjective.
4. That's a good hard drive setup. Just make sure you move your virtual memory paging file off it and onto the 1 tb if you're going to be putting any program files on the bitsy SSD (and don't put anything you care about or can't reinstall on that SSD, either, but I'm sure you know that).
I didn't really want those on there (particularly Norton) but the build and design page wouldn't provide me with an option to not have them on the computer. Likewise, I also prefer Windows 7 to Windows 8, but only Windows 8 was available (options were only windows 8 or windows 8 Pro). Unfortunately, the Windows 7 I currently have came preinstalled on my computer (so no installation disks or anything). Since I won't be purchasing a computer immediately it is my hope that I could call Toshiba to have them customize it further (or end up buying Windows 7 later on). At the moment I'm just trying to discern what a decent basic setup for the machine would look like.
As to your tip #4 I am glad that you mentioned it because I didn't know that :red:
Hopefully I will save this thread so that I can refer to the advice later when I finally do purchase a computer.
Thanks again for all of your help (you know, taking time out of your day to assist the newbies - we really appreciate it). Hopefully you guys will see some good stuff from Anhedonia_79 in the next few months (once I start operating on this new machine - my i3 with 4GB just isn't cutting it).
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I'll look forward to it. I'm also at sickleyield.deviantart.com if you would like to trade page-watches - we've got a good circle of DS/Poser folks on there trading renders and a lot of DAZ PA's also promote there.
SSDs are great for having your main OS installed on, because of their greater speed, but they are notoriously unstable and prone to self-destructing at random. Further, the more RAM you're using, the bigger that paging file needs to be, and it can easily exceed the size of a smaller SSD (I had to find this out on my own but admittedly my SSD is smaller than you're planning).
Jade is your home large enough, to house that system, Lol !!! Awesome system, check'd the specs. Wish I could get my hands on the graphics card :-)
Just go all out and get a Xeon processor. lol
Or you could save yourself $500, increase your render time by a few seconds, and get an I7 3930K.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-3970x-sandy-bridge-e-benchmark,3348-6.html
How do you know what graphic card to buy for an upgrade to your computer? How hard are they to install?
Kimberly
Well, my formula is "buy the best one I have the money for." This usually leaves me a couple of releases behind bleeding edge because I never have $1k to spend on just the graphics card. There is one in every price range and most games (for instance) perform all right with a mid to upper-range card. Rendering in DS or Poser, in my experience, is pretty much the same - I dream of being able to afford a workstation rendering card one day, but I'm fine without it.
How hard? Very easy, if you already know how to pull open your machine and where the slot is. Usually there's one cable to plug into the motherboard. The biggest problem I had with my last machine was getting all the cables away from it to allow space. Newer cards tend to be huge. Have some electrical tape or those anti-static velcro straps to wrap cords with.
Truely now DAZ Studio will not use the Card in 3Delight renders. I have some editing and effect software that will need that monster I'm getting. It will also be good if you Get a card that supports OpenCL if you do LUX renders.
I still stick with a 300GB 10k rpm VelociRaptor for my boot drive. Might not be as fast as an SSD but at $139 it's less than half the price or even 1/3 the price of an equivalent sized SSD and faster than a 7500rpm hard drive. They also have hybrid ssd/platter drives but I shy away from those as it is said "The more complex something is, the more likely it will have problems or break."
<--- And that. :D</p>
Hi Kimberly, from all my research, graphics card cuda cores is essential for graphics performance. The higher the better. Graphics cards are not difficult to install at all. Many do have issues with cards being to large. Heat is also another issue, for faster/larger cards.
Cards are very easy to install and you need no experience to do it. As already stated, make sure your wire are out of the way and you have good airflow. If you get an nVidia card then go to there site and look up the measurements and make sure the card will fit in your case. All you need to do is unplug the power and pull it out of the slot
Well, my formula is "buy the best one I have the money for." This usually leaves me a couple of releases behind bleeding edge because I never have $1k to spend on just the graphics card. There is one in every price range and most games (for instance) perform all right with a mid to upper-range card. Rendering in DS or Poser, in my experience, is pretty much the same - I dream of being able to afford a workstation rendering card one day, but I'm fine without it.
How hard? Very easy, if you already know how to pull open your machine and where the slot is. Usually there's one cable to plug into the motherboard. The biggest problem I had with my last machine was getting all the cables away from it to allow space. Newer cards tend to be huge. Have some electrical tape or those anti-static velcro straps to wrap cords with.
I tend to buy lower end HP computers (or what ever I find) that has the biggest Ram I can find then upgrade it one part at a time over several years. I maxed out the ram last year and I was considering a new graphic card. I guess my question was worded wrong. Is there anything special I need to look for in a graphic card because I'd like to do lux renders faster?
I'll add graphics card cuda cores to my list of notes on this. Good Thought, I need to see what my computer can handle in size.
Thanks