Hardware

[Pekka]

Hi to all!

I asked this before in landscape section, but I ask the same thing here too...

The question is about an "optimal" computer for VW for Windows. I will get a new computer soon and I should give some information on what kind of computer I need. So I am interested in the CPUs and their speed, amount of RAM, display adapters and so on. What is enough for fluent work?

I do landscape designs and I need DTMs and I am very much going for 3D designs and maybe some modeling etc. My present computer has difficulties in for example DTM cut and fill operations and printing could be faster (I print some test print outs with my desktop Canon bubblejet). I haven?t really even tried to do any 3D models yet.

PR

[Tim G4]

For starters, you need a Piii for high end rendering (renderworks and the lightworks raymaker will not work on anything else). Go for the quickest processer you can find (anything above 700mhz should be fine), and lots of RAM. A 32meg video card is also a good idea,

[Pekka]

quote:

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Originally posted by Tim G4:

For starters, you need a Piii for high end rendering (renderworks and the lightworks raymaker will not work on anything else). Go for the quickest processer you can find (anything above 700mhz should be fine), and lots of RAM. A 32meg video card is also a good idea,

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Thanks Tim,

are You sure that P3 or P4 is the only answer? How about AMD Athlon or TB? I am thinking about 800-1000 mhz CPU, 512 megs of RAM and a Geforce 2 GTS Ultra video card with 64 megs memory. But RIMM memory modules aren?t cheap and P4 won?t work without...

PR

[jeparson]

to answer in favor of amd processors- i say they work just as well as the pentium models and have much cheaper faster configurations

gateway has a great ready built athlon series for beginning

currently i am running a k6-3 400 an older amd processor- the complete config is

20gb harddrive, 32mb tnt2 ultra (the card before the geforce chip) 256 mb of ram, 17inch monitor, and k6-3 400 mhz processor

if you want a great athlon system- a good investment is a system running either a duron 850 or the athlon thunderbird 900mhz- i recently built one of each for clients- they are incredibly fast and use cheap ram

graphics cards for rendering- this is more important than processor speed- get a geforce gts 32mb card- either a guillmont, or the elsa versions- these have the highest ratings for vectors and rendering and are relatively cost effective-

harddrives- ata 100 isnt necessary- the ata 66 systems are fine

ram- at least 192-

operating system- win98 se or win2000- windows me is still moody

hope this helps

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[Jack Fulmer]

I'm pretty sure that VW/RW isn't currently designed to make use of today's blazingly fast and wonderfully designed graphics accelerators and their respective GPU's. You'll have to ask NNA why.

Check the approved application specs on most mid to high end cards (Elsa, 3DLabs, Hercules {which actually is Guillemot}, etc.) and you won't see VW mentioned anywhere.

That being said, for the current release of VW/RW you should focus on CPU and RAM. Get the fastest and most you can, respectively.

JF

[Pekka]

Thanks to all!

I think that I will get as powerful machine I can get, based on AMD processor as fast I can afford...

Video card issue is interesting, it seems to me that only some high end (and expensive) rendering/animation programs can get the most out of the latest video cards. I have to give it a thought or two...or buy some good games!

Pekka