Building a PC for animation/modeling

C

Caswell

Veteran XX
So far, these are the parts I've chosen...

Case: Antec SX1040BII case with 400 watt power supply $143.00 $143.00
CPU: AMD Athlon64 2800+ boxed,
Mobo: ASUS K8V Deluxe, S754 DDR AGP 5PCI SATA RAID 1394 1000LAN SOUND
RAM: Apacer 2x512MB PC3200 (DDR400)
Harddrive: Seagate ST3160023AS, BARRACUDA 7200.7 160GB SATA 7200RPM 8MB
Video: ATI Radeon 9800PRO 128MB 256BIT AGP VGA DVI-I TV OUT RETAIL BOX
CR-Rom: LiteON SOHC-5232K 52X32X52X16 CDRW-DVD DRIVE RETAIL BOX
DVD-Rom: LiteON SOHW-1213S 12X +/- dvd writer
Monitor: 19" something

How does that sound to you people that are in the animation field? The machine will see SOME gaming, but not a lot. Most of the time, it will be a photoshop/maya/3dmax/etc computer.

It's being built on a budget, and it's already over it. Is it worth going for a 9600XT video and uping CPU power? I was also looking for the FireGL or Quadro cards...are they any good?
 
Call me an AMD fanboy...but I don't like Intel. Not to mention, a chip of the same speed costs more. The AMD chip I have right now does a respectable job of rendering already...
 
a year ago when i built my comp to be used for gaming + animation/modeling/graphic design i had gone with getting a P4 since at that time it showed it better for those types of apps (the same ones you listed that i also use daily)

not sure how athlonsXP fair in those apps, im sure theres bound me to some benchmarks, i would def research it.
ram looks good, at least a gig will help a lot.
and like kwago said - ditch the radeon, they suck ass under 3D apps. get an nvidia card.
the older geforces up till the gf3, you could soft/hard mod into quadros for the 3D stuff, not sure if thats still possible with the newer ones.

otherwise the rest looks good.
 
Might want to consider a sata/raid setup since that board supports it with the built in SI sata chipset. I don't know how much space and loading is required for 3d modeling/animation as I only do video editing on my setup, but my two 250 maxtors rock for video editing :)
 
Ok, thinking of going Gefoce4 TI 4800 for video. Saves me a little money too...shouldn't be a problem.
I've started putting a gig of RAM in all the machines I build...doesn't cost that much and helps a lot.
I'll check some AMD vs Intel benchmarks...but it going to take some good numbers to convince me.
 
if you're feeling peppy, you can buy a 9800 Pro 256 and flash it to FireGL X2-256t. That's a $665 video card for $280. I think you can do something like this with nvidia cards too.
 
I'll add another drive in the future, but for the time being I don't have enough to drop another drive in just to increase transfer speed.
 
Goof said:
So far, these are the parts I've chosen...

Case: Antec SX1040BII case with 400 watt power supply $143.00 $143.00
CPU: AMD Athlon64 2800+ boxed,
Mobo: ASUS K8V Deluxe, S754 DDR AGP 5PCI SATA RAID 1394 1000LAN SOUND
RAM: Apacer 2x512MB PC3200 (DDR400)
Harddrive: Seagate ST3160023AS, BARRACUDA 7200.7 160GB SATA 7200RPM 8MB
Video: ATI Radeon 9800PRO 128MB 256BIT AGP VGA DVI-I TV OUT RETAIL BOX
CR-Rom: LiteON SOHC-5232K 52X32X52X16 CDRW-DVD DRIVE RETAIL BOX
DVD-Rom: LiteON SOHW-1213S 12X +/- dvd writer
Monitor: 19" something
It's being built on a budget, and it's already over it. Is it worth going for a 9600XT video and uping CPU power? I was also looking for the FireGL or Quadro cards...are they any good?
Click to expand...


you need to probably look into a twin processor system. most 3d apps handle better on them. so probably a twin xeon system. sorry but if you are looking to make a serious animation rig you need to stop looling at consumer grade processors.

raid setups are important. when you need to edit a 4 gb movie files a regular hd setup is just going to slow you down.

and loose the video card. if you are going to seriously build a computer for animation and modeling then you need a workstation card designed for it. quadro card is the best way to go. the ati firegl series has had nothing but complaints from people I know in my field.

I am not saying you have to buy top of the line xeon, raid, quadro, etc.. either. But look for workstation grade equipment in your budget instead of the standard consumer products.
 
This isn't going to be used as a professional high-end animation machine. I'm still a noob at it, just want something dedicated to work on. I have no where near enough cash to start thinking about dual processors...in the future it will happen though.
 
Goof said:
Call me an AMD fanboy...but I don't like Intel. Not to mention, a chip of the same speed costs more. The AMD chip I have right now does a respectable job of rendering already...
Click to expand...

Im an AMD fan as well, but the fact remains that for rendering/graphics/movies, Intel chips are way faster than AMD.

Though i havnt seen a comparison to 64bit...

Also, you might want to consider the FX series chips for this...

Lesse...for rendering disc IO is also a concern. Its the one place id consider a RAID worthwhile on the desktop (Striping).

The recomendation made earlier about going nvidia over ati for open gl support makes sense too.
 
Looked at some benchmarks and I might budge on the whole "no intel" thing. I'll get some prices and see. The AMD64 FX chips can compete, but not the non-fx chips.

I agree with everyone on raid, it's just not worth the money YET as I don't have the money for it. It's something that is easy to add in the future anyways.
 
CommyBastard said:
if you're feeling peppy, you can buy a 9800 Pro 256 and flash it to FireGL X2-256t. That's a $665 video card for $280. I think you can do something like this with nvidia cards too.
Click to expand...
i tried that with my 9800pro, it did not give me any performance increase at all
 
Go for the A64 3200+ if you can afford it.

The 9800 Pro is fine for rendering/graphics.
 
I think you'll be more than fine...I run 3dsmax at school with a 2.4, 1 gig ddr, geforce fx 5200 or someshit like that...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top