[CBHS] Comprehensive Blender Hardware Survey

[overshoot.tv]

There is no really appropriate forum to post hardware related questions. The off-topic forum is littered with silly game threads, so I guess the News and Discussion forum is the next best place to post this.

For Blender development, obviously the more powerfull hardware, the better... It's especially true for CPUs: the more powerfull, the quicker animated sequences will be rendered. But why waste money on the very latest and topmost GPU when a more reasonably priced, mid-range one would be acceptable??

This thread is a comprehensive hardware survey for Blender. Post a comment only with your hardware specs.

In each comment, post:

1. CPU - brand, designation, speed, number of cores...
2. RAM - amount, designation and speed...
3. GPU - brand, designation, amount of dedicated RAM...
4. OS - Operating System: brand, distro, version, 32 or 64bits...
5. Blender - how you usually use blender: do you do lots of animation? Complicated scenes? Simple 2D? etc.
6. Appreciation - according to your use of Blender, do you feel that the hardware you have is acceptable or not? Sufficient or not? If you could, what would you upgrade first: CPU, RAM, GPU?

Useful links
I'll update this thread with relevant links provided in comments.

This is the list of systems in use and supported by active Blender developers:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/De...rted_platforms

Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...rd,2404-7.html

Blender Render Benchmark v0.2
http://www.eofw.org/bench/
Covers CPU, RAM and OS but the test cannot cover the GPU.

Moderators: can this thread be made sticky somewhere and can you delete non-informative comments? This thread could become a long-term resource for people to consult when they want to upgrade their hardware, or when they want to start working with Blender to check if their hardware is ok...

[PhilBo]

Doesn't this link already cover that (at least CPU/Ram/OS)?

http://www.eofw.org/bench/

[overshoot.tv]

1. AMD Sempron 2300+, 1585MHz, 256 KB cache size, 3173 bogomips
2. 752MB DDR RAM
3. MSI NX6200AX AGP GPU - nVidia 6200, 256MB DDR2
4. Linux Kubuntu 8.04 32bits
5. I am a Blender newbie and have only done simple scenes so far. My goal is to do animated videos.
6. The GPU, even if off the lower end of the scale by today's standards, was surprising enough for my simple newbie needs. The RAM was enough too, but I had to be careful with multitasking. The best was not to have any other resource greedy applications running at the same time. On the other hand, I definitely felt the lack of power of my CPU: even a simple scene would be rendered in seconds, so a 10 seconds 30fps animated clip....

With the above specs, I guess you understand why I'm looking forward to buying a brand new computer with an AMD Phenom II x4 945 CPU, at least 4GB RAM and an as yet undetermined nVidia GPU.

Blessings.

[overshoot.tv]

PhilBo: thanks. I've added the link to the original post.
It's great and quite comprehensive. However, it doesn't cover the GPU, which is at this stage the aspect that interest me the most: is the best GPU really necessary?

Please post your specs. Thanks

[Dorro]

Intel e7400, 4 GB DDR2 RAM, Nvidia 7600 GT, Ubuntu 9.04 64 bits, noob, my computer has never been powerful/fast/pretty/thin enough since my first Z81 (my brother's actually) and we wanted to upgrade the RAM from 1 kByte to 4 kByte (kilobyte!!!!) from about day three or four as far as I can remember.

[PhilBo]

System 1:

1. CPU - Phenom II 920 @ Stock
2. RAM - 8 GB DDR2 800 mhz OCZ Platinum Ram
3. GPU - BFG GTX 260 Maxcore 55
4. OS - XP 32 Bits (Soon to be Windows 7 64 bits) / Ubuntu 64 bit
5. Blender - Stills / Product demonstration
6. Appreciation - Phenom II is great for rendering in Blender and Lux. Looking forward to GPU accelerated renderers for Blender (or in Blender)

System 2:

1. CPU - Athlon X2 5000+ BE
2. RAM - 4 GB Corsair DDR2 800
3. GPU - 8800GT 512MB
4. OS - XP 32 bits (soon to be Windows 7 64 bit.)
5. Blender - Same as above
6. Appreciation - Used as a slave for network rendering or for a backup machine when my wife is using my Phenom II to read Facebook.

As far as GPU's are considered, you would do the best with Nvidia with Blender due to the robustness of their OpenGL drivers in Windows AND in Linux. ATI has done great with their Windows OpenGL drivers, but their Linux drivers leave a lot to be desired. I just upgraded from an HD 4850 512 on system 1 to a GTX 260 since the HD4850 died. I had no issues running Blender or MOI3D with it. It worked great. But I decided to go team green with the replacement since the GTX260 was on sale for $140.

[Felix_Kütt]

1. MoBo - AsRock K10N78FullHD-hSLI R3.0
2. CPU - AMD Phenom x3 8650 2.30 Ghz
3. RAM - 2 GB, Patriot PDC22G6400LLK PC2-6400 (800MHz), 4-4-4-12, 2.1V
4. GPU - integrated, NVidia 8200 IGP (basically 8400, just integrated).
5. OS - Windows 7, 64 bit.
6. Blender - Anything and everything, using 64 bit builds.
7. Appreciation - This's a firm platform, could always use more ram though*, amd cpu's work great for workstations**

* - I could sculpt a 3,400,000 poly model just fine without HDD swapping, haven't tried pushing further.
** - Would go intel for render farm/nodes.

[wolfmanyoda]

1. CPU - Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz each
2. RAM - G.Skill 4Gb pc28500
3. GPU - EVGA GeForce 9600 GT 512MB
4. OS - win 7 ultimate 64bit. Usually dual boot with ubuntu, haven't put ubuntu back on yet.
5. Blender Just stills at the moment. Trying unsuccessfully to build my own.

I'm quite happy with the performance, especially after going to a 64bit OS. I was running 32bit version on the same hardware. Definitely an improvement.

[JoOngle]

1. CPU - Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, 2.4 Ghz, 4 core
2. RAM - 8 Gb, PC6400, 800 mhz
3. GPU - Asus Nvidia, GeForce 8600, 512 Mb
4. OS - Linux, Ubuntu 9.04, 64 Bit
5. Blender - Commercial production, work, hobby, Cartoon Animation, Product visualisation, Walkarounds, Game demos
6. Appreciation - I can never get strong enough hardware, If I could afford it, my entire apartment would be one big renderfarm now.

[thedaemon]

1. CPU - Intel q6600 2.4Ghz stock clock speed
2. RAM - 4GB 667mhz ECC registered
3. GPU - Geforce 9800GTX+ 512MB
4. OS - Windows XP 32bit, Ubuntu 64bit, OSX 10.5
5. Blender - I am a character animator, I'm also creating a short film. Do some animations for indie game developers.
6. Appreciation - Currently the ram is holding me back, with it's slow clock speed and ECC that my motherboard does not support. It will be my first upgrade. Blender is pretty fast in just about everything though, and I haven't had any real slow downs yet, unless you count sub-d meshes with complicated rigs.

[Atom]

Bogomips isn't a real word!

[superx10]

1. CPU - Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600@3.2Ghz
2. RAM - 4GB G.Skill DDR2 800
3. GPU - EVGA Geforce 8800GTS 320Mb, driving 2x 22" screens @ 1680x1050 each
4. OS - Currently Win7 64bit; varies
5. Blender - I usually use Blender for low-poly collision mesh modeling for games and other hobbyist things. I also do builds of 2.5 SVN fairly regularly just to check it out
6. Appreciation - Most of my .blends are very low-poly. My netbook is more than sufficient for my needs in terms of Blender, but this is my main computer.

[AdobeMan]

CPU: AMD Phenom 9500 - Quad Core - 2.20Ghz
RAM: Corsair XMS2 4GB DDR2-800
GPU - Nvidia ECS GTS-250 1gb
OS - Windows Vista 32bit
Blender - Modeling and Game Development.
Appreciation
according to your use of Blender, do you feel that the hardware you have is acceptable or not? acceptable
Sufficient or not? sufficient
If you could,
what would you upgrade first: CPU, RAM, GPU? I would upgrade my CPU

[Jurgen]

1. CPU - Intel E8400 - 2 cores, 3ghz
2. RAM - 2gb ddr2 800mhz cheapest
3. GPU - palit radeon hd3850 512mb
4. OS - Arch linux 64bit
5. Blender - Simple modeling
6. Appreciation - Machine is more than enough powerful for my usage.
what would you upgrade first: more memory (6gb max), new graphics card and Q9550 processor

[sick]

1. CPU - Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83 Ghz
2. RAM - 4 Gb G-Skill 1100 MHz DDR2
3. GPU - Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT, 1024 Mb
4. OS - Linux, Ubuntu 9.04, 64 Bit
5. Blender - Mostly sculpting and some tests with the game engine
6. Appreciation - 4 more gigs of RAM will be my next upgrade

[dolittle]

CPU Phenom II X4 3.0 Ghz.
RAM 4 Gig.
GPU integrated nvidia GF8300
OS Ubuntu 64
Blender perpetual noob
Appreciation 4 Gig RAM. I would consider Open_CL GPU computing

[Shay Tessler]

i can believe people did that with 3 seconds
here is my spec

1. CPU - Intel® Core™i7 I7-920 2660MHz @ 2660MHz
2. RAM - 6GB RAM
3. GPU - ATI READON 4870
4. OS - Windows 7 64 bit
5. Blender - modeling and rendering
6. Appreciation - my machine is strong well , i guess i need double strong for high render images

Blender v2.49a 64 bit


rendered with 8 thread of test file
in 00:00:27.44

how come ?
(also site has a bug i write 8 thread he says i rendered with 1 thread)

[C-106 Delta]

System 1:

1. CPU - Pentium 4, single core, 2.6 MHz
2. RAM - 1 GB
3. GPU - Intel Integrated Graphics Chip
4. OS - Windows XP (32 bit)
5. Blender - Modeling / GameEngine
6. Appreciation - Most games "work", however, they run very slow. GLSL is not supported.

System 2:

1. CPU - Intel Centrino 2, dual core, 2.0 MHz each.
2. RAM - 4 GB
3. GPU - Nvidia GTX 260M (1 GB)
4. OS - Windows Vista (64 bit), Ubuntu (64 bit)
5. Blender - Modeling / Game Engine
6. Appreciation - Acceptable