I’m planning on buying a new computer (budget 1500$) for modeling in Blender, programing and gaming. Problem is, i know nothing about computers (Yes, i can see the irony). So i googled around and got these specs:
CPU: Intel i7-920 quad core (2.66GHz)
Graphics Card: Geforce gtx285 1GB
RAM: 4-8 GB DDR3 (Not sure how many i should get…)
OS: Windows 7 64bit home premium
Is this a good build? Please help 
Which computer part should i focus on?
that does look like a good system! very good infact… i would get 8 gigs of ram if your going all out with the cpu as well…
with the i7 and DDR3 you need to run the ram in multiples of 3 to make the tri-channel work. go with 6 or if you want more than that go with 12. also be sure to get the windows version that will allow the amount of ram you are wanting to max out at.
this article is a bit old, but has some great info on ram. http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/experiments_ram_memory_myths_put_test?page=0,0
Yeah that’s why i’m going with the 64bit OS. 32bit won’t use more than 2 - 3 RAM i think.
Thanks for the replies
the different versions of w7 64 also aford different amounts of ram as well… for instance my w7 64 home premium will only allow up to 16gb. but home basic only allows 8gb
Hard drive? Make sure your current one doesn’t become a bottleneck in the new system. Also, check the specs on the video card and be sure to get a strong enough power supply. With that budget, I would also make sure that the video card is CUDA compatible. You might want to take advantage of the trends with GPU rendering (Octane, etc.).
Yes i know that’s why i’m going with the premium in case i decided to upgrade.
As for the hard drive, i don’t know… I don’t really use much so i was thinking around 500GB…
As for the power supply, how many watts do you think will do?
CUDA?
Looks pretty good, what kind of discount are you getting on the video card? If it cost’s more than 200 I wuold suggest going for a GTX460. As for the power supply I would suggest depending on your budget (I dont know how much each part cost’s for you) some were aroudn 600-700 watts. If you bugdet allows for it though a 1000 watt will give you a nice amount of breathing room. Also Cuda is Nvidias personal version of openCL. I believe that all of Nvidias newer cards and CUDA enabled. I know for sure that the 285 and 460 both have CUDA enabled cores.
Seems like you have a great computer in mind!
CUDA is a fairly new technology that lets the GPU do number crunching for programs
it looks promising for rendering
the card you mentioned will do fine
Dave
Thanks for the replies everyone, i got everything i need now
Oh and the card is going to cost me 200 bucks i believe. I’ll ask about the gtx 460 though.
If you get a GTX460 (I´d ditch the 285 for sure), be sure to get one with 1024MiB VRAM, its quite faster than the 768MiB version and usually is 20-30 Euro more expensive.
The 460 performs about 10% better thatn the 285, is about 40-50 Euro cheaper (new) and offers DX11 and HW Tesselation (if one needs it)
I think the specification is pretty fine for blending.
You coud propably even get two gtx460 cards for $1500, along with a cool case and psu (psu and case don’t get outdated as fast) and of course a big and nice lcd screen if you don’t have one already (23 inch wide can actually be quite affordable)