hi i’m planning to get a new computer and i wanted to hear what the commmunity had to say. i was looking at the velocity micro vector z20 here are the specs:
400 watt power supply
nvidia nforce 630i based chipset
intel core 2 quad q6600 quad 2.4Ghz 8mb cache
2 GB corsair ddr2 ram
512mb nvidia geforce 9500 (compatible with blender?)
320 gb hitachi hard drive
vista home premium with free upgrade to windows 7 when its released.
so basiccly i wanted to know do ou think these components will work well together? is it a good system for use with blender? i dont want to pay too much thats why its not a high end gaming supercomputer. any comments greatly appreciated!
My advice is that for every component, ensure that there is a warranty. I know of folks who have been burned when the warranty did not cover for hardware faults.
dOn’T dO iT !!! bUy a cOmpUtEr aNd yOu wiLL bEcOmE LiKe mOsT oF uS hErE. oUr wHoLe lIfE Is SpEnT N fRoNt oF tHe pUtEr, BlEnDiNg, tHiS FoRuM, nO gIRlFrIeNd , L O N E L Y…
as a rule, Blender works better on Nvidia cards. That a quad-core CPU and each core is more powerful than my one CPU. It has 2 gigs of Ram. I have one. Yeah. It’ll work for Blender just fine.
If you’re into hardcore gaming I dunno if the 9500 is top of the line. I’ve got a 7900GT, which was pretty high-end when it came out… It’s still not a bad card to buy, but it’s not the most top of the line thing. Nividia has a weird way of numbering their cards. From what I can see, this is the system they use:
(GS, GT, GTO/GTX). The #### are four numbers. First number is the series. I have a series 7. The next number is the quality scale of the card. 7900 is a high-end card. The letters at the end represent another tier of quality. Maybe the clock/ram speed? The GS is actually scaled down. A 7900GS is not as fast as a stock 7900. GT’s are slightly better than the stock and GTO/GTX are pretty high-end.
So a 9500 would be a mid-level entry to their series 9 cards. My 7900GTO might actually have better overall performance as far as the number of verts it can throw around, but yours will have better support of higher versions of DirectX, better shader support (and probably faster as well) and other newer features.
HOWEVER, there are probably faqs you can read that explain it better. I’m really just guessing, since I did a lot of reading up back when I bought the 7900, and that’s the way it looked to me at the time. I’ve no idea if that’s the real method in their madness.
It looks like it would be a pretty solid machine, tho. What sort of price are you talking about, tho? I’d think that that would matter, since it might be very possible that some people might know of a place or a site where you can get the same PC for less cash, or a better PC for the same amount.
EDIT: Also, if you can help it, i’d recommend getting a Seagate HD. Hitachi might be fine, tho. I just recommend Seagate whenever I can. Damn fine HD’s.
Squiggly_P: thanks a lot for all your information, it really helped. i think the graphics card is good with regard to power, i was worried with regard to display issues. i was never sure if it’s ati or nvidia that people say have problems with blender. and no, i never even bothered trying to figure out their numbering system! the price is about $800-900. i thought that was pretty decent. whats ur take? thanks again.
Nvidia GTX 280M is a very good Nvidia card (for notebooks). However, it will cost you a pretty penny.
Nvidia GTX 260M is one step down, but it’s cheaper.
Edit: Those are for laptops / notebooks though…
The GTX 295 seems to be the “best” Nvidia card for desktop computers… but it’s about $500.
c-106: thanks for the info but as i said i’m not looking for top of the line, precisely because i don’t want to pay 500 dollars! :eek: thanks for your help.
It’s a nice rig. A powerfull graphics adapter is always a plus for 3D workstation. That being said; a power supply with more watage would be helpfull. That system is leaning toward the “rather quick” catagory and would warrant 500w or more. The 9500 is kind of a power hog.
blonder: thanks for the advice. the power supply was the one thing i wasn’t sure about, but unfortuantely i already ordered it, so i hope 400w will do. it will still run, right?
it has 7.1 channel integrated sound
depending on how many drives and crap you have jacked into it, it should run everything ok, i’d think. If you’ve got a DVD burner, a cd-rom, a Blu-ray drive and your HD and have them all running at once while playing a game you might get a blue-screen or something, but barring that it should run.
I had this machine running on a 250 for a couple of days after my 500 blew out. Seemed to manage it ok, though not all the drives were hooked up (not enough connectors). I didn’t really push it too hard on those days, tho
you can buy a nice new antec basiq 500w power supply for around $40-60. I have one of these and it works great with my GeForce 9600oc. I would consider replacing the stock psu.
the dawisch: as i said i already ordered it, so it’s a bit to late for that. and anyway, the longer a new pc stays closed and the less things you addon and upgrade, the better.
oogsnoepje: i would get more, but as i said above ^. i specificlly did not want to get 64 bit due to program incompatibllity, mainly blender. so i decided 2gb should be sufficeint, although
3 would be nice.
my computer died few days before, and actually i was just waiting for it to happen’ so i’m looking for a laptop, and i found this one
what do you think? will it run blender smoothly or i will have problems like on the computer that just died that needed 3seconds(literaly) to move a point. the old one had ati graphics, and AMD
it will still run, right?