so i’m either about to buy a new computer or upgrade the one i have.
currently i do mostly 2d work but i’d like to use blender more.
basically i want to know what kind of hardware setup works well with blender in linux and tips on what i should aim for hardware wise.
is blender processor heavy? gfx card heavy? should i look for processors with more cores? highest available clock speed? how much ram do i need? what kind of video card should i get on a budget? (maybe $200 for the card)
should i just simply aim to get the most i can of everything?
I would recommend going for an Nvidia card, they have the best support for linux. And I would also stay away from Intel onboard graphics.
As bigmanjoe said, rendering is all about processor speed so get the best processor you can. AMD will soon be releasing their Bulldozer architecture with 8 cores. The downside is that AMDs often have problems with overheating:( Personally, I would get an intel but that’s just my taste:)
It might be prudent to look into a nice beefy video card because looking to the future GPU based renderers will become more prevalent. Most of the existing external GPU renderers are currently based on CUDA and thus require Nvidia chipsets.
AMDs used to have a problem with overheating. I’m running an AMD 1090T Black Edition six-core CPU and I’ve pushed it to 4GHz on air with no overheating problems.
get one of those, with a AM3+ 990X or 990FX mobo. And and Nvidia GeForce 560TI(2GB) or 570 whatever you can afford.<p><br>
Also with the price of ram how cheap it is right now i would fill it up<br>
16GB. 4x4GB, like some G.Skill DDR3 1866. (just my personal preference)
When sculpting the vram on your graphics card can be an upper limit…
1 gb is usually workable at 6 million polys… will max out at 24 million…
2 gb RAM is workable at 24 million…
Obviously a faster card gives better smoother performance when scripting.
Cycles renders faster on gpu but will also run on CPU.
Currently it’s limited to cuda only so NVIDIA is the only choice there.
The NVIDIA gtx 560 ti gives good price/performance right now. And you can get a 2gb model.
Opencl is being worked on for cycles renderer… that will open up possibilities for amd cards.
For blender internal renderer it’s all CPU, but there’s a big push for the compositor for gpu acceleration. (using opencl)
I would recommend make sure your power supply is a good one! spend a extra $50+ and get a gold standard, but then im not a PC guy. but I would go way out to make sure to have really good power supply so you can have 2-3 graphics card in your machine.
start with one for now, then when cycles and all the other opencl stuf in blender gets released having additional graphic cards will start to make a serious impact on rendering speed.
And one note for anyone else out there who might be planning a Windows 7-based system instead of Linux: Get the Professional 64-bit version of Windows 7, not one of the home versions. Pro and Ultimate 64-bit allow you to run 32-bit apps; Home Premium and lower won’t.
It must be amazing then that my 64bit Win7 Home Premium can also run 32bit apps just fine. Are you actually referring to the WinXP mode in the high end Win7 versions that allows you to run non Win7 compatible 32bit programs in a virtual WinXP. Not that i’ve ever encountered a program that has actually needed this.
What ever you decide, also pay heed to warranty issues, and support for your hardware. While the products may appear good at first instance, in due course, you may at times need to have an issue that won’t necessarily be solved over the phone.
Hey guys having a small problem.
At 9000 polys blender starts to lagg. Not able to survive at 1 million polygon.
My System Specs:-
Cpu :- Intel® Core™ i7-990X 3.46 Ghz
Ram:- 12 Gb
Gpu:- Nvidia gts 450 ( I have tried many gpu’s but no changes )
Os:- Ubuntu 11.04 64 bit & Mac os X leopard
PLs help
chaos !!!
ok nvidia is good but if you are using open gl stay away from nvidia because they purposely crippled their open gl support so peaple would buy their quadro cards so ati is the better option and from my experience they are a better bang for the buck too. but as said before if you are gpu rendering nvidia is the better option for now until open cl is used more gpu renders.
thanks everybody. i think that’s the most replies i’ve ever gotten on any message board.
i’ve got most everything picked out now but i’m wondering about SLI on linux.
if i get two Geforce GTX 460 2GB 256-bit how well would that work in linux? (it’s currently on sale on tigerdirect)
would that give 4GB vram or would it just use the vram from one card?
i’ve heard that dual 460’s work better than a single 560(i think it was a 560, 500 series for sure though) but nothing specific about in linux. since it’s currently on sale two of them would be about the same as the 560ti on newegg.
i also think i saw something for cycles about just using two cards having one do the gpu rendering and another to handle the viewport but i don’t really remember where i saw it. (i’ve been looking through a lot of stuff lately and i know it’s an available option in octane render)
also i saw some videos of luxrender’s opencl gpu rendering stuff using two ATI Radeon HD 5xxx cards and even some demos that were posted over a year and a half ago using Radeon HD 4xxx cards (not in crossfire)
so is smallluxgpu (i think that was it) a viable and workable option for rendering animation right now?
I just bought a used 2008 Mac Pro, if you’re into Macs I can recommend it, it’s a 8-core, with 12gb of ram going to upgrade. Shitty graphics card installed the Radeon HD 2600XT. That is already removed. Ordering a 5870 from apple store.
@DaedalJS - when cycles get opencl you can start using ATi/AMD cards. smallluxgpu is/was a develop branch of luxrender, what I get next version gonna have it implemented. as it’s now AFAIK smalluxgpu has its own materials and can’t render all the materials in LuxRender.
Also I’m buying a SSD for system disk, then 2TB of regular harddrives for cache, storage. time machine (backup). SSD is highly recommended for performance boost.
@RiVIT yes GPU realtime is OpenGL, but like in cycles/luxrender etc, it’s just using the cores to do computation with CUDA/OpenCL behaving more like a bunch of CPUs in parallel.