I didn’t know where else to post this. I was just looking for some advice on PC upgrades.
So I’m currently running this setup (well the relevant specs):
CPU: 3ghz e8400
GPU: GTX 260
RAM: 4gb 1066mhz (I can have up to 8gb)
This is all well and good for gaming but when I do 3D work and have over 200,000 polys in the scene there’s alot of slowdown. I wanna speed up my workstation when I have high poly stuff in the scene and/or am doing sculpting. Plus I wouldn’t mind speeding up rendering (particularly in yafray).
So what could I do to speed things up and would it be worth it? Also, what benefits in 3D might an SSD drive bring?
Are you running a 64bit version of Windows? Without that you can’t run more than 4gb ram. Other than that video card is a helpful upgrade. Although with the higher powered video cards you will want to make sure you have the head room with your power supply.
200,000 polys really shouldn’t slow down that system. I have run with 1.5M polys on machines about 1/10th the speed of that.
Generally it comes down to GPU & RAM for sculpting and high poly stuff (of course CPU will also be used), and it comes down to CPU for the Rendering.
My advice would be to try and find if there are any other factors I.e. software that may be slowing your computer down and then clean everything up first. If that doesn’t work try looking at the GFX card drivers and seeing if they are the latest etc…
Beyond that it would be GFX card upgrades and ram upgrades. but your card is already fast and your ram is already reasonably large.
you may be able to check if your power supply is making the machine slow down by using something like CPUZ to see the real-time throttling of CPU or memory speeds.
I do only have 20gb of space left, my porting over from my last pc was a little weird. Also I do have the latest drivers, but I might not have the latest motherboard drivers so I will check that now. Also what should I do to check this on my PSU?
I was running a Q9550, OC´d + 29800GTX + 8HDDs and 10120mm fans.
I had a BeQuiet Straightpower 550W - ran like a charm.
Maximum intake of the PSU was under full load ~320W where about 90W went into the CPU the rest in the graphicscard and drives.
Given the fact the PSU has an efficiency of 80%, the 320W measured intake, are transformed into 320*0.8 = 256W the rest got hot air =)
Now I got a Corsair 650W, 83% eff.
Quadcore heavily OC´d, GTX470 + 9800GTX and it still works like a charm.
Don´t let commercials fool you into buying a 1kW PSU.
The lesser the load on the PSU, the worse the effeciency, the more power you waste.
The more W you got the higher the energy waste due to weak effeciency under poor load.
Green computing! =)
Just because one drives a Dodge Ram doesn´t mean he has to push the pedal half in idling the engine with high rpm, waiting at a red traffic sign…
And yes, high efficency PSUs are more expensive.
And yes, it takes about 2-3years of 24/7 to get the money back in. But its not about money for me, its about saving energy. And once you pay your own electricity bill you´ll hold that dear.
Wow, I had my suspicions and I guess I’ll be fine with what I have for a long time. I think now I’ll clean my registry, might speed up my PC a little. Thanks
I would really suggest to install linux.
Grab ubuntu, its really a everyman linux. A blind monkey can install it (no offense)
You´ll be surprised, the OpenGL viewport preformance will be a lot higher, and the overall performance will be better as well.
You can download it, burn to CD or setup a pendrive to boot from (all howtos on the homepage) and try it and even install it from windows for ease of access. Dualboot no problem.
And if it is nothing for you, at least you widened your horizont by trying. I was tought sceptical interest is better than diffuse rejection =)
Other than that, your E8500 uses socket 775.
You can, if your board supports it, grab a Q9400 or a Q9550 - you get them used on ebay, and there isn´t much that can be broken with a CPU other than thermical exhaustion.
I got latter one, for 3 years now, the latest stepping OC´s to ~4GHz with aircooling. Mine runs with 3.6GHz without raising the core voltage. (Reference is 2.83GHz)
I think it was a great buy. Back when I bought it it was 250 Euros and there is still no need to upgrade and I never had a processor longer than 2 years. This one will last until it fries or I get an Octcore =)
Ram can´t be replaced with anything but more. But with 4 GiB you should be fine unless you need to render postersize in 600dpi or have massive phyisical simulations.
For the graphics card. The more money the more power. Easy as pie. But your´s should suffice. The 260 is slightly faster than my GTX9800+ was, and I was able to work on 2mio+ models, shaded, the rotating and panning got slow (it seems to be single threaded and cpu dependend to translate and rotate the coordinates so i guess it was more the cpu bottlenecking not the gpu) and in wireframe no trouble at all.
I´d go with:
Install(Linux);
if (satisfaction == false) buy(Core2Quad);
RAM and GPU should be fine. And the quad should speed up your rendering quite a notch. Viewport performance might raise a bit.
I lied to you.
I am human and therefor destined to error. I currently got a 850W psu, my bad.
To elaborate, the total wattage splits into 12V, 5V and 3.3V.
Lets say you got a high quality PSU and a low quality one, both with 500W
the high quality one would be able to supply 350W with dunnow 22A to 12V, while the low quality one only can supply 250W with 18A to 12V (all random numbers)
So if you for instance run SLI and need lots of 12V power, a 500W psu might not supply enough wattage and you need a bigger psu, with more wattage/ampere on 12V, while the rest of the wattage is for nothing.
If you got a 500W psu that offers 300W for 12V and lets cut out the 3.3V the remaining 200W for 5V and your system needs 450W 12V and 100W 5V and you buy a 1000W PSU you would have 600W on 12V which is nice, and 400W for 5V where you still just need 100W, and that part is inefficient.
Its tricky with PSUs. Either you can buy the next bigger if yours fail, you got enough experience to buy the right one in the first place, or you just buy some overkill psu and waste energy due to poor effeciency.
(no offense)