I am thinking of getting myself a new workstation to perform Blender projects and I want to make sure that it is cost efficient.
My main concern is render time. I know for a fact that your render time is most affected by the CPU, then RAM (not much, just enough to prevent the need to use virtual memory).
I am not entirely concerned with my budget, although I would like to have a rig that would allow me to produce photo-realistic renders quickly. I won’t be doing animations much so that may help you get an idea as to what I need.
I’ve always wondered this myself. To be honest, I don’t think many on this forum focus their work on how well their PC can perform. You can do quality work with any machine, as long as you have the patience to wait to see the finished product.
I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a matter of patience. I run an AMD X2 4400 and 2GB of RAM and Blender runs great. (although, i’m about to upgrade to a 6000 Black Edition) I think the problem is… the cost of higher end hardware. If you’ve got a high budget, by all means, build that monster.
Render time is affected by CPU and RAM, but also by OS. For example, if you have a 64bit CPU but a 32bit OS, it will be far from reaching it’s maximum potential. Also, on a 32bit OS, you can’t utilize more than 4GB of RAM. And if I remember correctly you can’t use more than 3GB for one application.
Though there are 64bit versions of Windows, they still don’t really put your hardware at it’s maximum potential, so unless you have something holding you back, I’d recommend Linux.
