I’m looking at getting a new computer built specifically for 3D animation purposes and they have asked me a couple of questions about the software I’ll be using (which is Blender).
Can anyone tell me whether or not the Blender program is multi-threaded?
Also does it use Open GL or Direct 3D? (I think this has something to do with the type of graphics card I’ll need)
I don’t really understand what any of these terms mean but hopefully someone out there does.
Blender is OpenGL based, it is multithreaded for the renderer. You are generally safer going with an NVidia card as opposed to an ATI card. Dual core duo is generally your best performance and price right now. Lots of ram - ie 4GB is where you will tend to get the most improvement.
LetterRip
Thanks very much for that.
If you could spare a minute, below is an extract of a quote I received today showing the specs of two systems suggested to me by a company who do a lot of 3D animation workstations but are not overly familiar with Blender. I asked for prices on one system for someone with a 10K budget and another for someone without a budget.
I hope I’m not committing a no-no by showing the prices but I figured it would be OK providing I didn’t divulge the quoter’s details.
1 x HP XW 8400 8 Core Workstation – 1.86GHz Per Core, QuadroFX 3500 $9,309 Inc GST -
Dual Intel Xeon 5320 1.86GHz 8MB/1066 Quad Core CPUs, 4GB RAM, 2 x 250GB 7,200RPM SATA HDDs
NVIDIA Quadro FX3500 256MB PCIe Graphics Card, 16X DVD+/-RW DL[/FONT][/SIZE][/LEFT]
HP USB Standard Keyboard, HP USB Optical Scroll Mouse and MS Windows XP Pro 32-bit
1 x HP XW 8400 8 Core Workstation – 2.66GHz Per Core, QuadroFX 4500 $15,797 Inc GST
Dual Intel Xeon 5355 2.66GHz 8MB/1066 Quad Core CPUs, 4GB RAM, 1 x 300GB 15,000RPM SAS HDD
NVIDIA Quadro FX4500 512MB PCIe Graphics Card, 16X DVD+/-RW DL
HP USB Standard Keyboard, HP USB Optical Scroll Mouse and MS Windows XP Pro 32-bit
If you (or anyone else) have time, I’d love someone to look at these systems from a Blender perspective and tell me if there’s anything in them that I’d be paying good money for that would not either help speed up render time, or make moving around the 3D window interface on large files smoother, (my main objective being to speed up render times).
I am looking to buy a new system purely to optimise the performance of Blender for creating 3D animations and am a little inexperienced on the computer hardware side of things.
Yes, for 3D you’ll want as much power as you can possibly get. Both of those machines look very good. I’m not sure what GST is, Australian? $15K US sounds a little steep (although Newegg is selling the FX4500 for about $1600 so I may be off).
Blender only has single process for modeling / authoring. Duo core will only help in rendering. But those graphic cards are actually something of a second processor. You’ll be glad to have that.
Thanks for that. (Yes GST is an Australian thing - Goods and Services Tax. It’s 10%).