ive been using blender on my laptop:
P IV 3.2, 128mb Radeon Vid Card, 512mb RAM
now i finally got permission to install it on my work comp:
PIV 3.2, NO VID CARD, 512mb RAM…okkkk…
here’s the question: why are my renders only 10% faster at BEST on my laptop using identical files? do u need more info??
Your laptop and PC seem to be almost identical. I don’t think the videocard has any influence on renderspeed. Depending on what else is running on your computer while rendering, the speed may vary.
video card is only useful for running the display. So your laptop should be able to display larger files and run smoother than the desktop.
System resources (free CPU and RAM) are the big factors in rendering a final product.
Learn to love the command line. Blender tends to render faster as a back ground application.
So that’s
path/to/ blender -b /path/to/file -s 1 -e 300 -a
where s = start frame e = end frame.
has to be run from shell or Prompt (win 2k/XP)
fascinating. thanks. so if i was to ask the company to upgrade my computer i should have them focus on just plain ram?
no not just the RAM, the RAM holds the data the processing computes it so the faster the processor the faster the computing can be done and hence the faster the render, although getting more RAM is good becuase that means less swapping on the hard drive and can speed up the render a little bit
i checked the forums bout couldnt find any recommended computer specs…maybe i dddnt check good enough
3dmax and the othe big boys recommand gi-normous vid cards plus everything else…
…whats the recommended for good blender use? projects averaging at 500,000 gons?
I have almost the same specs as your laptop and I’ve been investigating my memory swap while rendering.
The bottleneck in my case is clearly the RAM which should be upgraded, cause I’ve been using virtual RAM which is BAD!
If you would go to 2 gigs of RAM your CPU would be slowing it down.
There are other things worth mentioning.
A CPU comes with L2 cache which is the first and fastest type of memory it adresses.
I have 1MB of L2 cache but today you see CPU’s of 2MB or more.
The more you’ve got the better, but it’s really expensive.
When there comes the time you do need to go virtual check your motherboard.
If it has less then 800 Mhz Front Side Bus (the connection between CPU + RAM) and the rest of your PC (HD et al) it’s definitely time to upgrade.
All this is more or less standard nowadays so it should be cheap.
P
so my gfx card does nothing or close to nothing - cuz even modeling time isnt that much less choppy if at all with the same high res file.
…ima start stocking up on RAM…
does blender put out any kind of recommended specs somewhere?
No they don’t because there so many different platforms perfected.
Currently 64-bit tweaked versions are in beta and only good for machines running Linux. (anyone remember when Blender supported the 64-bit Alpha platform?)
Which is a shame, because I have a G5 iMac at home that I would love to have 64-bit support for…but…
I have to say, though, my roughly 8 years of dealing with 64-bit systems (Alpha and UltraSparc) that there can be some advantages so long as the software is tweaked for it.
No am I no AMD fan boy. I’ve had a lot of issues with AMD and heat in the last five years. Personally I prefer the direction that Intel is going with performance per watt.
Personally I’d go with:
Dual Core Intel Pentium
4GB of Ram
256MB Vidcard (Nvidia)
XP pro
2x250GB HDD Raid
DVD-R/w
That should handle most stuff in Blender or 3D Max.
At work we use Mac and run Lightwave on the new Quad Cores…yeah, 10Ghz and 8GB of Ram…that will do a lot…
Not exacly… first is the L1 cache, which is closer to the CPU core, and is the fastest.
Great choice - you chose the hotter one 
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/11/21/the_mother_of_all_cpu_charts_2005/page4.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/06/03/dual_core_stress_test/page2.html
unimatrix…unless Tiger is better, I don’t think OS X has 64 bit support (processing) in the aqua GUI - only on command line. So unless you can render blender by command line (can you - how?), it won’t see the G5’s 64 bits anyway.
blender+acad workhorse
sorry to mix in autocad - and thanks for all ur info so far, but i dont’ know where else i can find folks who use both programs (cept cgtalk)
im currently introducing blender to a non-profit architectural firm that i am doing volunteer work at. so money’s tight with them. that being the scenario, i’m still going to recommend that they upgrade their computers. unfortunately they do all of their 3d modeling in autocad (which is super wasteful of resources) and their 3d models regularly hit 50-60mb (they are very dense models)…so how dows this sound:
2 computers at:
P4, 128mb vid card, 2gigs RAM
or
1 computer at (and the other computer gets no upgrades):
XEON, 256mb vid card, 4 gigs RAM
non upgraded comp: P4, 64mb internal vid memory (no ext card), 512mb RAM
i think i prefer the two comp’s so i can turn em into a renderfarm at night. im going to be training 2 ppl to do 3d AutoCAD and Blender over the next three months. So they will be using the computers.
sorry again if i posted it in wrong place, but im not sure if blender needs more juice or acad…but i think acad does…whattaya think?
on linuxes, you can conserve your desktop’s RAM (f.e. gnome) with rendering from tty.
if you kill unnecessary processes, speed is your middlename. even faster if you use optimized builds. you just can’t beat price/performance ratio and smoothness of work experience.
stop your gdm/kdm
(ctrl)-alt-F1 to your terminal
enter the render commandline
start desktop again and check results
on linux this is very seamless, smooth and painless.
all in all 3 short lines of typing and one login.
surely, this is not that useful for quick previews. ymmv
I use autocad 2002 at work on a p4 3.0ht, 1 gb ram, shared crappy ati 64 mb video card. For 3D models in 2d wireframe, you will never notice a lag. until you start clipping. If you have acad 2004 or newer, it uses horsepower more efficiently. Blender can use more resources for rendering purposes, but it will just give you results faster. Autocad will slow down to the point of being unusable if you have huge models (ie 3D solids, not just lines drawn in 3D space).
I would think two separate machines would be better in the end - that way if you have to re-render some shots, you can leave the other one pumping away.
Command line is faster to render versus the gui way. (Still can’t figure out how to render blender from terminal on my mac.)
Be sure to use a bender version that is optimized for your CPU. You can gain 30% faster renders.