My PC died today. It is understandable, because it is like 10 years old. 256 RAM
Now I am writing this from my moms laptop.
Anyways, to cut the story short, my dad is buying me a new computer specifically for my graphics training (Blender, PS, etc…), I just don’t know what graphics card and processor to choose. I can either go for Core i5 2500, or for Athlon II X4 645. Does it matter on which I get as far as rendering is concerned? What about graphics cards? Nvidia or Radeon? I am also considering to switch to Ubuntu Linux, I heard it is more stable than win7… I might be wrong. So, does linux support both Nvidia and ATI radeon cards? Also, will getting 8GB ram instead of 4GB make difference in terms of rendering speed? Or is it all about the CPU? Or graphics cards? Sorry if these questions sound stupid, but I am just starting out in blender, and I am only 10 years old anyways.
Please respond asap if you can, my dad is going to the consumer electronics store in about 6 hours.
I use openSUSE and Linux has open source drivers (called modules) available.
However there are proprietary modules available for Linux.
I prefer AMD over Intel because of pricing.
seems to me you can get more bang for your buck with cpu power if you go with AMD.
I don’t remember using a lot of ram when rendering but my cpu monitor was reporting high usage last time I looked during the render process.
personally I would get 4 gigs of ram instead of 8 gigs if it meant I had a faster processor.
in addition I would get vmware player to run windows 7 or xp from within Linux so that way you don’t have to reboot to use windows if you absolutely have to use windows.
I have an AMD with integrated Nvidia video and I am pleased with my setup.
from what I understand Intel ships with integrated ATI video.
I would probably recommend the core i5 over the AMD processors at the moment, they are much faster then the equivilant priced AMD processors.
That being said, it may be different when bulldozer is released… though it was delayed again, but i am not sure how long for.
In terms of GPU… I would probably recommend to get a dedicated graphics card if you are doing any serious 3D work… they help A LOT with viewport when dealing with complex scenes…
Also are you planning on using any cycles rendering? if so you probably want a decent nvidia card as cuda is supported much more over opencl at the moment (but opencl will be developed up aswell… cuda being nvidia only and opencl being both amd and nvidia)
the amount of ram in a computer effects how complex a scene you can render…if it cant store it all in ram, it will have to offload it onto the harddrive and you’ll get a HUGE slowdown occuring.
amd is having an announcment in frisco on the 13th, probably about bulldozer. http://amd-member.com/newsletters/DevCentral/FusionZone2011.html i think the bulldozer nda expires on the 13th also so we should get some reliable benchs. anantech says all the “leaked” benches are wrong and based off scrapped chips. it might be worth waitng until after the amd show before deciding, its monday.
my pc died prev week… it was an AMD3K with 2gigs of mem and a geforce7600
my new machine is a Pentium Dual core 3.2Ghz with 2gigs of mem…
it is a cheap machine
I dont need strong pc… but I can make good things
Thanks everyone! So I talked with my dad for some time, and after some bargaining, and guess what? I managed to make him buy me a i7 with 8GB ram, GeForce GTX 570 graphics card, and two 21 inch HD monitors (my previous one was a 1024x763 CRT monitor from before I was born LOL). I can’t wait to get it. Dad said that when he was my age, all he had access to was a 16kb ram machine… can you believe it?
I am happy that my dad is supportive as far as my desire to do 3D graphics goes. My mom however wants me to be a lawyer, like my dad, but I hate that kind of work.
I will!
I am 100% noob in blender, but I have ambitions and desire to learn it… but I am not allowed to instal any software on my moms laptop (I am using it now), so I will have to wait until I receive my new desktop, I think this will happen today after dad comes back from work.
I envy you, because that machine is top-of-the-line. It’s a core i7 2600K right? Because there simply isn’t a better processor on the market right now (you can get slightly better render speed with a core i7 990X(6-core) but that one is simply not worth it and the 2600K is still better in overall performance).
The gtx570 is also an excellent card (the graphics card only affects viewport framerate, not rendering, unless you use the new cycles renderer with CUDA, for which it is really fast) Oh and I’m sure you’ll love working with those dual monitors :).
So yeah, you pretty much have the ultimate blender & graphics design machine (unless you count those $5000 beasts)
