Q: Specs for a VERY powerful PC for graphics rendering?

[treysha]

Can someone please help with this.
I need to get a VERY powerful and VERY fast PC assembled. The purpose of this PC is to do high-end graphics rendering (plus, of course, all the other usual PC stuff).
Can you (especially those experienced in graphics rendering) please give me the complete specs that I should go for? Will Windows XP be ok as the OS?

I am thinking along the lines of dual or triple or even quadruple processors (if the last two exist)?

All suggestions are GREATLY appreciated.
Cheers!

[saphalline]

Ok, quick specs here on a dual-Opteron 3D rendering workstation. Pulled some preliminary hardware links from Newegg as a guide. Here they are:

$1300 - Quadro FX3000 256MB 256-bit (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814133103)

$424 - dual-940 Tyan AMD 8131 + 8151 w/AGP (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813151120)

$666 - 2 x $333, Opteron 246 (2.0) retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103412)

$824 - 4 x $206, 1GB DDR400 sticks, Kingston KVR (Reg + ECC) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820141431)

$77 - Chenming server case retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811125480)

$70 - 570W server PSU retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817193002)

$183 - 73GB 10K rpm WD Raptor (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144160)

$372 - 2 x $186, 300GB Seagate NCQ 5-year warranty (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148064)

$57 - Lite-On 4x DL DVD burner retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827106966)

Feel free to play with these specs as you see fit. Total cost is around $4000 USD once you include shipping, which is not a bad price! I was pleasantly surprised. Very nice config here, lots of good hardware, but again this is just a quick stater system. You can play around with the options and stuff, but I was going for lots of power. You can even move up with some of this stuff - U320 SCSI HDD's, or maybe get Opteron 252's, or another optical drive, or more RAM, whatever. The stuff I picked out here is good hardware for the money, but you could easily spend 3 times that much on a monster rendering rig!

Yeah, WinXP will be fine for the OS, but there are other options, too. Windows Server 2003 would run well on this sucker, but that one is overkill for a home user. There's also the new 64-bit version of XP Pro, which would be fun to try on a dual-Opteron workstation. You could also run a dual-boot with a Linux distro, just to try that out (Linux 64-bit maybe).

There aren't any 3-way CPU systems. You can have 1 CPU, 2, 4, 8, etc. It's usually a power of two, but at the very least it has be even (above 1). Quad-CPU systems are almost entirely rack-mount servers, so I'm afraid there's very little if any options for a 4-way 3D rendering workstation. I can take a peek around, but there doesn't seem to be a 4-way chipset that also supports 3D rendering vid cards.

Anyway, that should get you started. And maybe someone else has a few ideas for you...

[Rick]

A Dual will work for you.
No need to go above that..

Depending on the software you will use.
You may even be able to get by with one of the new dual core cpu's

The single largest bottle neck will be the video card.
unless you spend the extra $$ for a very good one.

Are you going to work in 2 or 3D ?

[treysha]

Wow, Thank you Saphalline for the in-depth information. I TOTALLY appreciate it. Very useful indeed.
And Rick, I'm working on 3D. 2D too, but mostly 3D. What good video card would you suggest?

[Rick]

I prefer this one for cad/cam (autocad) work

http://www.ati.com/products/firegl.html

But then just about any of the High end OpenGl cards will work for 3D cad

Be forwarned they run about $700.00 usd

For a 2d work station I prefer Matrox
http://www.matrox.com/
I use these for Photo editing

[Rick]

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2383

Also Note the above link has the firegl
In a review with the 3d labs wildcat and the Quadro
Note it ranks in the middle on most of the tests
$800-$850 or $1500-$2000

[saphalline]

Rick brings up a very good point about choosing the right 3D rendering card - you should know which software you use most before making a buying decision! Some cards work better than others in certain areas. 3DLabs' Wildcat series has always been the most expensive and most powerful cards out there for the most popular 3D rendering apps, but a lot of that performance increase involves specialized sections of the chip & drivers, and the rest is just pure power! :D

NVidia's and ATI's offerings tend to be a bit more mainstream in terms of pricing, but they have their expensive versions, too. They also trade blows in the rendering apps - a bit better at lightwave here, a bit better at 3DS Max there, etc. So learning what software you want to use is actually part of the buying decision.

Another thing to consider is the use of either AGP or PCIe. AGP is certainly just fine as its bus isn't yet saturated by modern 3D needs (even in high-end rendering) but as we get further into 2005, PCIe deserves more and more attention to those buying new systems. I was going a lot with Newegg for my quick list of parts, but there are other online vendors that cater more to the SMP crowd. I think I ran across a site called 2CPU.com or something like that, and of course Newegg didn't have Tyan's latest mobo featuring NVidia's new dual-Opteron PCIe chipset (Tyan Thunder K8WE w/NForce4 Professional). That chipset seems to be designed for exactly the sort of system you want to build.

Another thing to point out is the fact that I'm pretty dead-set on Opteron's for a 3D rendering workstation. I'm not an AMD fanatic, nor am I an Intel fanatic - I tend to look at it from a performance standpoint. If Intel is better, I go with them. In the case of dual-CPU platforms, Opterons reign supreme for performance! The reason is that the Opteron has a built-in memory controller, so each Opteron in a system has control over its own RAM. There is no sharing of RAM bandwidth like there is on a dual-Xeon platform. This not only increases RAM bandwidth significantly, but also improves CPU performance because Opteron's don't sit around waiting for RAM nearly as much as Xeon's do. The downside to this is that each Opteron needs two sticks of RAM (for dual-channel mode) which is why I chose 4 sticks of 1GB for your quick config. WinXP can only handle up to 4GB of RAM. Or if you know you won't be using a server OS any time soon, it would be cheaper (but less upgradable) to go with 8 sticks of 512MB. That would fill up all of your RAM slots, but then again when are we going to see a desktop OS that can use more than 4GB of RAM? Not anytime soon considering what happened to Longhorn! ;)

You should definitely spend most of your time picking out the right 3D rendering card for your needs. But don't forget about the rest of your system, either! Just come on back if you have more questions.

[Rick]

saphalline All to true

One of the nice things about the high end cards.
They list in detail what they support and How

Before you have to spend the $ on them ,,

Matrox for example has a List of cards and how they obtain support for each software package
and list them Yes/No/Coming soon

http://www.matrox.com/mga/workstation/video/app_grid.cfm

[treysha]

Mostly I am using CAD and StudioMax for Rendering.
Any particular good cards for these softwares?

[Rick]

You should check the support options for the StudioMax
With each card you find you may like

As for the Cad support. Again it depends on what CAD software
For example Autodesk Autocad has wide support by just about all the card makers
who follow the standards