Hardware - Please recommend for Rendering
 

Question, I am looking at improving my PC's performance for Rendering in Maya (PLE.)


My PC's specifications are given below

Essentially it is 1,5 years old with an
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz with 4MB Cache

2 GB DDR2 533 MHz Ram (Corsair)

Gigabyte 7600 GT (GV-NX76T256D-RH)

What can i do to improve my rendering performance...

Option (A). Add 2 GB of Ram to make it 4GB RAM.
or
Option (B). Change graphic card... (Please recommend a decent card, that is not too expensive).




Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
GigaByte Board model: 965P-DS3 (Intel 965P)
BrandName:Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz
NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
Corsair 2 GB VS 533MHZ DDR2 Ram

OS Name Microsoft Windows XP Professional

System Model GBTUACPI
System Type X86-based PC
Processor x86 Family 6 Model 15 Stepping 6 GenuineIntel ~2399 Mhz
Total Physical Memory 2,048.00 MB
Available Physical Memory 1.21 GB
Total Virtual Memory 2.00 GB
Available Virtual Memory 1.96 GB
Page File Space 3.85 GB

Rendering using either software or Mental ray generally taxes the processor more then anything, so unless your scene is using a lot of RAM or your going to be rendering with hardware then upping the RAM and/or changing the graphics card wont really do much. And if your using 32 bit OS then im pretty sure that a programme can only access 1.5 gig of RAM so upping it wont do that much.

Ive got that processor in my desktop PC and ive overclocked it to 3.2 gig with watercooling, and its running nice and stable, I can go higher (ive had it up to 3.8 gig but it became very unstable) so that might be a way forward.

Im not too sure but if you check the specs of the board it might be able to use a quad core, there pretty cheap now.

Thanks for your help gster123

I will look at watercooling and overclocking!