New system
 

Recently I've been looking at putting together a new computer which I'll primarily be using for computer graphics and animation.

One question I've had that I haven't been able to get a satisfactory answer to is about GPUs. I think I read somewhere that Maya can only utilize 1 GPU. Would SLI be any advantage? I seem to remember reading that SLI operates as one GPU to the software.

I'm also going back and forth between a GeForce (285 or similar) and the Quadro FX3800. I know the alleged problems with GeForces etc. I just need to make a decision. Stability is important to me, as are speed and performance (who would have guessed?).

If anyone has experience in these matters, I'd be happy to hear some thoughts. I'd also like to know what you think the biggest contributor to fast rendering is (I suppose using mental ray).

The rest of my computer at the moment is looking something like:
Core i7 920 CPU
Gigabyte or Asus mobo (maybe GA-EX58-UD5)
6 GB DDR3
750W PSU
Hopefully a SSD boot drive (but they're so expensive right now)
1 TB HDD

Other opinions on this setup would be greatly appreciated. I've gotten so much helpful information from posters on this site, I'm anticipating a good discussion :)

As far as I'm aware, SLI is of no use in Maya, I heard about SLI quadros working but don't quote me on that, and I've never dug into it. Since the machine is going to be a workstation, why not just get one good workstation card? And as far as MR rendering, the cpu is key and of course RAM, 6 GB is pretty good.

Yeah SLI, crossfire makes no difference to Maya.

As Gen said a good workstation card will make sure that you have no problems at all.

Ive got a mix in my Rigs, and tbh I cant see any difference mainly, though when running highquality viewports the quadros are slightly quicker.

Thanks for the comments and info.
I think that's what I'm leaning towards right now, though it's a little hard to justify the extra hundreds of dollars when I hear there's not significant speed differences, though I do want it problem-free. So just to clarify, quadros don't provide much improvement in the rendering area, even with all the fancy specs that Nvidia's trying to throw at me?

Hmm, now that I compare the GeForce (285) to the Quadro, the GeForce does seem to have more processor cores, higher memory bandwidth etc... for less money. I wish decisions like this were easy to make... :)

You virtually dont do any rendering using the GFX card so unless your playing games or using quadro accelerated products then you wont see any difference.

I've got a desktop with a 570 and a laptop with a 2700 in and dual ATI 4800's and theres not much difference unless you go mad polys/igh number of textures etc and the quadro 2700 pulls out then with a tad of speed advantage.

Ah, I see. Thanks for the help.

Now that I think about it, the largest proportion of what I'll be doing will likely involve lots of particles, dynamics, fluids, that sort of thing. It'll be really helpful for me to be able to quickly play back the dynamics simulations, or in playblast I guess, without rendering it all. What do you think would help me there the most? Thanks again.

Processor.

Thanks Genny,
So in that case, I'm considering getting a GeForce and using some of the money I'll save to improve my CPU, maybe the 940.

If you get a decent cooler and check out the MB, the ASUS I know does, you can overclock thge i7's to hell.

Yeah, that's one thing I've heard too... although I've never done any overclocking, so I'm nervous about frying stuff... I'd rather have stability and a good lifetime than a bit more speed, although I understand if you do it right, it shouldn't put too much more stress on the system.

Bah!

Ive got a 1.1 gig overclock and its smooth as butter, even under long periods of stress. I went up to 1.2/1.3 and it went a bit funky on a quad core.

Worth looking innto and thinking about.

Aren't they discontinuing the 940s in a few months? Personally I'm still a little leery of the i7s, I'll wait a few months before I start seriously poking around.

I'm kinda pissed right now, trying to get some drivers for my dell notebook and the site is acting sooooo douchy

Haha, I read "discounting the 940s" and I got excited, then I correctly read "discontinuing" and I got depressed. I haven't heard that... why are you leery of them?

Gster: I'll look in the oc'ing, I'm sure it can't be too tricky (famous last words)

Dells site's usualy pretty good, as far as high end laptops go I would always recommend Dells, we use em all the time for mobile workstations and there great, never had a problem and the £/power+reliability is really good compared to any PC and fruit based toys. Though I wouldnt recommend a low end one or a desktop, just the XPS or the precisions.


EDIT - If its the ASUS then its built into the MB so its not a hard thing to do as it has presets (or they did!)

Ah ok... I obviously haven't looked into what's going on with the i7s enough. Apparently there's a new core i7 quad 950 which is 3.06 GHz compared to the 940 (2.93 GHz) for the same price, so it makes sense that the 940 will be discontinued.

Aaah need to reboot brb lol.

Haha... and I need to show my friend that a Mac Pro (which he's all for) comparable to the PC I've got spec'd out will cost over $5000, whereas the PC will cost just under 3 grand... haha. ($CA)

Yeah that was my bad about Dell's site, I have a fresh Windows install and there's a lot I didn't personalize, apparently Firefox was blocking that pop up where you choose the download method. This is a low end notebook, I got it with writing in mind, its right by my bed for the most part.

Macs are beautiful but not even close to being worth the price tags, I like customizing without having to sell my ass on the street to pay for it.

Yeah macs have the looks but not the power or the futureproofing (though thats dodgy at the best)

Gimme my Dell at the mo, 4 gig DDR 3 that can be upgraded to 16 gig, with blue ray and thats a laptop, and it can be upgraded to a quad core... Have that in a Apple.

Wont score points in a Starbucks window though, it a ugly brute and the power supply aint small either (bout a DVD box size made of lead) but it does what it says with ease.

Gonna keep my desktop for a while till I get some extra cash I can spend as the lappy aint strictly mine, its works.

Yeah, I've yet to be sold on the whole laptop idea...
Mobility's not really a priority for me and I like customizing and upgrading components. Plus they're generally more expensive for less power, though I guess that's changing slowly.

Very true, I would go desktop over laptop any day when pure powers is involved.

The rig that your looking at will be fine, make sure you have overhead on the RAM and the cooler, and go 64 bit, that way you can up the power with either RAM, Processor or a overclock.

Yeah, I'll definitely be 64-bit.
What do you mean by overhead on the RAM and the cooler? I'll probably be using this fan/heatsink or similar...
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=35245

Overhead as in you get a MB that can support as much ram as poss, and a case that can take any cooler that way you can push the system to its max in the upcomming years.

Oh, ok. The MBs that I'm looking at support up to 24 GB (6x4GB) so that shouldn't be a problem. I still have to decide on a case, but I'll make sure to choose one that can hold a large heatsink. Thanks again for all the advice.

Alright, so next question... scratch space/ scratch disk...

From googling a bit, it doesn't look like I can set up a dedicated scratch partition for Maya only, like PS can, can I? Would I have to re-direct the entire TEMP dir to the scratch space? How much space would be beneficial for Maya (on top of 6 GB RAM)? And I'm assuming the faster the read/write speed the better, so on a SSD the space would be quite limited/expensive.

Oh yeah, and I was looking at the GeForce GTX 285 which comes in 1GB GDDR3 and 2GB variations... I understand extra video card memory is useful for storing Z-buffer info? (thanks wikipedia...) Is there any performance benefit here for Maya? I'm a bit wary of the "buy a bigger number because a bigger number is bigger than a smaller number"... you know. :)

Never had to redirect temp folders /shrug My setup is fairly simple, 3x 500GB SATA HDDs and a another 500GB external, 1 is partitioned in 3 for the OS, Photoshop scratch disk, and program files. The other two are mainly storage and the external I lug around so I can look cool at the cafe even though I can't stand coffee, lol joking but the external just so handy.

Hey more RAM can't hurt (in most cases) looking at the clock and bit rate, 1GB DDR3 seems good to me, though 2GB I think will lessen the possibility of bottlenecking and thus viewport lag. I am by no means an expert on this but its just my 2 cents.

Unless your pushing huge textures and lots of polys you wont notice a difference really.

/nods head in agreement

Great, thanks so much again. Maybe I'll get an external drive sometime, but I have an aversion to external devices... wires and clutter :)

Alright, so I'm getting pretty close to finalizing everything... still waiting for some hopefully good back to school deals on parts.

Here's what I'm planning on getting:

i7 920 D0 Stepping 2.66 GHz
Asus P6T Deluxe V2
Corsair XMS3 Dominator 3X2GB 1600 8-8-8-24
Lian Li PC-p50 (but I can't find it in stock :( )
Intel X25-M G2 80GB SSD (again, not in stock yet, but cheaper than other drives for same size)
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB HD
EVGA GeForce GTX 275
Noctua NH-U12P heatsink/fan
Nmedia C98 card reader/eSATA/firewire

Windows 7 x64 and main apps on SSD, data etc. on 1TB
Get a used ~160GB or something and put Ubuntu on as second OS (for those things that windows can't do...)

So that's pretty much it, I'm pretty excited about it, and I'm hoping to get it all for about $2000 CA, which I don't think is too bad considering...

Oh yeah, and you may notice there's no optical drive... I'm gonna grab a used DVD writer until Blu-ray gets a bit cheaper and I might actually use it...

So bought my computer today... really excited to get it. Only real difference from above is I'm going to get an OCZ Agility 120GB SSD instead of the intel one, cause they're still not available, and the agility was at a quite good price (relatively speaking)...

So goodbye single core... goodbye DDR... goodbye slow boot and app loading... goodbye viewport lag :attn:

thats cool let us know how the render times are in maya 64bit as compared to the x86

Sure... well it won't be a fair comparison though, cause my system is so much better.

I'm curious... Using Mental Ray, there was a reported problem with the i7's, when they first came out, dropping to one core while rendering. I wonder if this has been fixed with the new generation.

I sure hope that's been fixed... :) I'll let you know when it arrives.

So I've had my new system for a couple weeks now, and really happy with everything so far. Maya x64 runs great on Windows 7 x64, starts in ~8 sec with a SSD after it's been cached (6GB RAM). No issues with the viewport and very smooth (only really tried it with ~100,000 polys so far though).

Mental ray renders fast (which is very subject, I know) though not blazingly instananeous (may try OCing someday when I really need more power). All 8 virtual cores shoot up to 100%, so no problems with the i7s.

This is just to give people info on how a certain config runs maya, not to brag, cause I'm sure lots of people have way better systems than me :p

I'm guessing that the i7's aren't as fast as 8 true cores correct?

That's correct. But for multi-threading apps, I believe 8 virtual cores are better than 4 physical cores.