What is your computer at home?
 

I'm convinced I need to update my computer at home. My Maya won't render heavy scenes which worked fine at school, even though I just increased my ram to 1Gb. If you're happy with your home set-up, tell me what you're using for:

CPU; Ram; and Video Card. For example, I'm using

AMD 2200 (1.8Ghz)
1Gb Ram
nVidea FX 5600 256Mb

... so I can get an idea as to what to look into. Thanks!!

p4 at 2.66 ghz

builtin vid card(getting a radeon 5500 in about a week)

512 mb ram

pretty crap but that radeon will help alot

i think you need a better cpu:beer:

:EDIT: yay post # 250:attn:

Desktop

AMD athlon 1.7Ghz
1 Gb RAM
40 gig Boot disk
160 Gb Storage
NVIdia Gforce 4400

Laptop

Intel Core 2 duo 2.26 Ghz
2 Gb Ram
120 Gig HDD
NVidia Gforce 7900 GTX 512Mb Graphics Card

At home:

P4 2.2 GHz
512 MB RAM
2x80GB HD
64MB ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder Pro 8500 DV

and it still works like a pro.

Here at work:

P4 1.5 GHz
512 MB
1x20GB HD
1x80GB HD
256MB NVIDIA GeForce 6200

handles more in viewports, but renders slower.

Do you work with Maya for a living? I can't imagine a studio comp having such low stats, no offense.

lol i use it occasionally here for logo creation, but i mainly create publications... so my main programs are adobe pagemaker, photoshop, and acrobat.

PC at home is:

Dual Xeon 2.8Ghz
2Gb RAM
1x SCSI 40 GB
1x ATA 40 GB Drive
1x ATA 80 GB Drive
Radion X1300 Pro 256Mb GDDR3 RAM

Work one is:
P4 3.2Ghz
512Mb RAM
1x ATA 40 GB RAM
Intel onboard cr*p

gster, same video card in my laptop

just got a I mac dual core intel (no maya yet)

just completely revamped the PC with new processor and motherboard (still no maya)

and the laptop ?? maya is on it but i am thinking i will use for strivktly for office and school purposes

but whats under their bonnets?? well thats personal :)

AMD Opteron 165
2GB RAM
SATA2 250 GB Hard Drive
Nvidia Quadro FX 540

strider, whats the differance between acrobat and reader..?? much?? I hear reader is more insuccure but thats not what i mean?

Im using acrobat 8now, before, reader 7, they seem exactly the same to me?? what is their purpose if you dont mind me asking :)

fooshmack, the latest 3D World or a mag like that will give you good specs and reviews from pros that have tested the latest stuff, there are pages of stuff to ream through and you'll get a good idea of how to balance money and needs, but then again, judging by your eagle eye interpretation of strider's low RAM workputer you already have a fair idea of specs?.

Hey there Mirek,

Reader only allows you to open PDF documents but with Acrobat you can create them.

Hope that clears things up.

Take it easy,

Mat.

sure does, looks like im on the right track, thanks matt. hope uni isnt being too cruel, it can really do ones head in ,in a big way.
take care

acrobat also comes with adobe distiller, which allows for pdf creation from postscript and encapsulated postscript files for pre-printing.

it's useful for embedding fonts, color separation, internal image management, etc.

I will look into said magazine(s), thanks. I don't know why I didn't think of that myself.

I have a fair idea what would make a great home set-up, but I'm on a fairly tight budget as I'm still a student to the program. I just need something to let me operate smoothly at home and put together a good portfolio.

Im a student too, i hear yu!!!
:)

strider.., that just went straight over my head lol :) thanks anyway. ill try and figure that one out but i havent enough time to learn what i need to learn as it is. :)

Desktop

Intel Celery(sic) 2.66Ghz, running at 3.19Ghz
2 * 512 Mb RAM - interleaved performance mode
80 gig 8mb cache Sata - 53 MB/s
20 gig 2mb cache Ide - 20 MB/s
Radeon 9550

i dont think these stats are very helpful without render times but i might be wrong. I mean we all have systems that work and are powerful but i dont know if just stats are helpful to the original question??

AMD 64bt 3700+

1gig

250gig hard drive

ati x850xt pe 256mb

These two images are rendered from the hippo scene as found(free) in part 0 of the hippo modelling video stuff.

On the left is software, at 45 seconds. On the right is hardware @ 5 seconds. Both images were rendered at 1K square.

fast renders, and speaking of fast you said you've been using maya since sept??

wow! :) some got it some dont (me)

nice hippos too.., im working on the the jiggler deformer at the moment?? it would work very well on animated hippos's, as their feet hit the ground you could makes their legs wobble like tendons.., check it out if you havent already.

they are quick? I've got no idea, I bought the absolute cheapest of everything that I could find :D but it seems ok to me. (10,000 times better than 3dsr4 was on a 486-100, which is my last point of reference:lmao:)

haven't tried the jiggle deformer yet, sounds like a lot of fun. thanx for letting me know what that bit does mate. Still getting my way through Joan of Arc at the moment, so that'll be good fun soon.

I didn't actually model that hippo, incase that's what I'd implied. Am hoping to start the project sometime in the next week or so. I just downloaded the free teaser part 0, that's got the final model in it then rendered from there.;)

Yeah, only sept, but to be fair, I've been able to spend a _lot_ hours these last few months learning the beast that's maya.

Simon

If you want to have render times its all dependant on the version of maya your using and the scene file (obviousley) if you want to have render time stats, someone needs to send up a file that we can run to see (as well as stating the version of maya that your using because the newer versions of mantal ray might be generically slower or faster)

Hardware rendering really isnt anything to go by for render speeds as its just the GPU processing everything and displaying what it can, i.e - it will just drop things it cant display, for example anti aliasing, specularity, transparancy etc, if it cant do it it will just disregard it and display what it can.

There are benchmark scenes out there, THIS LINK will take you to one from Zoorender.

I've seen a few of these scenes about the place but never tried any of them out, never really seen the point as I can't afford a new computer or any upgrades so if the render time is crap I'll just be depressed!

Cheers,

Mat.

Nice link Mat.

Took me 14 Secs to render it at production settings (default)

No probs,

but I think that you're meant to just hit the render button when the scene has loaded, all the render globals will be set up with the scene file.

Curiosity got the better of me and my computer rendered the scene in 2 minutes 48 seconds.

Cheers,

Mat.

2 min?? thats about MY performance speed these days lol :)

14 Seconds?? OUCH, that's quick.

6 mins 38 for me.

Thanx for the link happymat27.

see, Matt was right, render times are just depressing. :) its like mine is bigger than yours but theirs is ALWAYS bigger :)

Laptop (Alienware)

P4 3.8 Ghz

3GB DDR2 Performance SDRAM at 667MHz - 2x 1024MB 2x512

160GB (160GB x 2) Serial ATA 1.5Gb/s 5,400 RPM w/ 8MB Cache

Dual 512MB NVidia® GeForce™ Go 7800 GTX - SLI Enabled

What models that? Sounds bonkers

it is the m5700 before they stopped( not made no more because they now use the core 2 duo) so now they use the m5750 model which IMO is worse because now they are using the core 2 duo which is nice but they are doing dual gefore 7900 gs craphics card which is worse the dual gefore 7800gtx and the new motherboard can only handle 2bg of ram which mines can handle 3gb (which is what i have).

yea it is pretty insane lol it ran me near $6000 but i took it out through my school loan

Ahh right, thougt that alienwares first dual graphics card notebooks were the M9700 series as I looked into the P4 alienwares, the Area 51's etc (and the AMD 64x2's) but waited for the intel cores to come out.

Think whan I get some cash together I might upgrade mine to 4Gb RAM (its max)

yea those are nice but the only problem i have with the 9700 series is its amd and im an intel person since i have a friend who works for intel. she usually gets me upgrades all the time so i stick with that

ohh man i know im so upset tho, i wanted to wait got the the axl desktop which is even way better. ill soon take out another student loan before i graduate lol and do so. lol thats how i got my car lol im going to owe alot of money

dude make sure u get the comp tho. these are the sweetest compes ive ever used

I got a Dell XPS m1710 with the Gforce 7900GTX in the end.

I didnt really want to pay as much as Alienware charged extra over the other other comps that are the same, all be it without the paint job.

tru. how is the xps systems. i was looking into it before i purchased miines

Great, really fast, decent weight to move about (to uni and back) and well built, very solid and stable, lots of ports (6 x USB's and a mini firewire for video editing), also its almost completly upgardable, and the instructions tell you how to do it.

I settled on the XPS as it was the best laptop for me looking at the reviews online, and I did a lot of looking and reasearch! LOL!

Heres my comp

AMD Athlon 3000+
Kingston Ram 2gig
Western Digital Hardrive 120 & 140gig
ATI Radeon 9800 PRO 512MB (also Nvidia 2 built in motherboard)

is there a way which i can use my ati radeon card to render my stuff like im doing now but also have it helped with my nvidia 2?

marlon

im pretty much sold on macs these days, the PC is nice with the new processor and the laptop is good with the intel and the wiz bang video card but i have never seen anything so user friendly as a mac, all computers should interface like this one

I Mac
intel big processor, dual core
nvidea ..?? something great

blad blah .., 24 inch screen, ect ect, but so frendly to use it is a breeze and with a bit more RAM (forgot how much there is) it will fly

thats my vote, when they bring out the maya for macs.., will be very cool

Hey there Mirek,

Maya's always been available for Mac and Linux as far as I'm aware, If not always then certainly a long time!! I'm not too sure how it works when the Mac has intel processors though (whether you use the PC or Mac version).

Hope your well, uni has had me bogged under, got another bit of coursework to submit tomorrow!!

Later,

Mat.