Curious About Comparable Desktop Computers
Novica
Posts: 23,924
I use a laptop but I'm going to get a desktop and start to save up for a really nice one. I know nothing about desktops, and although I find a lot on graphics cards, I'm not able to piece together what a good computer would be, along with a graphic card. I'm plain awful at comparing computers, I don't know if I'm looking at apples and oranges or bananas. This first one is a Dell XPS x8900, with these specifications. Are there other ones I should be looking at that are equal to this one?
This one has a NVDIA ATX 960 graphics card, with 2GB DDR5.
The processor is 4GHZ and is an Intel Quad Core. RAM is 32GB DDR4
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My advice, if you want to use iRay a lot, would be to get a nVidia graphics card of at least 4GB, otherwise a lot of scenes will not fit on the card.
So can you change out graphics cards or are you stuck with the one that is in the computer? I am not technical. I know that in laptops, there's limited amount of RAM you can add, mine was 4GB and we upped it to 8, but that was all it would do- so can you change out/increase the GB of the graphics card/replace it?
most of the time .
You didn't mention which processor. The i7 will give you faster render times than the i5. The reason i7 renders faster is because it has hyper threading; the i5 does not have hype threading.
When you upgrade a video card, you also have to look at (PSU) power supply. If you buy a card that exceeds your power supply, you'll fry your PC. (Stock power supply on a dell 8900 XPS is 460w.) Power supply can be upgraded...just letting you know that you need to look at this when factoring in which card.
RAM: I wouldn't go less than 16GB. Not sure if 32GB is too much money vs need...that really depends on how big you are rendering; how much video editing; or how much you have going on at once. If price is a factor, I'd put my money into an i7 core processor vs 32GB RAM.
I TB or 2 TB storage would be a plus.
BTW, are you just looking at the Dell site? If so, do comparisons on Amazon. Sometimes, you can find better deals there. Oh, and Dell changes out their deals fairly regularly. You might also check other places for example Sam's Club....really depends on what you want and what the deal is. Personally, I have three Dell computers....I best deal was at Dell; 1 best deal was on Amazon (new as the whole refurbished thing worries me); 1 best deal was at Sam's Club.
Here is a site with some tips for getting the most out of the Dell website.
http://consumerist.com/2007/06/14/22-confessions-of-a-former-dell-sales-manager/
Novica you might want to take a look at newegg.com
My old PC was x8900 with 16 GB & the 960 2GB card but I use the card to run my monitor so there was never enough for iray & any renders over 800 x 800 almost always went to CPU
Other than Alienware which is expensive I don't think Dell have any systems with 4GB or more Nvidea GPU which is why I went to newegg
Search for hp GTX 980ti on eBay. The one for $1,149.95 is a nice system. Only drawback is the motherboard may only have has one PCI-e x 16 slot for a video card.
Note that not only will you need at least 4GB RAM in your nVidia card, but you want as many CUDA cores in it as you can possibly afford. My nVidia card (an OEM thing only available through HP and Dell, but not the card you mention) has 4GB RAM, but only 384 cores, which means it doesn't have enough processing power to handle even small scenes (and 4GB RAM will hold something like one figure with clothing and hair, and not much more -- a very simple scene).
Depending on your budget, if you're not a big gamer, you might want to try a two-graphics card setup. One to run your monitor and programs, and another dedicated to rendering. I'd switch to that if I could, but I don't have an available slot, unfortunately.
Nah, I've rendered seven subdivision level 3 Genesis 3 Males in one scene on my GTX 980, and it only has 4 gigs of RAM. And the background was fairly heavy on textures too. Also, it's my only card, so my two monitors are plugged into it too. It did give me a warning about memory in the log, but it still rendered.
Ditto.
Every desktop system I've ever owned (non-Mac, that is) I have built from scratch. I got exactly what I wanted/needed, with a solid upgrade path for the long term.
The only down-side was that, once I started upgrading components, I didn't know what to do with the old ones! Everyone I offered them to just assumed that I was getting rid of them for a reason, and wanted nothing to do with them!
I've always taken my old parts and put them in another case, added an OS keyboard mouse and monitor then put it up for sale on craigslist, or sold the parts indivitually :)
Building your own computer from separate components is a reasonable idea IF you know what you're doing. There are lots of variables. i.e. does the motherboard have a CPU socket compatible with the type of CPU you want to buy? Is your power supply big enough and does it have enough of the right types of connectors? Does your motherboard have enough daughter board sockets of the right type? Is your case big enough? Which type of memory works best? Can you get drivers for all of the elements of the motherboard and daughterboards? Are the manufacturers of the component boards and devices reliable and do they provide convenient and adequate service? What is it going to cost to assemble all the miscelleneous software that you would like that might have come "free" with a pre-packaged system? Do you have adequate skills and tools to properly and safely handle sensitive chips and components. Do you have a temperment able to handle setbacks and frustration? Have you sent your wife/husband & kids & pets away for the duration for their own safety?
That has been my experience too, I have rendered a number of complex scenes using 4GB, with multiple characters etc. I remember when iRay first came out, one of the DAZ guys (Spooky, I think) was saying how 2GB were somewhat limited as up to 1GB of the card was used by with various overheads etc, and so only a bit over 1GB was left for the scene. For this reason 4GB sort of triples, rather than doubles the space available for the scene (although things are not as simple as that, and the overhead etc can vary a lot). For this reason I would recommend a cheaper 4GB card over a 2GB with a few more cores.
Hubby finished a chat with the nvidia folks a few minutes ago. Already talked with Dell. We are looking at the Alienware but everything in general. Checked out NewEgg, Amazon, Dell, and believe it or not, Sams Club has some nice ones. Still looking and appreciate VERY much the assistance.
I need some idea as to what would give me more than acceptable performance so far as CUDA/cores, kinda lost there. And is CUDA and cores the same thing? So 384 is "getting by" but so you'll know what I'm doing, my book will almost always have 2-3 people in the scenes so I can't continue to get bogged down. Wasting a lot of time. The emphasis is on the graphics card and definitely wouldn't go lower than 4GB
Might be worth a read.
http://www.custompcreview.com/pc-computer-builds/recommended-workstation-pc-builds/
The more cuda cores the faster it will render so long as your scene fits in the GPU memory
I have 970 which has 4GB & 1664 Cuda cores & as other have said easily renders 3 people
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-970/specifications
How long it takes is dependent on many things icluding the size , surfaces, lighting etc but I use my PC for daily work not related to graphics so I try to avoid anything that takes to long & only need web graphics so never need to render super large stuff.
If you have an example of a scene that I can download & I have the content needed I will happily test render it for you to see if it fits in the 4gb & how long it takes if that would help you before you spend.
I read your reviews thread often as a lurker & they have helped me spend a lot of money here :)
I have a GTX 970, and I would say my iRay renders are 8-10 times faster rendering on the GPU compared to CPU only.
LOL, so you want a bit of payback, eh- help me spend money? We should get together and go shopping...look out world! But seriously, thanks for the offer, that is extremely generous of you. I've already gotten the following, which is a significant improvement over my poor lil laptop:
It's a Dell Alienware Area-51 computer with an Intel i7 Six Core, 32 GB of RAM, a GTX 970 (1664 CUDA cores) with 4GB RAM on the video card (going 6 was $1000 more, forget it) It has a 2TB harddrive.
And I don't get most of this, but my husband says instead of one brain with one minion doing the work, it has six minions, and "whatever."
There's this- and I have no idea what the overclocked is, or does, but must be good:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-5820K (6-cores, 15MB Cache, Overclocked up to 3.8 GHz w/ Turbo Boost)
With respect to the last, make absolutely sure the cat is outside! (Fried two CPUs because Caboose decided to get friendly!)
FYI for other non-technical people:
A "CUDA Core" is nVidia's equivalent to AMD's "Stream Processors." NVidia's proprietary parallel computing programming model, CUDA(Compute Unified Device Architecture), is a specialized programming language that can leverage the GPU in specific ways to perform tasks with greater performance.
I think you will be happy with new PC - I have a similar set up but only have 16GB RAM & that has been fine.
I still have my old machine with another 16GB & the 960 card that I could add if needed but hubbie & I both work online & like to keep a spare working machine just in case so perhaps I will just buy more ram & a second card when I give up spending all my spare cash at Daz which will probably never happen if I keep reading the reviews thread :)
I refuse to take the heat entirely for the Art Studio thread, blame the awesome other people who share their product experiences/expertise! (Come post, it's open to all forum members to share opinions on what they like, love to have you!)
This video is fun at about 19 minutes, he starts playing with making the tower glow, change colors, pulse- and then he discusses the neat stuff you can do with creating a video game profile and what to do prior to launching the game, etc. My son will probably abscond with my computer for League of Legends lol. I've seen a few video reviews that really like the Alienware Area 51, a couple liked others better but they built their computer and I don't have the expertise to do that. If anyone has other suggestions on specific desktops, it would help other people. I know if I spent more time, I would change my mind ten or twenty times, but you folks have been SO helpful, wanted to thank you again!
That's a good PC, Novica, and you will be able to upgrade your video card down the road (and possibly the power supply depending on the wattage needed). Make sure you keep the computer air vents clear. Hot air can really mess up a PC and a Mac, especially with the stronger CPUs and cards that put out more heat.
Good to know- in that video, it mentioned the design of the Alienware helped with the venting, the slope shoots the air up and not straight into the wall.
...still using the workstation I built several years ago. Yeah, need to upgrade the memory to 24 GB (maximum the board supports) and get a newer GPU as I am running dual monitors and getting a lot of "not responding" issues and "whiteouts" (where the app window goes completely white for a while when a scene loads or begins to render) which I believe is due to the old 384 core 1 GB GPU trying to cover too many bases at once. I could just go the stopgap route and get an older 4GB unit, but it would still leave me with rendering on the CPU/Memory most of the time.
My case PSU, and MB could actually support a single Titan X, however,"wallet support" is a different matter.
My last desktop system had a serious overheating issue, despite six cooling fans in the case. (Having a dual-CPU motherboard, and four hard disks in it were probably a factor); I ended up getting a water-cooled set-up that solved the problem.
Hey, as Totte said, "If it's worth doing, it's worth over-doing!"
I "built" my new PC by taking a list of what I wanted to Fry's and had one of their experts help me choose all the pieces. They built it for a fee of $100 plus the cost of the components ('cause I don't know what I'm doing). I had a big budget and bought a very powerful machine - but keep in mind I hold onto my computers for 5-7 years so I wanted something that would be useful for a long time before I had to replace it. Then start the monthly savings account all over again to have the cash for next time.
Intel i7 6 core processor; 64 GB RAM, EVGA GeForce GTX980ti. DAZ Studio is installed on the solid state drive, and I have regular hard drive for storage.
...what did that all cost?
Turbo Boost is a feature that allows the computer to speed up when only one or just a few CPU cores are being used. It is quite handy with some programs that either aren't multi-threading (split the work between cores) or have functions that cannot multi-thread. Be sure that is what AlienWare means and not that the computer is overclocked as that could be bad when doing long renders.
for building your own, a Good site to find prices and compatibility is PCPartPicker, they cover many locations just select the country , not every thing can be bought in all Continents, so best to select where you'll be buying from.
make sure the compatibility is checked, so you will get the warnings if there is a issue, and then you could find the correct component(s)
Pro on building your own, you spent a whole lot less, Con you don't get that Named Brand warranty (just the warranty on the individual components {which really varies on the time of the warranty for each Component})
only tool(s) you should need is a screw driver, corrective eye glasses if you need for reading, able to read and follow written instructions, and the ability to pressing firmly without smashing
Most computer shops starting at $80 + (or what ever they charge rates are) will build the computer for you , just need to bring every thing to them, or purchase the parts from them.
there is nothing wrong purchasing Name Brand, you're just spending more
If someone is Purchasing Built or To Build, and know nothing , you're in the same boat, it won't matter which way you go. Chances are you will have done some research of what you would want, that is the best thing to do, talking to others that use the computer the same as you do, that do have knowledge which components you need to look for and which to avoid