Hi all,
I am looking at upgrading my computer to an HP Z800. I'm definitely getting the quadro FX1800 at a minimum but wondering what people are thinking about where i should put any extra cash? Should i go for a quadro FX3800 or spend the money on a faster CPU and more RAM?
My work is in the plastic mold design area so the number of components aren't that may but intricate details and lots of surfaces on parts are common.
Appreciate any thoughts
Asaf
You should check out the new ATI FirePro lineup too. The new V3800, V4800, V5800, etc lineup look to be an outstanding value. The V4800 looks to be similar to the nVidia FX1800
Asaf,
I agree with Anna for sure about the processor and ram, we have standardized on the Z800's and minimum of 8GB of ram, get the best processor for sure. As far as Graphics cards, there are so many, but get one with at least 512Mb of ram, remembering that the size of ram on the G-Card will hold that amount of hard ram hostage, so again, as much ram as you can.
We mostly have the NVidia 3800's, but recently have been testing ATI's cards again since they have been much more stable than they used to be, I currently have the V8800 which I am very happy with, though I did get more ram because it is a 2GB card.
I am in the same boat as far as type of work, except we create the injection molded parts, and even though they can be small and few, they are heavy on the system resources due to all of the small faces and surfacing needs.
Brian
Thanks everyone for your inputs thus far. It's so hard to decide where to place the money when you can't really test these things out.
I'm getting a quote from HP today so we'll see what happens soon.
As far as i understand it, the graphics card doesn't really do the processing of solid models but rather looks after how they will be rendered on screen. Is that right? And if so does that mean that benchmarking tests would not really reveal any performance increase in calculation times?
Asaf Weis wrote:
As far as i understand it, the graphics card doesn't really do the processing of solid models but rather looks after how they will be rendered on screen. Is that right? And if so does that mean that benchmarking tests would not really reveal any performance increase in calculation times?
Yes, the cpu does the processing of the model. The GPU controls the rendering of the model on screen.
Depends on what the benchmarks tests for, if it is a GPU benchmark then you will see differences in the video card as an example. If it is a cpu based benchmark then you will see the performance differences of various cpu's.
Cheers,
Anna
Spend your money on the highest clock speed CPU you can afford. 6 gigs of RAM minimum with Windows 7 x64 OS.