Hardware recomendations
Moderators: jesterKing, stiv
Hardware recomendations
Hi, I was wondering whether blender rendered entirely through the CPU or if made any use of graphic's card GPUs and which I ought to invest the most in for my next computer? What other aspects of hardware does Blender exert pressure on? (I'm guessing memory/bandwidth?) Any recomendations on which CPUs work best/most efficiently (32 or 64 bit Intel or AMD) or which GFX cards improve performance?
blender's render is entirely on the CPU, your graphics card would only make the interface faster
I don't know which cpu and stuff to reccomend for best rendering speed... I don't think it's all that important [particularly compared with the difference in cost]. Get something recent [athlon 64 or one of the 64 bit pentium 4 d [dual core?] if you have money to burn]... and don't skimp on the ram.
raytracing and/or radiosity are pretty much required to make a render take a long time [more than a minute]... if you care about render times a lot you can avoid them both. [this will make more of a difference than your hardware choice]
I don't know which cpu and stuff to reccomend for best rendering speed... I don't think it's all that important [particularly compared with the difference in cost]. Get something recent [athlon 64 or one of the 64 bit pentium 4 d [dual core?] if you have money to burn]... and don't skimp on the ram.
raytracing and/or radiosity are pretty much required to make a render take a long time [more than a minute]... if you care about render times a lot you can avoid them both. [this will make more of a difference than your hardware choice]
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Yaroslav_L
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- Joined: Wed Feb 23, 2005 8:59 am
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[more than a minute]...?!?!?!??!?!
Man! What U talking about?
I have deal with interiors and my renders take 2-14 hours!!!!!!!!!!!
A think the question was:
1.Support blender 64 bit processors.
As we know the reason of 64 bit CPU only if we have 64 bit OS and 64 bit soft. Correct?
A'm planned to buy new PC to, so I interested in it.
Can somebody help us?
Man! What U talking about?
I have deal with interiors and my renders take 2-14 hours!!!!!!!!!!!
A think the question was:
1.Support blender 64 bit processors.
As we know the reason of 64 bit CPU only if we have 64 bit OS and 64 bit soft. Correct?
A'm planned to buy new PC to, so I interested in it.
Can somebody help us?
I would say, get a Mac.
Now, serious, in my opinion you should go for a AMD 64Bit, if possible a Dual Core version.
Blender has some 64Bit releases on the Testing Builds Forum and will possibly have a official release by the time of 2.40 (this is the next release with the numbers bumped).
On the Dual Core issue, Blender can render with more then one CPU, thus the Dual Core will make an even more significant difference then being 64 bits.
On the GFX, buy a nice one, no need for 500 Eur cards, unless you want to make games with the internal game engine, and even that can be achieved with a medium entry card. My advice would be NVidia, it has better Linux support and works somehow better with Blender, although I haven't got any issues lately with my ATI 9700 (latest ATI Drivers for Linux).
One more thing you should take into account is the amount of RAM and how fast the RAM is. I would say, save some money on the GFX card and get 1.5GB of RAM minimum, with at least a CL 2.5, if possible get a CL 2.0 memory, it makes a big difference.
Lets also not forget the Disk, get at least a 250GB one and SATA if possible, also a big noticable difference.
Hope it helped.
Now, serious, in my opinion you should go for a AMD 64Bit, if possible a Dual Core version.
Blender has some 64Bit releases on the Testing Builds Forum and will possibly have a official release by the time of 2.40 (this is the next release with the numbers bumped).
On the Dual Core issue, Blender can render with more then one CPU, thus the Dual Core will make an even more significant difference then being 64 bits.
On the GFX, buy a nice one, no need for 500 Eur cards, unless you want to make games with the internal game engine, and even that can be achieved with a medium entry card. My advice would be NVidia, it has better Linux support and works somehow better with Blender, although I haven't got any issues lately with my ATI 9700 (latest ATI Drivers for Linux).
One more thing you should take into account is the amount of RAM and how fast the RAM is. I would say, save some money on the GFX card and get 1.5GB of RAM minimum, with at least a CL 2.5, if possible get a CL 2.0 memory, it makes a big difference.
Lets also not forget the Disk, get at least a 250GB one and SATA if possible, also a big noticable difference.
Hope it helped.
How to use a Blender:
Put your model, rig, animation and textures in the Blender, turn the Blender on and wait for it to Render, then turn the Blender off and show it to your friends.
Put your model, rig, animation and textures in the Blender, turn the Blender on and wait for it to Render, then turn the Blender off and show it to your friends.
I'd recommend two thing to get the most out of blender on current hardware:
a) the GPU: go for an nVIDIA GPU, as ATI support is rather bad under Linux.
which leads us to...
b) the CPU: go for an AMD64 processor and run some Linux 64bit system on it for the best possible render-times. I have had a little data on rendering-times with Yafray (and you'll want to use Yafray for interior-renderings) posted in this thread.
Enjoy,
Konrad
a) the GPU: go for an nVIDIA GPU, as ATI support is rather bad under Linux.
which leads us to...
b) the CPU: go for an AMD64 processor and run some Linux 64bit system on it for the best possible render-times. I have had a little data on rendering-times with Yafray (and you'll want to use Yafray for interior-renderings) posted in this thread.
Enjoy,
Konrad
That is also a good idea, just mind that the second machine can also be Linuxjoeri wrote:or,....
buy 2 systems.
1 to render all day long.
... No gfx
... Amd64 (dual)
... Linux
2 to work on.
... Nvidia gfx
... Amd (single)
... Windows (to read and write to customers)
, read and write to costumers can also be achieved nicely with any recent linux Distro.How to use a Blender:
Put your model, rig, animation and textures in the Blender, turn the Blender on and wait for it to Render, then turn the Blender off and show it to your friends.
Put your model, rig, animation and textures in the Blender, turn the Blender on and wait for it to Render, then turn the Blender off and show it to your friends.
Sure, but that isn't "read and write to customers", hehe.joeri wrote:hihi, yes but we all know you can't play the latest game linux
And you can always use WineX, it should cover 60% of recent games.
How to use a Blender:
Put your model, rig, animation and textures in the Blender, turn the Blender on and wait for it to Render, then turn the Blender off and show it to your friends.
Put your model, rig, animation and textures in the Blender, turn the Blender on and wait for it to Render, then turn the Blender off and show it to your friends.
Make sure your renderer uses memory to swap, not harddisk.z3r0_d wrote:without using radiosity or raytracing?
The more lights and shadow buffer you use (and big textures on your models) the more memory blender is going to consume (the MEM: thing in the top header). Make sure you have the memory it wants to keep a fast render speed.
re
thanks for all the replies everybody, I think i'll go with the 64bit dual core AMD... Its been a while since i was in the loop on hardware, last time i looked pc2700 was the fastest ram, what should i be looking for now? also does RAID improve blenders performance?
cheers again,
weezill
cheers again,
weezill
Re: re
Great choiceWeezill wrote:thanks for all the replies everybody, I think i'll go with the 64bit dual core AMD... Its been a while since i was in the loop on hardware, last time i looked pc2700 was the fastest ram, what should i be looking for now? also does RAID improve blenders performance?
cheers again,
weezill
.For RAM I would suggest a CL2 RAM, either OCZ / Patriot / Mushkin / Crucial / Kingston . I would also suggest DDR 1 memory, not DDR2, since DDR2 memories are CL4 and CL5.
For Disk, if you get a SATA II Disk I believe you don't need a RAID solution, even normal SATA Disks get the job done really nicelly with Blender.
How to use a Blender:
Put your model, rig, animation and textures in the Blender, turn the Blender on and wait for it to Render, then turn the Blender off and show it to your friends.
Put your model, rig, animation and textures in the Blender, turn the Blender on and wait for it to Render, then turn the Blender off and show it to your friends.
Here were the specs recommended for Cinellera
Dual Opteron 275
4 * 1 Gig Registered PC3200 RAM
500 GB SATA drive
Tyan S2885 motherboard
Gigabit ethernet
You might want to look a Arstechnica buyers guide which give very reasonable suggestions for hardware.
http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/sys ... 200508.ars
if you are looking to spend less money, check their recommendations from further back in time and/or skimp on the areas that are less critical to you,
LetterRip
Dual Opteron 275
4 * 1 Gig Registered PC3200 RAM
500 GB SATA drive
Tyan S2885 motherboard
Gigabit ethernet
You might want to look a Arstechnica buyers guide which give very reasonable suggestions for hardware.
http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/sys ... 200508.ars
if you are looking to spend less money, check their recommendations from further back in time and/or skimp on the areas that are less critical to you,
LetterRip