3D Workstation PC??

[Maverick2002]

I see buyer's guides all the time for the latest gaming PC, but what about workstation systems?

We're in the process of researching optimal configurations for a few computers at work for us designers. Right now we're running C2Q's with 8600GTs, 3GB of RAM, WinXP 32-bit.

Most of the work we do revolves around 3DSMax and Adobe Suite (with a heavy emphasis on After Effects, Premiere, Photoshop, and Illustrator). We probably won't be getting new machines until Nehalem comes out, but we're looking for general ideas of what to get.

I'm thinking 64-bit WinXP, Nehalem CPUs, 4GB RAM, possibly an SSD boot/app/temp write drive, and a "workstation video card" whatever that means.

Problem is, I can't find anything online about this sort of stuff. I realize workstation PCs resemble gaming PCs, but there are still notable differences.

Can anyone point me to a general guide or give some hardware suggestions?

TIA

 

[Modelworks]

I can tell you what I use, I run 3dsmax, maya, zbrush, cinema4d and now adding XSI 7.0.
Quad core, anything with a clock speed of 3Ghz or better.

Memory: 4GB should work well, I rarely hit 4GB usage even with photoshop and 3dsmax running high detail scenes in the millions of polys range.

Storage: Raid if you really work with lots of video . I don't recommend using raid as a backup solution on workstations anymore because the workstation can fail in some ways that can corrupt secondary drives in the system. Instead consider using a NAS (network storage) device for backups of daily work.
I set a bat file that copies everything to the NAS at the end of the day for backup purposes. That way both the workstation and the NAS have to fail for the data to be lost.
Don't bother with SSD right now it isn't worth the cost for the benefits.

Winxp 64 bit works great with all the graphics apps and plugins so thats a good choice.
Video card depends on if you want support.
You can use a gaming card but the problem is that if you have any display issues with 3dsmax , autodesk will not provide support because you are using, to them, unapproved hardware. I use a 8800gts and a quadro card. Both work great and I haven't had any display issues.
Get a video card with the most video memory that you can afford, I use one with 640MB and the other 768MB.

Also consider setting up a render farm if you haven't already. While you can render on the workstations it really cuts back on productivity since you can't do anything else with that workstation while it renders. Its much better to buy some cheap motherboards, add a quad core, 4GB ram and network those together. Currently using 8 quad cores for rendering and love it. I do the work on the workstation then submit it to the renderer and can go about doing whatever I like while it crunches the numbers.

 

[Knavish]

Since XP isn't officially distributed anymore, don't you think those software packages that you use will start to prefer Vista? Perhaps it's time to make the switch...

I'm pretty sure that Autodesk (3dsmax) officially supports "workstation" graphics cards only, so you're on your own with the consumer level models. Have you ever had to call Autodesk support about some kind of weird graphics behavior with your 8600GTs? If not, you might want to save your money and buy good consumer-level cards. From Adobe's website, it looks like the fully support last-generation consumer level cards in Premiere:
http://www.adobe.com/products/...device=graphic&format=

I seriously doubt that Illustrator or Photoshop care what kind of 3D accelerator you have.

 

[Maverick2002]

I should probably clarify a few things. My example is only a small part of our company. We have a render farm for distributed rendering and we even have a special rack just for After Effects multi-core rendering (because of the insane amount of RAM AE uses). Content is stored on a NAS.

Also, we're skipping Vista and waiting for Windows 7. Vista has too many problems for us to roll it out as a company.

Really my question is regarding the optimal setup for working in Max, AE/Premiere (i.e. "smooth" real-time previews of effects in AE and working with high-poly models in Max), and RAM intensive apps like Photoshop/Illustrator. Final rendering in Max/AE is taken care of by our render farm.

I think we may move to 64-bit XP for more RAM. With regards to video cards, is it worthwhile to get SLI/Crossfire or will one beefy "gaming" card do? We've ran some tests (SPEC) of similar Geforce/Quadro cards here at the office and there wasn't much of a difference at all.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: Maverick2002

Really my question is regarding the optimal setup for working in Max, AE/Premiere (i.e. "smooth" real-time previews of effects in AE and working with high-poly models in Max), and RAM intensive apps like Photoshop/Illustrator. Final rendering in Max/AE is taken care of by our render farm.

Max is getting better with viewport speed but it still has issues with seriously high poly counts 8 million +.
It uses the video card quite a bit for the display of texturing but it still offloads quite a bit to the cpu to calculate the viewport changes. The one thing that made the most difference for me is the video card ram. If it is too low then when you are using large textures in viewports the viewport will stutter as it rotates and textures are swapped out on the card.

I wouldn't get a video card with less than 512MB.

Crossfire and sli will not help with Max viewports much as Max doesn't use the gpu to calculate a lot of what is taking place in the viewports.


Skipping vista for now is a wise choice.
I set up a workstation just for vista to try out some of my current apps and it works but there are some serious issues that need to be resolved. Some have workarounds while others are going to require the developer to fix them. For now I just don't have time to tweak everything when I can load up a working system and get work done.