What to upgrade for Maya Rendering/Animation

[MtnFrost]

Hi All-

I have an older system I built a few years ago. I will be doing some freelance animation, rendering and compositing using Maya, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere.

I know my system is now ancient. But I need some advice on what to upgrade first, given that I cannot right now build a new machine. Stats:

Windows 7
Asus M4A87TD/USB3
AMD Phenom II x2 555 (core unlocker runs 3 cores)
4 GB GSkill DDR3 RAM F3-12800CL9-2GBRL
NVidia GeForce GTX 460 SE
1 GB 7200 Hard Drive

I found last year while attempting to bake out the light maps in Maya from a larger building model, my machine would peg the RAM and never finish.

My instinct is to go to 16 GB RAM, and maybe go up to a Phenom II x4 965. I will be scrubbing animation, and rendering frames at 720x486. I will be editing this in Premiere.

Thank you!

 

[piasabird]

Lots of RAM and the speed, Cache size, and at least a quad core might help. Animation is really hard on a lower end processor. This is one task when Intel Extreme processors might be nice like that new 8 core EE processor on the horizon. It is probably like running a stress test on the RAM and the CPU. So a good cooler and some extra fans might be nice. Overclocking is probably not a good idea.

 

[mfenn]

What's your budget? If you can't complete the task due to lack of RAM, then that's certainly the first order of business. A better CPU would make the whole thing go faster too of course. How to prioritize each part depends on the overall amount of money you're working with though.

 

[Ken g6]

Also if your budget is extremely low, I wouldn't discard any existing parts. Start with 8gb to go with your existing 4gb. If that's not enough then consider a second 8gb set.

 

[chusteczka]

Here is your motherboard.
Asus.com - M4A87TD/USB3
Newegg.com - ASUS M4A87TD/USB3 AM3 AMD 870 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX
This board is limited to an AMD AM3 Phenom II processor. It does have SATA III at 6Gb/sec, which is good. I continue using such a system and it works great. But then I do not do the heavy animation work you do.

My suggestion is to get an SSD for the operating system and upgrade the processor and memory.
SSD Crucial MX-100 256GB ($111)
CPU: Phenom II x4 or x6 ($80 - $160)
RAM: (2x4GB) 1600MHz at same timings as the memory you already have. That way you can continue using the memory you have for 12GB total, since the motherboard has 4 RAM slots. ($85)
Of course you can purchase the full 16GB RAM if you wish at ($160). That board appears to be limited to these memory speeds.
DDR3 2000(O.C.)/1600/1333/1066


EDIT:
And you will need a solid heatsink if you do not have one already.
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus

 

[chusteczka]

An upgrade will cost about $200 - $300. It might be better to either:

• find a Combo Deal to upgrade the motherboard, cpu, memory; or
• borrow the money to purchase a new system.

It makes sense to borrow the needed money since you will be earning money with your work. You can get the work done faster and quickly pay back the money.


EDIT: For example ...
Upgrade Kit UAG6140: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz Six-Core CPU, Gigabyte 970 Motherboard, G.Skill Ripjaws X 16GB 1866MHz RAM ($333 - $10 MIR)

 

[MtnFrost]

What's your budget? If you can't complete the task due to lack of RAM, then that's certainly the first order of business. A better CPU would make the whole thing go faster too of course. How to prioritize each part depends on the overall amount of money you're working with though.

Not much, I'm afraid. A couple hundred. I'm looking for the biggest improvement for the buck by replacing one or two items now, and then I can see about the rest, or begin rebuilding the machine with a new mobo and processor, later.

 

[mfenn]

Not much, I'm afraid. A couple hundred. I'm looking for the biggest improvement for the buck by replacing one or two items now, and then I can see about the rest, or begin rebuilding the machine with a new mobo and processor, later.

Thanks for the info. Your RAM some pretty standard G.Skill DDR3 1600 CAS 9 1.5, so it shouldn't be too hard to find a compatible second kit. This G.Skill DDR3 1600 8GB kit looks like a perfect match for $83.

Your board supports pretty much every Phenom II processor out there, but Phenom II's are thin on the ground at Newegg. You can pick up a used Phenom II X4 for ~$80 on Ebay, but honestly, that doesn't seem like a worthwhile upgrade from your (effective) Phenom II X3 "750".

I'd instead put the rest of the money into an SSD like the Crucial MX100 256GB for $110. The SSD won't improve your final output framerate, but it will make working in heavy content-creation suites much more responsive and save you time (and sanity) during the modeling/editing phases.

 

[chusteczka]

Yes, in agreement with mfenn. An SSD and (2x4GB) memory are the two components to purchase now. Keep the cpu you have. Transfer the SSD and memory to a new build later.

 

[MtnFrost]

Thanks. Ordered 8GB gskill to pair with the 4GB I have now - hopefully with settings the same I'll get 12GB RAM. Surprised about the SSD recommendation - I can't see how that will speed up rendering or 3D computation. I have a 7200 500GB Seagate as c drive, and another 500GB WD for additional space. Maybe putting a 512GB SSD in as primary I can use the current Seagate for more storage.

 

[chusteczka]

Even with 12GB of memory, the data will still need to be read from the hard drive and then saved back to the hard drive. As you work, more data and program library files will continually be read and written to and from the hard drive, creating latency. The SSD will remove this bottleneck and the SSD is easily transferred to a new build in the future.

With limited funds, it is best when money spent will still be of use later.

If you were to work now with your system the way it is, I bet your cpu is not maxed out due to being starved of data to compute due to the relatively slower hard drive and memory data transfer speeds, and limited memory size. Maybe with the SSD and more memory you will push the cpu to its limits.

 

[mfenn]

Thanks. Ordered 8GB gskill to pair with the 4GB I have now - hopefully with settings the same I'll get 12GB RAM. Surprised about the SSD recommendation - I can't see how that will speed up rendering or 3D computation. I have a 7200 500GB Seagate as c drive, and another 500GB WD for additional space. Maybe putting a 512GB SSD in as primary I can use the current Seagate for more storage.

I'd instead put the rest of the money into an SSD like the Crucial MX100 256GB for $110. The SSD won't improve your final output framerate, but it will make working in heavy content-creation suites much more responsive and save you time (and sanity) during the modeling/editing phases.

I bolded the relevant part of my response. The SSD isn't going to speed up your final render by much (if at all), but it is going to make you vastly more productive during the actual production part of the workflow.

 

[Ken g6]

I don't know about most of the software you listed, but Photoshop makes extensive use of scratch files. Even a single SSD for everything would likely be faster than a single HDD for scratch files and another for everything else.

If you want to spend most of your remaining money on an x6 CPU, there's an argument to be made for getting a really cheap SSD just for scratch files, if you're doing a lot in Photoshop. (Like I said I don't know about the others.) Maybe you could stick a few easily-replaceable files on there too like copies of program binaries. A couple of 32GB here are just $40.

This $55 120GB Kingston would be faster and bigger. It is Sandforce, so make sure you have everything that's on it backed up elsewhere, but it should be big enough for programs, scratch files, and maybe an OS install if you can reinstall quickly to the HDD if it fails.

 

[MtnFrost]

Thanks - I'm going to look into getting the Crucial 256 drive mentioned. As far as using the cpu to the max, I know when I was baking light maps out of maya the cpu meter would go up and then die, up and then die - probably swapping at that point. It was ugly.

 

[mfenn]

Thanks - I'm going to look into getting the Crucial 256 drive mentioned. As far as using the cpu to the max, I know when I was baking light maps out of maya the cpu meter would go up and then die, up and then die - probably swapping at that point. It was ugly.

Yep, swapping will kill your performance faster than anything else. That's why getting enough RAM is top priority.

 

[johnsmith7623]

"For now i would suggest you did the right things by upgrading the ram. ssds can boost up your system like crazy and you will love the difference from the hdd. you will already feel like you upgraded your system. Sandforce ssds like kingston or intel have worked great for me and i use a lot of photoshop and after effects. definetely a bang for the buck for your requirements.
When you decide to updage the enitre system, I would suggest the amd fx series processor either the 6300 or 8320. Go for the asus mobo to pair it up with."