which motherboard for 3d pro?

[shinji3c]

Hi all
good ones.
I have a question.
I'm about to buy a new computer. I do have a Dell XPS series but i think it's only good for game and stuff
Anyways, i need another computer to work on graphic application such as Maya, softimage, 3dmax, etc.. I will be doing a lot of rendering and lots of web graphic also. Oh, I would like my PC to be very quiet.
and so far i have written down parts to buy but i dont know too much about motherboard but i know it's probably the most important thing to buy so here i ask your opinions. Oh i also need your opinions on graphic card...i bought the firegl series from ATI but i don't know. Does anyone know any better than that one? Let's just assume that i got about $3000 to spend on PC components excluding the monitor because i already got one. What are my options?
So far, I have bought
- Intel p4 3.4 Ghz 800 FSB(maybe upgrade later)
- Cruicial DDR 1024 Ram
- Sound Blaster Audigy
- ATI FireGL 256Ram <-- ??? any better than this?
- Maxtor 120G HD
- Intel Lan Card

Thanks guys
Help me get the best PC!!!

 

[mechBgon]

If you have two 512MB memory modules, get two more. And pair them up with an Asus P4C800-E Deluxe (at least, that's what I would buy if I already had the items you've bought) and an Antec TruePower 430 or higher, or another power supply with a respected reputation and healthy amounts of wattage.

I would also suggest that you get a second hard drive and periodically back up your important stuff to it. You'll be hating life if your hard drive crashes the day after you finished a killer scene or animation. For similar reasons, a decent UPS such as an APC SmartUPS 650VA or higher might be a wise investment.

Quietness is mainly a matter of eliminating noise at the source, so you have to take everything into account: video-card fan, motherboard fan (if so equipped), hard drive noise, power-supply fan noise... if you have eliminated every noise source except one, then you still have noise For that reason, I'd say to pick hard drives that use fluid-bearing motors (all Seagate ATA drives, many Maxtors and Hitachis, but not many Western Digitals yet), and maybe a Thermalright SLK-900U heatsink with a Panaflo L1A 92mm fan.

Hope that input helps, and I'm sure you'll get other good suggestions here too. Welcome to the Forums

 

[batmanuel]

I'd go for either the Asus P4C800 Deluxe or one of the Abit IC7 series. Both are based on the Intel 875P chipset, which is going to be your highest quality P4 chipset available. These boards also have an AGP Pro slot, which is required by some of the really high end professional OpenGL graphics cards (like a FireGL X1). The Asus board probably would suit you best, since it has a passive northbridge heatsink, which will be quieter than the fan on the IC7 boards.

On the other hand, looking at most of the new professional OGL cards, they seem to be moving away from AGP Pro and going to having the extra power provided by Molex plugs (like the high end gaming cards they are based on), so if you want to go for a cheaper 865PE based motherboard, then you would probably be okay without AGP Pro. None of the new Quadro FX cards seem to require it, which looking the benches I've seen are the fastest at professional 3D work. The FireGL is actually a pretty decent card for the money, though, and is better than some of the Quadros in the same price range. (Some of the old, low-end Quadro 4s were basically modified GeForce 4 MX cards).

If you have the cash to spend the Quadro FX2000 is quite good, albeit pricy. It runs around $1200, which will probably blow your budget. It is still, however, a LOT cheaper than the king of hill right now, the $3000 Quadro FX3000G

 

[shinji3c]

Thanks guys
So i guess ASUS has good reputation on making mother board...
I just wanna make sure that the mother board is the top of the line and CAN SUPPORT MY CPU(or can even support faster ones so i can maybe upgrade the cpu later)
Ye the graphic card looks really really good dude but wow it is expensive...sigh...
Thanks for the help
I really appreciate it.
Now i'm going ASUS web site and check it out.
Any other suggestions?

 

[mechBgon]

Don't worry about the upgrade path. There won't be any more Socket478 Pentium4 Northwoods above the 3.4GHz that you've already bought, so you only need to worry about getting a board that supports the processor you have now. If you want to upgrade later, sell the board/CPU combination on the used market and buy a new board & CPU.

 

[shinji3c]

I'm sorry to bother you again
What else do i need?
I keep doing research but eh...i just want to make sure that i'm not missing anything...
So far, the items listed above are all i got....Also i wonder which case i should get. This is the first time i'm building my PC so i want to make sure i got everything correct.
what else do i need to buy???
Thanks again!!!!

 

[mechBgon]

Ok, here we go:

• Case You could pick up an Antec Plus1080AMG, they are decent cases that come with the TruePower 430W power supply I mentioned. They have one fan-coolable hard-drive cage that will take up to three hard drives, and a second 3.5" cage that could take another two (but has no cooling-fan holder).
• Power Supply Antec's TruePower430 is a safe bet. Enermax units also come to mind, they usually have very high amperage capabilities on their 12-volt line.
• Motherboard I like the looks of the Asus P4C800-E Deluxe because it has the CSA Gigabit Ethernet bus and has a pretty good reputation.
• CPU You already got this
• CPU heatsink/fan I'm assuming you have the stock Intel one, give it a try and see if it's quiet enough for you, since it's already paid for. Otherwise a Thermalright SLK-900U with a 92mm Panaflo L1A would be pleasant and yet very good cooling too.
• Memory I've burned through up to ~1600MB of memory in trueSpace 4.3 (but only had 896MB of physical memory, ouch... watch them hard drives churn! ) so I'm thinking that for your much-higher-class apps you should throw the full 2GB of RAM into your system.
• Optical drive(s) A Pioneer A07 DVD±R/RW burner would be a nice single optical drive, if that's enough to meet your needs. They come in black, I think... black drives would look nice in the charcoal-grey Antec Plus1080AMG
• Hard drives You already got one. You could start with that and add a second one for backup purposes.
• Memory-card reader? I like my memory-card reader. You might look at the Inwin i-530 (newegg.com has these). Besides memory-card functions, it also has front audio, Firewire and USB 2.0 ports. These come in black too.
• Floppy drive If you need one... yeah.
• Audio card The mobo has onboard audio, you could try it to start with and see if you like it.
• Network card The onboard CSA Gigabit Ethernet is what I would use. It rides a separate bus instead of clogging up your PCI bus and your north-south chipset bus.
• Auxiliary cooling fansIf it were me, I'd snag four of the Enermax thermally-regulated 80mm fans (newegg carries them) for the case's two front & two rear fan holders. They run quietly and will speed up if things get seriously hot (they have thermal probes you can place where you want).
• Video card You already got this, so try it out.
• UPS If you're doing this professionally, a line-interactive UPS would be a good move, so you can save your work and shut down if the power fails. APC SmartUPS units come with PowerChute Plus automatic-shutdown software and are line-interactive so they "iron" the power.
• Monitor(s) ??? You may already have a good monitor?

Hope that helps some

 

[shinji3c]

wow
you are very kind dude
thanks again
Ye i got the monitor from my old PC. It's a 17 inch LCD monitor and i don't think i will need a new one yet.
hmm so i assume the mobo comes with 4 slots of crucial DDR RAM?(i think what i got was 512 Ram DDR PC3200) cuz i got 2 512mb memories. Well again I really really appreciate it.
Thanks sooooooo much!!!!

 

[mechBgon]

Aye Captain, four slots so you can add a second pair of modules And that's something you could do later too, if your budget is a little crunched. Put your existing modules in slots 1 & 3, and leave 2 & 4 vacant for the other pair. Buy two of the same module at the same time when you order, so you know they'll match eachother (meaning, they aren't one single-sided and the other double-sided; that would turn off your dual-channel memory setup and cost you performance).

When you do get your mobo, you can find the latest motherboard drivers here (you will definitely want the i875P "Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility," and they also offer the software for the onboard RAID functions there too). It might be good to have those pre-downloaded and burned to CD, along with Microsoft DirectX 9.0B and your latest video driver, just to make things easier. Have fun with your new rig

 

[shinji3c]

hi mech
can u tell me what xeon cpus are?
Are they better than P4? should i consider getting one of those ??
I don't know any about it...
oh and what is overclocking????
Oh...i'm sorry to bother ya again...

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: shinji3c
hi mech
can u tell me what xeon cpus are?
Are they better than P4? should i consider getting one of those ??
I don't know any about it...
oh and what is overclocking????
Oh...i'm sorry to bother ya again...

Xeons are Intel's family of server/workstation processors. Intel has released enough new ones that I'm having a hard time keeping them all straight, but the main things are

• They are capable of running in multiprocessor arrangements, whereas Pentium4 is not.
• Current Xeons have a lot in common with certain Pentium4 models, design-wise. But the socket type isn't one of them. You cannot plug a Xeon into a Pentium4 motherboard or vice versa.
• Some models of Xeon are very expensive, as in, several thousand dollars per Xeon.
• Because the chipsets that support Xeon are almost all for heavy server/workstation usage, they use Registered memory modules instead of "regular" unbuffered memory modules, and because of this, they can handle more modules and more total memory.
• Many Xeon dual-processor motherboards will not fit a standard ATX case and many also require a special EPS power supply instead of ATX, to reliably deliver the power that all those memory modules and multiple processors can demand.
• Your high-end software will probably do render jobs significantly faster with two Xeons than with one Pentium4. In some situations, however, a fast single processor is still best.

Overclocking is running the processor above its marketed speed, and voids the warranty.

 

[shinji3c]

hmm
so mech which would you recommend?

 

[mechBgon]

I wish I could answer that, but the only experience I have is with my piece-of-trash trueSpace 4.3 software. I've used it on dualies and it does render faster than with a single CPU, but in all honesty, rendering is only a small part of the whole routine. Modelling, positioning, texturing, setting up lighting, computing radiosity... there's a lot of user-interactive stuff that has to happen before you get to the rendering, and a fast single CPU might be the best for that. Not to mention cheaper!

If you're made of money, then by all means grab a couple of 3.2GHz Xeons and 4GB of Registered ECC memory, and some SCSI hard drives while you're at it If you're on a mere-mortal budget, then I'd say carry on with the path that you've committed to (Pentium4) and upgrade when there is something that looks like it's worth it, or when you absolutely need that 4GB+ of RAM.

Bigger picture: I would've suggested looking at the Athlon 64, 64FX, or Opteron(s) if you hadn't already thrown your hat into the Pentium4 ring.

 

[shinji3c]

holy!!!
i wish i were made of money but ...sigh
i looked at 3.2 Ghz Xeon and Oh my god are they expensive
lol
I think i just stick with the solution u gave me
Whew...time to scratch some lotto tickets!!!!

 

[WalkingDead]

For a 3D apps machine, you want the max stablity and max rams.

Athlon 64 is probably better for 3D than anything from Intel. If you are going to use anything Softimage, AMD runs better with it. Mantal Ray (the rendering engine for XSI, Maya and 3Dmax), also runs better with AMD chips.

Nvidia GPU is better for 3D apps than ATI cards.