Workstation for 3ds max & vray rendering

[abekonge]

Hello All.

I'm wondering if anyone might be able to offer advice on minimum specs for a system that will be able to render a large (let's say 2 million polygon +) scene at 800x600 resolution within 3 to 5 minutes, at 1200x900 resolution within 5 to 10 minutes, and at a very high resolution such as 3200x2400 within a few hours.

I know that a lot depends on materials and rendering configurations, but, if anyone is keen to answer my query, if you could assume settings appropriate for a "sketch" or "draft" for the 800x600 and 1200x900 resolution renderings and settings appropriate for a final presentation rendering for the 3200x2400 resolution rendering.

I’m not even sure if the above makes sense, as I currently don’t have the hardware to even begin to render that size a scene.

Budget is less of an issue than being able to meet the above performance standards.

Any feedback or advice would be greatly appreciated...

 

[mnewsham]

If trying to get that kind of performance i would recommend a build with 16GB of RAM and if you are using GPU accelerated programs i would say get the GTX 570. and the i7-2600k CPU.

 

[Krynj]

Are you using Vray RT? Vray RT utilizes GPU rendering, so you could definitely do a quad SLI setup with four GTS570s. That will give you some huge rendering powering.

I know you said budget isn't much of an issue, but having some idea of budget helps decide which types of parts we should recommend. You could go totally balls out with Tesla, but, again, having some sense of a budget helps.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/tesla_computing_solutions.html

http://www.amax.com/hpc/productdetail.asp?product_id=Xn-F4101G

 

[abekonge]

@mnewsham and @Krynj,
Thank you both for your thoughts.

I am realizing that I really should have given an idea of a budget, so...

I’d like to keep it as close to US$4,000 as possible, but if an additional expenditure up to about US$1,000 more will bring a sizeable jump in performance, I would strongly consider that.

I plan on using VRay 2.0 in 3DS Max Design…

Part of the reason why I didn't include mention of a budget at first is that I have no idea whether such a budget will be enough for a system that is capable of the hoped-for performance...