noob question: wtf am i dooooing?!

[TheAdmira1]

Im trying to build a comp for visual effects work... using linux to run Houdini, Maya, and Shake mostly. I know I want dual quad cores with between 8-10g ram so i can make render times nonexistant... but thats about all I know... im kind of on a budget so i have been lookin at the amd phenom 9950 black edition... where do i go from here? Is that cpu any good? any suggestions on motherboards? i want to run dual monitors for programming, what video card is decent? any help would be greatly appreciated... thanks in advance...

 

[rohan23]

What exactly is your budget? You would get better performance with a i7 core. You wouldn't need an x4. The i7 would be cheaper than getting 2 x4 processors and would give you great, if not better results.

 

[TheAdmira1]

my budget is around $2K... as for the i7... ive heard about them but i really dont know much... I have to constantly render thousands of frames for my industry and waiting 2-10 min a frame suuuucks... a friend of mine has dual quad cores and his render time is down to 20-130 seconds... so thats really where i was coming from on the quad cores... I know houdini can run 8g of ram and shake can use up to 4... but i want to be able to use other apps on my comp normally while rendering in houdini...

 

[rohan23]

The C2Q series isn't truly a quad core. It's just 2 C2D in one chip. The i7 is a true quad core. You will get better performance with the i7 instead of one C2Q. If you can wait, Intel is working on a dual processor x58 board. Two i7 chips will dominate everything on the market.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9731&Itemid=37

 

[TheAdmira1]

so the phenom isnt an actual quad core? i would love to wait but i need to b up and running kind of soon... hopefully in the next week...

 

[rohan23]

I think the x4 series is a true quad core. The C2Q isn't. I would still go for an i7. They are fantastic for rendering anything.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2333773,00.asp

 

[NEED WOW NOW]

The Phenom is an actual quad core. AMD had came out with it way before Intel has.

The real thing here is you shouldn't be worrying about if the Quad core your chosing is a true quad core. You should be worrying about weather the processing power is higher.

With your budget you might want to go with the low range i7 CPU and a high range Workstation graphics card.

Go with a i7 920
And I'm currently researching a few workstation graphic cards. There quite expensive so you can expect most of the budget is going into that.

 

[TheAdmira1]

good deal... that looks fast as hell... do you have any idea what you can overclock the 2.66 to? id love to get the 2.93 but its +$500 so running dual would b $1K already... could i still get 8 g of ram and everything i need to put together a decent comp? sorry im asking so many questions, i just dnt have a clue as to wtf ive got to do here... thanks again!

 

[NEED WOW NOW]

Yes, you can still get everything you can.
However, you don't need to double up on two i940's. One is plently of processing power! And because the i940 boards have tri-channel ram capabilities, getting six 1GB sticks of DDR3 would work great.

With that you should have about a $1000 to spend on a Graphics Card, Hard Drive, and a Powersupply. DVD drive if you don't have one already.

Edit: People are Overclocking the i920 to 4GHz on Air cooling so I would still go with that. The extra money spent on the 940 could be spend on a better GPU and a decent Heatsink.

 

[TheAdmira1]

i was just chiecking out the i940...i think ill go with that one seems pretty badass... can i run multiple 2g sticks of ram instead of the 1g or in conjunction with the 1g sticks?