[proximo]

Hey all , well i know this topic has been brought up and all b4 but computer systems change all the time and this is more of a direct question, then what is best, see im going to be putting togeather a system and just wondering is what you would all recomend as far as processor, now i want to go athlon , because i have read many benchmarks that say it is faster then p3 and i like amd better ad a company , and at almost half the price , its just a better processor in my opinion , i guess what my quesition is , hjow many of you guys have p3 and athlons , and have you had any problems with them ?
this this the system i am thinking of getting tell me what you think ,

amd atholon 900 or 1000 mhz
256 pc 133 ram
64 or 32 meg geforce vid card
26 gb HD

then i might slap on dvd rom crap like that ,,
tell me if you think this would be a good setup and all thanks guys , spoong read this , what are the diretions to were you are going to speak , i would really like to see it, and how much does it cost ? anyhow hope you can all help me out thanks .

[Frost]

Here's what I have (had) on my desk at work.

I have a (Kryotech) AMD Athlon 1Ghz at work and it seems fast enough. Quite nice. Note: certain INTEL aps and CODECs don't work with this (I wonder why! =)

Had a P3 850Mhz with Rambus, was also very nice... not as fast as the Kryo, but not too far behind.

Currently have a dual P3 933Mhz with 1Gig of Rambus. SCSI 4 Ultra-wide blah-blah stuff. This just plain kicks. It also cost at around $7k.

AMD is cheaper, and delivers good speeds -- somehow, I don't trust AMD as I trust Intel. Motherboards and chipsets that work with AMD seem a little shakey, not as up-to-par, but they are still nice systems in my humble oppinion. SCSI hard-drives are also great... I would invest in that if I were to deal with large data... large images, etc. Intel is solid stuff, no two ways about that.

This is just my 2 cents worth. I'm no tech.

[Rinaldo]

If youve got he money that system sounds Pretty good.

Don't know much about the Athlon thing, exept that when I was buying my computer I was going to put an Athlon in it, but I was running on a serious budget, and to get an athlon compatable MB it cost more than to go with PIII. I have heard that both are faster than the other Some reliable sources have said that Althlon is better so I was going to give it the benifit of the doubt but at ther time there were a few compatability issues. I just couldn't be bothered.

I am not sure about what the pricing is like Where you come from but In Australia the 900 and 1000 are a bit on the stupid side as far as purchasing goes. I was lookiing at some prices the other day and it costs like $3000 Australian more to go from a 700 to a 1000 (there were a few minor changes besides procsesor).

If I had the money to buy the system you outlines above I'd go with the most cost effective Althlon (I dunno what it is at the moment but there is always one that is "just right") and put the rest into RAM.
The extra couple of hundred megaherts ae not going to give you that much of a boost as compared to more RAM.
Those realy fast chips are rushed out the door to satisfy marketing rubbish etc. They are pushed to the limit. While the next generation of chips will be running comfortably at that sort of speed.

If you do a lot of PS work you really need the RAM.
As soon as I get a job I'mm running out to get a G4 with a gig of RAM.

I suppose It would of helped to tell us what you are going to use it for as well.

Anyways I'm no expert on the subject, but that's my bit.

[proximo]

Well i guess that would help for me to tell you what im going to do .. well im going to be running ps and 3d max and maya , im still unsure on what i want to do and all , i mean , im still in school and i went there for 3d stuff , but after finding this forum , i just find the 2d stuff so much more rewarding , sence of accomplishment eheh , butanyhow , i was looking on ebay for the chip and they sell 900 athlon chips for like 300 and you can get a board on there also for around 100 so 400 for the chip and board , then the vid cards like 300 .. and then the rest goes to ram , cuz i already have the HD and stuff, so that is were i stand as of now , i thank you for your input on this subject, i just dont want to be like , god damn why didnt i get the... you know what i mean ,, now i know that intel is a really solid processor , i had one b4 but i have k6-2 350 right now and its been really good for me..

[Rinaldo]

Your telling me. The iMAC crashes if you look at it.

My lecturers are all from the Design industry and their all pro mac. They're all like "Macs are more stable than PCs" etc.

BS...I run Win2k and appart from when I do something really stupid (something that you wouldnt have dreamed of doing pre-Win2k due to its stupidity) It hasn't crashed on me yet. I have had Video card problem but this is mostly due to the drivers.

Although I agree that the Mac campigns are a bit shy of half decent. I know why they did it. I've spent hours trying to convince my girlfriend that a PC would be better. She does design, and for some reason the designs and add campains just strike a chord with that demographic.

ohhhwell...

[psi burn]

yea. macs are ok. until any third party program is installed on it. the most you can do with a mac is click its menus.

[proximo]

Lets not start a mac PC war eheh .. well i use or have used both mac and PC and i just like the PC , now at school were i use both , we have new g4's not sure on the mhz on them , they are nice comps, i mean out of the box they can do full motion video caputering and editing and stuff but im not going to be doing that so i really dont need a max , i mean they are cool , but i just like ther vercitility of PC , being able to upgrade a mother board, cpu , anything with out spending an arm and a leg and worrieing about all the mac crap , i mean how do you install a new mb in an imac , ohh wait you cant , but i really dont care eheh i use both and they both work so no big deal , any how , so what vid card would you guys recomend then , i mean the only games i play are diablo 2 and starcraft , but mostly i run max and photoshop and stuff , do you think the P3 would be better for runnning these ?
im kind of confused because of a benchmark test i saw on some web page were they compaired the p3 and athlon and the athlon had better responce on most of them so im not really sure eeheh .. also

Spooge ...

were is it at that you are speaking ? i would really like to see it ..
thanks again guys..

[Zaphod]

Head over to www.tomshardware.com, they have good comparsions.

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/Zaphod
http://www.designmodule.com.bi

[chumps]

Well i dunno about you guys but i'm done with buying top of the line stuff. The bang for the buck just isn't there.

Check out sharkyextreme.com's cpu prices, think # of mhz per dollar. When you roam around gigahertz territory the mhz/dollar ratio really stinks.

Nothing wrong with getting stuff that isn't top of the line, getting most for your buck, and upgrading more often than buying high-end usually permits.

Re: Quaddo/geforce. The only difference between the two besides a few hundred bucks is that the geforce drivers have disabled thingies that make certain 3d apps slow. Ive heard lots of people installing quaddro drivers for geforces.

Nvidia is totally changing the 'professional' 3d card business. Their consumer level card (geforce w/ quaddro drivers) totally spanks stuff that costs way, way more.

Regards.

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Stroke my ego.

[Rinaldo]

Ok proximo.

If you want to run MAX and Maya then you might want a more dedicated machine. I have heard that the Geforce cards are bridging the gap between Highend Worckstations and your generic home made white box, but a Card that is custom made for 3d work is going to be better than a Gaming card. The Quadro version of the Geforce (I think ELSA make a good card out of that board) are apparently pretty good for your money. I would love to know exavtly how much better the Quadro is compared with a Standard Geforce, but havent seen any comparasons yet.
I think the main difference is in the drivers. the gaming cards not being optimized for 3D apps and such.
But I dont really know that much about 3D.

As for the Photoshop....well just listen.

I used to own an iMAC.... well I jointly owned it with my Girlfriend, but anyway. It was one of those earlier ones: 333Mhz 6gig, we put an extra 128 meg in it bringing the ram up to 160. I bought a PC recently because I wanted to use MAX mostly, but also because it was cheaper.
I bought a PIII 600E with a 20gig HD A 32meg Leadtek TNT2, and 128meg. One of those make it yourself jobs.

They both Run Photoshop about the same!

The mac is failing a bit now due to an overbloated HD and an overdue reinstalation of everything. but I would say that they were about the same. the PC is a bit faster sometimes. but it's new and the HD isn't clogged.

Now you might be all saying BuuuullllS#$!. And I might be exageratin a little. but Honestly the MAC isn't all that bad to work on. It's got a bit more ram sure, but it's also got a pathetic 6 meg video card, and the bus is only like 66mhz.

I know you aren't about to become a convert and go out and buy a MAC but just think about it.

Seeing as a lot of profesionals use a seperate Machine for Different apps. and the PS format is Crossplatform. Go figure.
I'm know this isn't very helpfull, or to do with your topic, but I thought it was worth the effort writing it.


By the way; has anyone out there got a G4 with a decent amount of ram? How well does it run PS?

[psi burn]

of course thats a good system, it sounds more like you're bragging, with that type of cpu :O

although, p3's are more stable then athlons, but athlons are better for gaming.

unless you really want to watch dvds on your computer (eugh) you should go for a 32x or 64x cdrom. dvd roms generally read CD's slower then others.

[spooge demon]

I tried a G4/500. The brush response was rally nice. The image sizing (that and a few other functions are altivec accelerated) was quite amazing. 5k to 1k is a second or so.

As I have said before, I don�t like macs. They crash constantly and the interface is a pain and the whole new age ad campaigns I find insulting. But it just runs PS much better, esp large complex files.

[Matt]

re: Quadro

The "hidden features" of the Geforce are disabled via a hardware switch (different resistor placement) on the PCB.

Simply installing nvidia Quadro drivers is an exercise in futility. If you want to hack, however, then anything's possible.
http://go.163.com/~xtennis/G-Quadro/

[psi burn]

you really dont need anything above 700 mhz for games that are currently available, especially starcraft. you really wont see any boost in performance from 700 to 1000 mhz. wait for Halo, then that extra speed will come in handy.

[Frost]

I want a Mac. The new one is in a bite-size sugar-cube shape. And they come in different flavors too! Yum!

[Kraken]

macs make me horny.

[Francis]

Hey Frost, is that the one with the vent on top to catch all the dust and spilled coffee?

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Francis Tsai
TeamGT Studios

[Danny]

I can't believe nobody has mentioned this, but if you really want a serious 2D/3D workstation, the number 1 advice you should follow is to ***GET A DUAL SYSTEM!!!***
It's better to have a dual 600Mhz than a single 1Ghz system. For one thing, duals remain much more responsive. It's so nice to be able to continue working on your t-maps in PS, while rendering out previews in your fave 3D app. (to give you an example). A dual will just divide both tasks between the two apps, while a single will choke. While not all programs are capable of 100% multi-threading, you WILL feel the diffirence. Especially with the programs you mentioned (PS, Maya, Max).
However dual boards for AMD still haven't seem to hit the market, so you might wanna wait, rethink etc...

Danny

ps. another usefull tip would be to get an extra superfast HD that you will *ONLY* use for swap space. 256MB Ram isn't luxury for today's digital painters (esp. when you venture out into 3D). Your system will start using it's HD for extra memory storage. Using a dedicated and fast (pref. the latest SCSI variant) HD for this will help speed up that bottleneck process..



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[email protected]

Trust in Trance

[Frost]

Francis: hehe, that would be the one. =)

Danny: I agree 200% with you about duals. They are just amazing. Max even threads over the 2 cpus while working itself, which is great, so does photoshop. Most aps do so (at least, under W2K).

[Ko]

I agree with Danny

My system is a dual 500MHz PIII, running under winNT 4.0.
I mainly use Photoshop and it supports multi-threading for such tasks as image resizing and RGB to CMYK conversion.
Unfortunately the brush engine is yet to support multi-threading.

I have 256Mb of memory, which is the absolute minimum, when working with highres paintings.
When I paint on 3K images, my drive works overtime... guess I'm going to order som more RAM soon!

Ko

[Kramer]

Just a note to anyone that might be wondering.. my personal experience with a Gforce SDR, or probably DDR as well is that the drivers are pretty bad for GL within Windows 2000.

I have a nice system with the 32 megger Gforce, but it's so buggy in GL mode with Max that I have to revert to using software heidi drivers. If you want true GL in Max, get a real GL cad card, not a gaming card.

Kramer

[Sowler]

Yes, duals do seem more responsive for the most part, yet the Athlon will render the scene much faster. I work with both dual 550's and a 800mhz athlon, when switching between photoshop and 3dsmax it pauses a bit..i admit it, but the 800mhz athlon machine spits out the render about 30% faster. Athlons ROCK for rendering, thats why I bought mine. Duals rock.. and I want a hard core rig BAD.. thats why I'm savin for some dual Athlon love but to each his/her own.

2c
Sowler

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The UPS man has my Drawing pad :(

[proximo]

Wow ,, didnt see all the replys untill not .. cool deal thanks for the input guys ,, at current i dont think my buget will allow for a dual athlon but a single shouild be fine for now ,, im not going to be maken movies , just doing school work and what not , but from what i gather from the replys is that i should not go with the geforce card, and, the athlon works good for rendering , 256 ram min , anything else i should take into concideration ?
thanks again .
ohh yah im going to go look at them placed you all posted for benchmarks and prices .. thanks ..