Building a client's system for 3d rendering.....

Greetings all, just found and joined MajorGeeks and I'm kinda excited about what I've seen so far......so thanx, in advance!

I'm building a system for an instructor who does alot of 3d rendering. He works with Softimage and Maya. I'm having second thoughts regarding the best possible processor/mobo (for his budget which is approx. $2500.00). I'm partial to Intel's newer Xeons, would love to go dual. As for a good performing Video Display solution, either the NVidia Quadro FX 1300 or ATI's Fire GL V5100. The problem is the board......because overclocking is not gonna happen here I just need a good solid board w/good adjustable bios. any suggestions?

 

This is def not my specialist subject!!! Try http://www.armari.co.uk/ - they know their stuff (allegedly )

 

mhu


Welcome to Major Geeks, your request is being addressed as we speak. I know because it intrigued me and I'm doing some research

Irrespective, there are some very knowledgeable people here who can probably help. We all bring what we can to the party

 

Rendering for CAD/CAM etc is graphics intensive, the AMD is probably the way to go. Check HP for what they recommend, engineering workstations is one of their market niches, ignore their reference to the unix line.

Good Luck

 

id suggest going for dual opertrons, as they are cheaper, faster, and are 64 bit
also the quadro's are pretty good, maybe also consider matrox

 

For great CAD grade cards 3dlabs has some really nice ones. Some of these are very high price cards. Ranging from $400 - $2,800.

If your thinking dual Xeon processors, Asus makes some nice workstation mother boards that are dual xeon processors and support PCI express and PCIx devices.

 

Personally I'd go Dual AMD 64 Opteron.

And get a mobo that supports PCIExpress and get two SLI nVidia cards.... or a nVidia Quadro NVS (multi display). Make sure you get at least 1GB worth of ram, with heatspreaders of course

 

I second this setup.

Opterons are awesome.

 

I love this forum stuff..very new venue for me...thanks all.
I know that AMD is fast but not the way to go for 3d rendering. I'm convinced that intel's xeons (3.6 GHz-800 MHz sys.bus duap proc) or p4-570 w/ht or even the 530 (single proc) are the only way to go. Where I seem to be stuck is mobos!! I've always been been an Abit/asus kinda geek however i'm thinking that sticking w/intel's (pricey) D925XECV2LK for 1p - or - ???? for 2P the server/workstation boards have no SLI feature....temporarily stuck? you bet...but not for long...hapi sunday!