Hey, I'm putting together my first computer soon, to the best of my knowledge I've chosen parts that all work with each other, but I'd like some one who knows more than me to confirm it. The system is going to be used for 3d animation and video editing primarily. Heres my build:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz 2 x 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor

MOBO: ASUS P5N-E SLI LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard

MEMORY: CORSAIR XMS2 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory(Im buying 4 of these)

GRAPHICS CARD: ATI 100-505507 FireGL V3600 256MB 128-bit GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Workstation Video Card

PSU: Corsair TX 650W ATX12V Power Supply

CASE: Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

I'm also a little concerned about cooling, I'm getting the processor with the G0 stepping but using the Intel stock sink/fan, and the case has three fans that were well reviewed, will this be enough to keep it safely cool? and are these parts compatible?

Thanks in advance!

I wouldn't go with an nvidia chipset mobo, get a P45 or a Workstation mobo. The rest of the build looks fine. You are missing a hard drive.

If your not overclocking the stock cooler will be fine. If your not going SLI you should go with Intel chipset P35 or P45

yeah

wow, thanks for the quick replies! Haha, I do have a hdd, but I know that will work. As for the mobo, could you reccomend one? I hadn't even known there were such things as workstation mobos. The one listed I'm getting for $110, and I'm hoping to keep the price in that area. thanks.

searching for a p45 chipset i found this one: Foxconn P45A-S LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard. What do you think if this one? And where could I find a workstation mobo, and what features make it a workstation mobo?

Official Intel branded boards are designed for business use and max stability, and thus don't have overclocking features, which you won't need anyway. Try picking up one of them instead of the Asus P5N-E.

I would get Asus or Gigabyte

Well Ive found two p35 boards, one intel and one asus. Im inclined to pick the intel because its cheaper, and the asus seems much more set up for OCing which Im not planning on doing. Is there any other reason for choosing the asus i should be aware of? Also, will my other components be compatible with either of these boards?

(The intel is the Intel DP35DP and the Asus is the Asus P5K EPU)

get either P35 or P45 variants. both are good

Forget FireGL... unless you plan to use it on openGL applications – which i don’t recommend. If you insist on using openGL or your program lacks support for directX, you’re better of getting nvidia gaming card. They’re much better with archaic logic and thus openGL.

firegl v3600 = radeon 2600pro

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compa [...] sing_Units

For openGL needs, nvidia 8600gt will be much faster. I believe you can get that card for less than 100$ now. I don’t recommend it since, 8800gt, 9800gtx are waaaay better than it, but if you want to stay in same performance range and disregarding money, 8600gt is the way to go.

Read my post to find out more about professional version cards ripoff here:
http://area.autodesk.com/index.php [...] P10/#48487

I wrote that in february 2008 so its a bit dated, but the point is still there. What i actually recommend now is ati hd 4870. This is one badass card with 800 unified shaders 115gb/sec memory bandwidth. Its just really cool.

If you have money and find it, get the 1gb variant. This card just totals competition and has memory frame buffer to mach. I read 2gb versions are coming out, but that is probably too much ram for a mortal man today.

Again, if you want to get the best OpenGL card awailable today, I’ll have to refer you to archaic logic nvidia and their gtx 280. Its about 500$ now. And fact remains, that you cant get better performing openGL card than it. Hd 4870 shouldn’t be much slower in opengl, but it probably is- slower.

In directX for 3d digital content creation (dcc) ATI’s HD 4870 has no competition.

If you’re still not convinced, I have even more words on the matter
http://area.autodesk.com/index.php [...] P10/#74854

cheers

Thank you so much for this information! I was actually set to buy an 8800gt a few days ago, after hearing the quadro fx series was crap, when someone told me to get a firegl.

The 4870 is just out of my price range, but I'm now planning on buying the 4850, if you think that will meet my needs. Im gonna be using this for 3d animation (lightwave if you know it) and video editing.

I have two questions about the 4850 though: will it require more power than the firegl wouldve? and will I be able to use it for gaming at all?

As for the mobo, Ive now decided on the ASUS P5Q Pro, unless anyone knows something bad about that one...

However the memory standard for this board is DDR2 1200, so do I need different ram now? Because the Corsairs I was gonna buy are DDR2 800, though the pins are the same.

Next to 4870, 4850 is the next best thing- only slightly slower, but still with full 800 shaders. Its memory bandwidth is 50% slower though, not that it will make much difference in ligthwave.

Absolutely. That firegl had 120 processors, this one has 800. That said, a decent 400w PSU should be enough. I’d recommend getting a decent 500w PSU just to be on the safe side, and be able to upgrade at some time in future.

O yes. 4850 is slightly better than 9800gtx for games. With antialiasing (aa) 8x its same as gtx 260, I recommend you use 8x aa whatever you do- it just makes picture so much better.

For 3d dcc under directx – 4870>4850>gtx 280> hd 3870 > hd 3850 > gtx 260 > gf 9/8 series.

For games with 8x aa – 4870> gtx 280 >hd 4850 > gtx 280 > gf 9/8 > hd 3870 > hd 3850

For 3d dcc under openGL > nvidia cards> ati cards - in general.

I’m not sure if LightWave has D3D support or not, but its good to have stats above in mind.

I do have to say one thing here- any of the above mentioned cards are way too good for 3d dcc weather openGL or D3D. In most cases more ram is going to be better- instance- hd 3850 1gb will be better than hd 4870 with 512mb ram.

That said, I think that 512mb is more than enough for 99% of 3d work.

In summary with the graphic cards- all mentioned above are super fast and for 3d dcc will do wonders, you cant go wrong with either one. If you play games as well, getting the best gaming card makes most sense, because games (unlike 3d dcc) can push cards to their limits.

So if hd 4850 fits in your budget (~200$) it’s the best one you can get. If you choose to chose it, consider spending another 30$ to get a better cooler. Or if you don’t care about temperatures, its default cooler will keep it working too, hot, but working.

I’ve heard only good things about p5q. However, I didn’t hear that many things about it anyway.

Mobo will accept anything from ddr2 pc 667 to 1200. Don’t worry about ram.

Since you’re taking c2q 6600, get pc 800 memory. With it you can OC CPU to 3.6ghz. Get a good aftermarket cooler to reach these speeds. ( 3.6ghz = fsb 400 x 9, so memory pc 800 is just what you need for fsb 400, any more ands its wasted, as I doubt you will be able to OC this CPU any higher than fsb 400)

The important thing to remember is that for AutoCAD and many similar applications, you must use a FireGL or Quadro to get the hardware acceleration capabilities of the program, which really speed it up. Look at what programs you are going to use and check what video cards are compatible with them for full hardware acceleration. If a normal video card works, then get a normal video card, but if you need a Quadro or FireGL for full acceleration, then definitely spring for it as it will speed up each program noticeably.

Are you sure the quadro fx series are crap??? Damn... i have to take a look again. I just gonna buy a nVidia Quadro fx series for my aunt, using fully for AutoCAD.

well i know that the low end quadros (like the 570) are crap, and saw some benchmarks for maya and 3ds max where the firegl 3600 surpassed much more expensive quadros...

Thanks so much for all of your help guys, especially you eodeo!

I wasn't planning on OCing, but since Im already getting the right memory, I Think I will OC the proccessor, especially if i can get it up to 3.6ghz!

This is just wrong. All of it. Only thing quadro fireGL line have is a (to me) silly advantage in OpenGL. Even with it, they’re worlds slower compared to same class directX performance. And that’s not considering that gaming cards have admirable OpenGL performance to start with.

Yep. I'm sure. Gaming cards are very fast now. Getting a current midrange gaming card outclasses ANY lower/midrange quadro/fireGL. Getting a high-end current gaming card outclasses ANY quadro/fireGL model. Period. Current gaming cards are much faster than the outdated model quadro/fireGL are built upon. Even with special openGL and synthetic benchmark cheating methods, they cant measure up to the next gen cards. The thing with graphic cards is that they tend to double their performance with each generation; quadro/fireGL line just can’t keep up the pace.

Don’t think that Quadro/FireGL line uses some magical transistors or chips, they’re exactly the same as their gaming card equivalent. Slightly slower to ensure stability, and have drivers optimized for OpenGL. That’s it… no wait, there’s the insensibly higher price tag- lets not forget that.

Now, obviously I cant tell you not to use OpenGL or not to use your program, whatever it maybe. I use 3d studio Max and it offers both OGL and D3D. AutoDesk has been kind enough, to default Max to use D3D and they’ve posted plenty of warnings saying that D3D is recommended and faster than OpenGL.

Now, I understand that you may be forced to use OpenGL, for one reason or other. Still, even than- getting the same class gaming card will provide you with very similar OpenGL performance and a lot lower price. Don’t forget that for the money you would get el-crappo qudro/firegl you can get midrange/ high-end gaming card. This one will just obliterate any chance “professional” cards ever had.

And one last thing to i-must-use-opengl users: get the nvidia card. Install quadro drivers= instant openGL optimization without the higher price tag.

Have fun

p.s. ati users- you can always softmod your card to firegl- not that i recommend it- you will find it slightly slower in most things- but opengl would be slightly faster. Is it worth it? I don’t think so, but if you must use OpenGL and need it to be faster- go ahead.

Almost forgot- eido, go here:
http://www.frostytech.com/top5heatsinks.cfm

and pick one of the top 10 intel heatsinks. Get it to ensure stability at 3.6ghz for your quad core. Without it, you can get to ~3.0ghz. I think that .6ghz with lower temperature is worth it.

For about 200$ + 50$ you will get higher 3d rendering performance than best intel’s c2q 9770 at ~1500$

And lets get one more thing straight here- even “slow” and frowned upon nvidia 8600gt or radeon 2600 pro are more than capable of displaying 10+ million polygons with 4k textures regardless of openGL or DirectX.

Getting a better graphic card can prove useful if you need 100m polygons or some such heavy scenes, but for those you’re really gonna need more than 512mb of video ram. Personally, the highest polygon scene was 3million polygon 17th century fortress. My old 6800gt /w 256mb ram was capable of displaying it in real time.

Your bottleneck is more than likely going to be your CPU. As you may or may not know, viewport performance (like rotation and scene navigation) depends only on your GPU. But, if you have 1million poly character that needs to be animated, your CPU will bottleneck you, as viewports cant use more than one core. Its very similar to games in that manner.

You might remember reading people actually recommending faster dual core CPU (e8400) over slightly slower but quad core CPU (q6600) for games. This is due to games, like viewports, and 90% of software cant use more than one core. Newer games are optimized for dual cores, but just barely- they're mainly still dependant on the one core.

Extra cores to be fully utilized need specially coded programs, like 3d digital content creation programs. Like 3ds max, or Lightwave.

In conclusion, I recommend getting quad core and overclocking it to 3.6ghz