purchasing a professional workstation

[specialk]

im looking at purchasing a professional workstation for 3d and compositing. Anyone have any suggestions on who to go through? how about BOXX? anyone have any good suggestions as far as what i should get inside such as vid card, processor, RAM?

[Hugh]

Not sure about the internal setup, but we use BOXX machines at work, and they are lovely and fast...

I've never heard anything bad about BOXX (apart from maybe the price) and loads of good stuff about their machines...

[Paul Moran]

for me...(and im sure evreyone else ;) ) ...it all comes down to squeezing everything into the box for the $$ you can afford ;)

I personally would never buy an off-the-shelf computer... eg: DELL or Alienware or BOXX etc etc ... ( i hope no potential VFXTalk sponsors read this thread LOL )

I would always build it myself ;) ...i just happen to really enjoy specing out and building my own powerhouse :p

If i was in your position Id go with a spec as follows: (ill also include Aussie dollar estimates ;))

CASE: Any old P.O.S Case with a good 300 Watt PSU ($80)
CPU: Pentium 4 3.0 Mhz 800 FSB ($440)
MOTHERBOARD: ASUS P4C800-E DELUXE Intel 875 Motherboard($330)
COOLING: Really good CPU fan ($60) and additional case fan ($50)
MEMORY: 4 x 512 Mg DDR433 (PC3500) RAM Chips (@ $150 each = $600)
DVD/CD: Non brand specific DVD/CD Burner& Player combo drive ($250)

HDD Options:

NOW, the big fork in the road to SCSI or to not SCSI ... big $$ factor here ...

Option #1: SCSI

2 x 36 Gig 15k rpm drives running in RAID 1 ($1200)
Adaptec 2010S U-160 RAID 1-Channel Kit ($450)

TOTAL SCSI option = $1650

Option #2: IDE

2 x 120 Gig HDDs at 7200 rpm ATA133 ($300)...these will be RAID1 and handled by the motherboard controller.

TOTAL IDE option = $600

VGA: GeForceFX FX5900 Series OR ATI RADEON 9800 Series ($700)

TOTAL = approx $3000 Aussie dollars :)

Thats about it :)

Theres also monitors and speakers...but there are really up to you...Im still not 100% on LCD..i find CRT to still have a cleaner picture...but thats just me ;)

Hope that help mate

Cheers

Paul

[specialk]

Dual XEON DP 2.4GHz, 512k cache, 533MHz FSB
1GB PC2100 ECC REG DDR(2-512MB DIMMS)
NVIDIA Qaudro4 750 XGL 128MB 4X AGP
40GB 7200 RPM ATA133 hard drive
CDRW/DVD Combo Drive 32x10x40x12 (black bezel)
windows xp



^^is that a good set up for 3d and compositing?

[Aruna]

Looks good to me. I'd probably ditch the CDRW and get a DVDR instead. You might want to invest in a DAT drive as well, if you're doing to do alot of compositing for clients. Also, that 40GB HD is going to get full very quickly if you're comping.

Make sure your compositing package will take advantage of dual CPUs. I'd also at least double the amount of RAM there. 2G-4G would be nice.

I have a SCSI HD setup at home, and would definitely recommend that over other forms of access, but SATA is getting there. U320 SCSI is nice and fast, (OMG is it ever) and if you have a lot of HDs, it makes streaming full frame uncompressed stuff much nicer.. You're not limited by the amount of connections on your motherboard either.

Like Paul said, I'd probably build one myself if I had time. These days I don't have time, so I'd probably pick up a finished machine straight from HP or IBM that's dedicated to editing and visual effects and 3D.

I'm not up to date on the graphics cards these days, but if money is no object, the wonderful Wildcat cards are great. :)

Now, a dual 3D and compositing box has to run the double duty of rendering quickly, displaying stuff quickly, and also compositing quickly. If you get a standalone 3D or a standalone comp box, you can get by with removing some components unnecessary. You can pretty much comp on any old machine that's capable of running Windows or linux.


Originally posted by specialk
Dual XEON DP 2.4GHz, 512k cache, 533MHz FSB
1GB PC2100 ECC REG DDR(2-512MB DIMMS)
NVIDIA Qaudro4 750 XGL 128MB 4X AGP
40GB 7200 RPM ATA133 hard drive
CDRW/DVD Combo Drive 32x10x40x12 (black bezel)
windows xp



^^is that a good set up for 3d and compositing?

Damn.. I write too much.. Go ahead and have fun!

[specialk]

what is better AMD or Intel as far as processors go?

[russ_c]

Aruna,

You said that you "have a SCSI HD setup at home". Do you do a lot of freelance work on the side? Surely you can't bring your work from Tippett home...that wouldn't be legal right? Or do you just have a kicking system for doing personal projects to expand you proficiencies?

Russell

[Aruna]

That is correct.. I don't do Tippett work at home.. What I work on at Tippett, stays at work.

I have a nice system at home because I like to tinker and work on different techniques outside of work, as well as some personal projects that I try to do in the downtime. I used to freelance as well, which explains some of the more expensive pieces of my machine at home.

For your interest, my system at home consists of a homebuilt PC.

Intel P4 2.53GHz
1GB RDRAM
ATI Radeon something or other. (I will upgrade when Doom3 comes out)
One 20GB IDE for storage or miscellaneous files (Mp3s, downloaded files, etc)
One u160 SCSI OS/boot drive, 18GB.
Several 36GB SCSI u320 Cheetah drives. RAIDed, mirrored and striped, 1+0. I should theoretically run RAID 5, but my card doesn't allow it. That's a possibility with my next upgrade. We'll see.
A CDRW and a DVDROM. I will be upgrading to a DVD-R early next year.

This is running on an Abit motherboard with 64bit PCI slots for the SCSI bandwidth to work at it's fullest. Compressed HD runs very well, and uncompressed HD at 4:4:4 RGB resolution runs fairly well. Planning on purchasing a HD I/O card and deck in the far future, when I get around to it, and the prices have dropped to a reasonable professional level.

I'm also running a 19" LCD monitor from Samsung (no dual monitor setup). It works fine, and I value the room I have on my desk over the color quality of the image. It's pretty close, but I wouldn't graphically make a magazine cover on it. I'll stick with my LCD for at least another year. It's starting to die on me. Possibly going with another LCD setup, maybe two 19" LCDs, since they're getting cheaper, and the quality has gone up.

I'm using a Wacom 9x12 Intuos2 here at home. I think that's pretty much it. I can take a picture of it if you like. It's pretty standard fare though. Nothing special.

[rohit]

Does having a second hard disk for storing data speed up work?

Thanks, Rohit

[Aruna]

Depending on how it's configured, yes, it does speed up work.

[rohit]

How should it be configured?

And also, is it better to get an external hard disk?

Thanks, Rohit

[Aruna]

Depending on what you use your computer for! Hard drive configurations vary for the application.

If you're doing alot of quick and large reads, you would benefit from a RAID 0 or RAID 1 configuration, that is two drives are either striped or mirrored. The more drives you have striped or mirrored, the quicker (usually) your read speed is.

If you're doing alot of writing, striping may be the way to go, where the hard drives all receive a piece of information. This will also usually increase your read speed as well.

If you want redundancy and safety, RAID 5 is another way to go. All the discreet stonefs drive arrays have RAID 5 + 1 for safety.

Remember, striping and mirroring aren't really appropriate for IDE drives, since the IDE channel only accesses one drive at a time. Hence the reason for more and more manufacturers to include multiple IDE channels on their motherboards to facilite a RAID. Now there's SATA, which is getting to SCSI speed, but it's still not a SCSI killer.

External hard disks vary. If you're just going for portable storage and not speed, any USB or firewire HD will work. If you're going for speed, you can get external SCSI drives that will work with the SCSI cards. Many manufacturers have external drive arrays, if you do a search.

I don't want to get into the specifics of IDE vs SCSI, and the differences and advantages between RAID 0,1,5, etc. If you're more interested, go here (http://www.google.com).

[rohit]

It will be better to get a preconfigured branded mobile workstation than to worry about which processors, hard disks, ram, drives, monitors etc. etc. to opt for.

I'm working for www.advanceflash.com

Anything to say

Thanks for the effort, Rohit

[DarkAlien]

i have to agree with aruna and vfxtalk about building your own -- it's going to be a BUNCH cheaper than getting a pre-made rig.... i built mine (dual 1.2ghz athlon, 1gig ddr ecc registered ram, quadro dcc, and my OS is running on a 60 gig 7200rpm 8mb cache ide drive) about 3 years ago... it's still pretty damn fast for the work i do considering its specs... the same cannot be said about the dual proc G5s and dualie BOXX's we have at the labs... they get clogged down with a bunch of files being transferred and people just generally not knowing what the hell they do..

i do all my work here on this machine, and it turns out great... whenever i'm doing work (heavy compositing (mostly combustion) and some motion graphics (afx usually) at times... 3d sparsely when needed via maya5)... i always have AIM running, along with winamp for tunes and at least one instance of explorer running...

i guess what i'm trying to say is that, if you can build it yourself -- DO IT! because it'll be alot better in the long run.. when shit breaks (something will eventually break - trust me) you know every little thing inside that case because you put it together yourself, and not some monkey in a factory... it gives you a kind of connection to your comp and i dunno why but it just seems like it works better that way... at least that's just me.

regarding the intel VS amd post -- i prefer amd solely for the price/performance ratio... they're cheaper than intels and perform resonably well.. (unless you're doing work with lustre which is intel only)

a gig of ram is ok, but more is always better -- my gig works well enough in XP (strip down 2k-style mode.. no flashy buttons etc eating up resources) but i'd prefer more to cache frames in mem for playback etc

[rohit]

Are those who built the branded computer really monkeys? I hope they are specialists who work in dell, hp, IBM etc.

I need a good workstation & it doesn't matter whether it's branded or assembled. But it has to be a killer machine.