LargeFormat
old hand
Reged: 24/10/2006
Posts: 976
Loc: Buckinghamshire and Cumbria
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I have a computer problem that I'd like some input with. My main computer works well with photography but I also do photo realistic computer modelling in AutoCAD and that's where it falls down. Even a modest image, say 2500 x 1600 on screen, takes ages to process. I do use a lot of reflections, light sources and shadows but images take six full days even though I'm only using medium quality.
By the way the computer is a water cooled dual core Athlon with 4gb (3gb usable) RAM, PYN Nvidia Quatro 4300 graphics driving the 30" 2550x1600 Apple screen and all four hard drives are water cooled. OS is Windows XP.
I think I'll have to go to Vista 64 to be able to address more memory. I would like to be able to install 16gb RAM and two quad core processors.
Does anyone have any experience with Vista 64 bit, suitable motherboards and should I be looking at the graphics card. It cost something like £1,200 so is quite a high level one. 
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Meredith
enthusiast
Reged: 23/10/2006
Posts: 250
Loc: Coventry, UK
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Rendering to file doesn't use the graphics card at all. The graphics card is used for helping things along displaying the model on screen.
If you are not maxing out the memory, then the bottleneck will be the processor. Rendering just uses the processor so a faster one will speed things up. Turning off reflections/light sources etc will speed things up.
Almost any motherboard will work with Vista. Just get one that can accept lots of RAM and the processors you want to use.
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Meredith Lewis
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sjaszczak
A Real Gentleman
Reged: 08/06/2005
Posts: 935
Loc: York
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I have heard some good things from people with Core 2 Quad / Vista 64 systems.
In the past I would have been hesitant when it comes to 64bit O/S but I don't think there's any need to worry now.
I often go to http://www.anandtech.com/ to read up on stuff before I buy...there are some very detailed articles on all the latest kit there.
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Steve
My Flickr
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