Keyshot on a budget PC ?? / what are you running?

Started by David, September 22, 2010, 05:30:01 AM

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David

I'm looking to get a PC to play about with Keyshot at home,
At work i use an overclocked i7 920 @ 3.6Ghz with a Nvidia Quadro FX 1800
the machine that cost about £1600 a few months ago.

All in all it handles Keyshot very well.

now with a personal budget in mind im thinking about how well the cheaper Intel processors will handle keyshot.
for example you can buy the core i3-530 overclocked to 4.4Ghz for a much smaller pricetag.

Is anybody using an i3 or i5 Processor?

also can we have a benchmarking thread with a standard scene attached?

Chad Holton

Hi David. I use a 2.66 GHz dual core at work  :P and an i7 920 at home :). Huge difference as you can imagine. Would you care to share what your budget is? Do you have any extra parts that you can use in the build? Like a case or SATA drive?
AMD is cheaper but you don't get the Hyperthreaded processor like you do with Intel. If it were me, I would get the cheapest i7 and overclock it. You want as many cores as possible (eg hyperthreaded quadcore). If you're not a gamer don't get an expensive video card. You can just use onboard graphics if it's mainly a keyshot and web surfing box. I would suggest using a 64 bit OS so you can use more RAM. I'd say 6-8 Gig would be good for now.

"also can we have a benchmarking thread with a standard scene attached?" +1

guest84672

Added a new category called BENCHMARK - post away ...

Chad Holton


David

Thanks Thomas

I'd hope to be able to put something together for under £600, I have a case that i could use which would save me some money.

The i7 overclocking route was by far the best option when i got my work machine so i should probably use the same logic with this.

did you build your home PC from scratch?

Chad Holton

Anything you can snag will help. I'd spend most of the cash on the CPU.

Yes, I built mine from scratch. It was my second build. I had in it RAID configuration and a drive went out a few months ago  >:( so I bought a solid state drive.. they may be a little pricey at the moment but it did speed things up a little. It's a fast machine and I love it. I'd recommend an i7 to everyone.

I'm about to build another one from scraps I have laying around. It will be a AMD 945 quad core with 4 gigs. I got a good deal on some parts and need a computer to put in my kids room. It will basically be a web surfing machine.

David

A small development on this, I've got a friend who can get a sizeable discount with Dell machines, The only problem being that only one of their computers, the Alienware gaming pc comes with an i7 920.

the other options are Xeon processors.
I don't really know anything about these; will they run keyshot as well as the i7's?

For the same price the speeds seem a bit slower which will hinder Keyshot?
Lower FPS?

Chad Holton

I would still build my own just because I would have control over each piece going in the system. However, if you can get a nice rig with a sizeable discount, then maybe it's worth looking into. There is a fellow I work with, his son bought a Dell a few years ago. Real nice system at the time. The motherboard went out twice, of course the only place you could get a MB was from Dell for a hefty price... I'm not saying not to buy Dell but it may tie you down to what parts you can replace. I did buy a Dell in 1999 and it ran good the whole time I had it...

As for the processors. Xeon are usually more expensive and just as fast or faster than the i7's. It would depend on what processor you're talking about. Do you have the chip models you are comparing?

David

This is the spec that i'm looking at, its the T3500?

English Genuine Windows® 7 Professional (64Bit OS) with recovery DVD
One Intel® Xeon® W3530(2.80GHz,4.8GT/s,8MB,4C)-Memory runs at 1066MHz
500GB (7200 RPM) SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive with NCQ and 16MB DataBurst Cacheâ,,¢
4GB DDR3 1333MHz ECC-UDIMM (4x1GB)
1GB GDDR5 ATI FirePro V4800 - 2DP, 1DVI (1DP-DVI, 1DVI-VGA adapter) Graphics Card

i get a couple of hundred off the price which makes it quite a tempting deal.
What do you think?

4 cores / 8 threads at a 3.06Ghz turbo speed should match up to the i7 920 shouldn't it?

Chad Holton

I just checked out the price - not bad at all! I doubt you could build one for any cheaper, especially after your discount.

I'm guessing the processor should get you around the low to mid 50 fps range with the KS benchmark. I would see if you could get more RAM for it though or at least find out how many RAM slots you have and what the max is, if you want to add more later on.

Robb63

Just to help you I have the Alienware Aurora, i7 920, with the Dell overclocked to 3.66, and liquid cooling. I have 6GB of RAM in it and have been using it pretty solidly since February (it's a great machine).
I'm getting about 51FPS out of it.

Oh, I'm running Windows7 Premium 64bit. I did recently add an Nvidia GTX460 videocard to it to replace the GTS240 that came with it. It was a last ditch effort to get the new SHOT to run worthwhile (which it didn't do, kind of a waste of my money really).

I'm wondering how much more performance in KS I'd get with more RAM?

David

Cholton - I think the spec comes with the choice of 2 x 2 Gig of ram or 1 x 4 etc, at the moment i have spec'd 1 x 4, i'm guessing that this will leave an empty slot for a future upgrade. I might just chuck in a bunch of ram and be done with it though.

Rob - Thanks for the info on the alien machine, I was tempted but I think a workstation graphics card will better suit my needs, do you use any CAD software on your computer?

As for the Ram i'm not sure if it will make much difference at all, From what i understand its all down to the processor and the number of core's / threads you have.

I also had a go with the beta demo of shot on my brand new Quadro FX 1800, it wasn't up to the job where as keyshot runs great. its a no brainer really

Robb63

David - I use Rhino all day long, and also run Solidworks pretty frequently.
The machine runs fantastic on both CAD platforms, but as I'm sure you know because it's not a "certified" graphics card SolidWorks won't display the data with the "Realview" shading enabled which is a bummer, but doesn't slow down my workflow at all

Chad Holton

Quote from: David on October 13, 2010, 04:24:57 AM
As for the Ram i'm not sure if it will make much difference at all, From what i understand its all down to the processor and the number of core's / threads you have.
As for speed (FPS), RAM doesn't matter. RAM is for importing large files and/or high resolution renderings. I have ran out a few times on my system here with 3.5 Gigs. 4 Gig may be fine most of the time but you may want to keep some slots open for a future upgrade(s).

jlowap

#14
Quote from: David on October 12, 2010, 01:11:18 AM
English Genuine Windows® 7 Professional (64Bit OS) with recovery DVD
One Intel® Xeon® W3530(2.80GHz,4.8GT/s,8MB,4C)-Memory runs at 1066MHz
500GB (7200 RPM) SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive with NCQ and 16MB DataBurst Cacheâ,,¢
4GB DDR3 1333MHz ECC-UDIMM (4x1GB)
1GB GDDR5 ATI FirePro V4800 - 2DP, 1DVI (1DP-DVI, 1DVI-VGA adapter) Graphics Card
4 cores / 8 threads at a 3.06Ghz turbo speed should match up to the i7 920 shouldn't it?

Ive just got my New PC...
and its prety much what your thinking about there..
DELL T3500
Win 7 Pro 64-Bit
Xeon W3530 (2.8GHz 8Cores Hyperthreaded)
6GB 1333MHz RAM
2GB Quadro 4000

Was bought as part of a package including 2 of the above for £1400 each (list price on the dell website is just over £2000, mostly because of the Quagro 4000 Card )
It ran my Keyshot 2 Trial with no probs.. sorry but i cant remember the FPS as the trial has expired

Regards,
James