Turn time....RAM or MHZ

[Sisawat]

3D animation and visualization work.

One of these days I will get my Civ mod done.

My motherboard will take 3072mb.

Next machine will have no less than 4gb RAM.

[Spec]

Originally posted by Sisawat
3D animation and visualization work.

One of these days I will get my Civ mod done.

My motherboard will take 3072mb.

Next machine will have no less than 4gb RAM.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Isn't it useless at that point? all that to save a second or 2......

[Sisawat]

Uhm, when rendering massive (3+ GB) datasets, you save quite a bit more than a second or two with that much RAM.

[Abdul-Aziz]

I would choose better processor

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Sisawat
Uhm, when rendering massive (3+ GB) datasets, you save quite a bit more than a second or two with that much RAM.

3GB databases? Are you sure you don't need a mainframe?

[sun_tzu_159]

Hi all,
The answer is simple. 512MB RAM in DDR is enough to run any game. Buy the fastest processor you can afford, then buy the fastest cache transfer disk drive you can afford. Run as little as possible in the background and finally turn off the music/fx - if your processor is still struggling.

Regards
STZ

[Sisawat]

Well, my machine essentially is a mainframe, it has a server motherboard anyway.

I'm dealing with Renderman RIB files. They can get quite large. The Gigabyte range is, admittedly, big for a hobbiest like myself though. Even if they are small sometimes rendering will chew through your RAM like nothing, especially if complex radiosity is involved. I've since moved from BMRT to Mental Ray, but even that can take up its fair share of RAM in complex scenes. I bought this machine with that in mind.

Swapping = the devil when it comes to continuous complex calculations.

That's why this is still on-topic. If you're playing Civ and its swapping, time for more RAM. You will see a dramatic improvement in performance. If you're not swapping and you want a performance gain, get a better processor.

[Master Zen]

Can anybody vouch for those PowerLeap processors? They say you can upgrade, say, my P3 500 into a 1.4 Celeron II(?) for the lowly price of about $150.

https://www.powerleap.com

[Willem]

Originally posted by Spectator



!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Isn't it useless at that point? all that to save a second or 2......

Yes, rendering can take an awful lot of time. Some of the big animation houses even have a whole series of computers just like those linked so they can reduce the amount of time it takes to do a film. They're thinking more along the lines of saving a day or two, not seconds.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Master Zen
Can anybody vouch for those PowerLeap processors? They say you can upgrade, say, my P3 500 into a 1.4 Celeron II(?) for the lowly price of about $150.

www.powerleap.com

You can probably get a P4 1.6 ghz for that price maybe even a 2 ghz. Processors are dirt cheap at the moment, that hardly sounds like a good deal.

[The Viceroy]

I think most people have already touched on bits of this already .. but the answer is not as simple as one or the other .. of course, having both better Mhz + Ram is going to help .. but much depends on several factors..

1) your machines current base
2) what OS your running, or more to the point, how much RAM/processor your current setup is gobbling before you've even started anything up.

The 2nd factor is very important when trying to decide.

I run Seti client on my PC, which gobbles up 16Mb + 100% cpu at idle .. if your game uses idle priority processes, your competing for processor space.

So the decision should not just be based on factor 1, but also your base usage of these resources.

[IthacaMike]

Originally posted by PLATO1003


3GB databases? Are you sure you don't need a mainframe?

I'm a sys admin (aka Systems Programmer) for the Cornell mainframe. It has 2GB of memory.

The power of the IBM mainframes is their ability to shuffle data on and off disk very very quickly. As in read a record, add a few fields, write a record.

Mike G

[PLATO]

IthacaMike, I guess I've now revealed what I really know! (i.e. computer IQ < 0)

It is always nice to learn new things

[Wittlich]

Originally posted by The Viceroy
I run Seti client on my PC, which gobbles up 16Mb + 100% cpu at idle .. if your game uses idle priority processes, your competing for processor space.

So True! I too use SETI ( http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/ ), which I leave on all of the time - except when I play PTW - then I shut it down for the duration of my PTW game.