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Pc Question


john1983

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hahaha was just driving home from work, hmmm i recon those are a bit expensive just done a price check and they are £300, is there anything a bit cheaper maybe half that?? i will give my boss both options tho and try and push for the better one, haha

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I would look for a card that has as much onboard vidRAM as you can afford. 256MB even 512MB might be in your price range. Above that, cards with 768M, 1GB on up get quite pricey.

 

You may still get some measure of relief by maxing out the memory on your motherboard (you have any idea what that limit is?) then setting the 3GB/switch (easily done) which is recognized by AutoDesk as a solution for dealing with large files. I offer this as a possible solution since you are running XP Pro. If you were on a newer system utilizing Vista then it wouldn't be necessary to go this route.

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I will find out what the max memory that i can fit on tomorrow when i get back to work and let you know, how do you set the switch?

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You have to find then edit the Boot.ini file. Windows hides this file so you have to know how to uncover it so to speak. Then, most importantly, you have to copy this file to a safe location for retrieval and reuse if need be. Finally, you have to be very careful in what you type as this file, erroneously editted, can keep your computer from booting up. Sounds scary, I know, but it can be done safely.

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John: I have to go out for a bit but I promise you I will look at the two cards. In the meantime, have you looked at the link to the hotfix for rendering?

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sorry one other question. I am going into a meeting on monday about upgrading my pc, what would you recomend getting to upgrade the one I have already got? I have just checked and all my memory board slots are full. do you think its just the graphics card that needs changing?

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Honestly, I'd try to hold out a little longer and purchase a new system when Windows 7 hits street. But it's such a hard question for outsiders to answer as we don't know your job requirements,Your daily workflow, nor any idea of the budgetary allotments.

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Thanks Maxwell I might do that then.

 

The only problem with my computer at the moment is im getting asked quite alot to do 3d rendered drawings of office layouts which is fine to do but they sometimes take 2-3 hours to render, in that time I cant do any other work on my pc because ends up going so slow the and the cursor judders when I move the mouse, sometimes I get pretty busy so what I would like to do is have a drawing rendering in the background while I get on with my other work. I think I might just ask for a computer that I will use just for rendering. One that has just enough spec to do this on it to do the renders and then I can leave it rendering while I carry on with other jobs.

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If you find yourself doing a lot of renderings, especially ones in the 2-3hour range currently...then you're going to be discussing a fairly sizeable upgrade to your PC.

 

First off, a 64bit operating system is a almost a must, but this may create problems incorporating drivers to an older plotter, check your plotter manufacturer for details on the 64bit drivers. And any program that works with Windows Vista should also work with Windows 7 from launch.

 

Secondly a multi-core processor (Quad-Core) is important, especially in conjunction with the 64bit OS as this will distribute the load more evenly across the cores and allow better multitasking.

 

For your graphics card I would probably shoot for the Quadro FX 3700. All reviews I've seen for it have been positive and its a better price point than most of the ATI competitors.

 

You'll likely want a minimum of 4 gigs of RAM, but its cheap right now so you may want to max it to what the motherboard will allow or the budget can afford. I slapped together a quick build over at Dell based on their Precision 7400 and it came in around $3,300. I'd recommend you request they budget $3,500-$4,000 as that package included 32bit Vista with no Office software, and their smallest hard drive as I'm guessing you're on network storage. Basically for you the most important things are probably the 64bit OS, Quad-Core processor (higher the bus speed the better 1333-1600 FSB), Quality Graphics card (again I recommend the Quadro 3700, but if it can be afforded the 4600 and 5600's will offer definite improvements $$$), and at least 4 gigs of RAM (667MHz minimum, 800MHz if the processor/motherboard allows).

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John:

 

Of the two video cards the FX 3700 is considered the high end solution while the FX 1700 is considered mid-range. The cards share the same base architecture and differ only in the following areas:

 

Frame buffer memory: 512 DDR2 (1700) vs. 512 GDDR3 (3700)

Memory bandwidth: 12.8GB/sec. (1700) vs. 51.2GB/sec. (3700)

Memory interface: 128-bit (1700) vs. 256-bit (3700)

 

There's no doubt in my mind that the FX 3700 will give you superior performance at a faster speed. The downside obviously is the price as the FX 3700 is higher and it also uses more electricity than the FX 1700.

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thank you both for your help i will put it forward what has been said in the meeting on monday and see what happens

 

thanks again

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