What are your PC set ups?

[ranzee]

I made a Hackintosh.

Motherboard: Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H
Case: Coolermaster
CPU: Intel Core i5 3GHz
RAM: 16GB
SSD: 256GB
HDD: 3 x 3TB SATA3
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 2GB
Firewire card
Monitor: Samsung 27" 2560x1440 res

OS: Mac OS X 10.8.4 (Mountain Lion)

On this beast, the software I run:

Ableton Live 9
Pro Tools
Eventide Blackhole
Arturia Jupiter 8V2, CS-80V2, Spark 2
Novation BassStation
Valhalla DSP Shimmer
XILS-Lab Synthix

USB
Focusrite Scarlett 18i8

Firewire
Presonus StudioLive 16.0.2

[Ashe37]

It's a quadcore http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819113334

I need the Quadro because I want quick and stable viewport control while working on 3d projects.

What software are you using?

[Jabberwalky]

3ds Max 2014, and Zbrush 4 mostly. I'd like to get into some realtime viewport rendering stuff as well.

[Ashe37]

Ok, I'll tell you right now that the Quadro K600's ! GB of RAM severely limits what you can do with GPU-based rendering in either iray (which you already have ) or Vray (the most popular third-party solution.)

[Nistegmos]

The OP doesn't really need to upgrade his system if you ask me, unless it's to match the system requirements of newer software.

My setup is a Core2Duo 2.4 Ghz CPU or something like that. 4 GB of ram, slots for 8 GB. one PCI slot. SATA hard drive and ports, no EIDE ports. My soundcard is my Alesis M1 Active 320 USB speakers but I also have a zoom R8 interface which is slower but higher quality input sound.

I had been running Windows 7 but it started crashing on itself during bootup and shutdown till it finally wouldnt boot at all and wouldnt even boot up from the install CD-ROM. I never had those problems with XP or Linux. My Linux CD-ROMs boot up just fine so I installed Puppy Studio 4 and Puppy Precise, both Linux. I moved Reaper and FL Studio and my VST's onto Linux for use with Wine. It all works except for input from my MIDI controller. That's a buzzkill for me since I'm a keyboardist.

I'd change over to hardware, but I can't afford most of it. I looked at the volca bass, but really??!??!?! It just makes about ONE SOUND and that's it. And it's not very tweakable compared to the average VST. Synth ONE VSTi sounds better and has better tweaking options and it's free. But dang operating system software of Windows is such a productivity killer when it dies.

I might give up working on music altogether. I don't usually feel like inputting the music with a mouse.

[Ashe37]

I disagree, If he is doing 3d work, a newer CPU is going to be 4x or more faster, easily. (based on that a three year old 3 Ghz i7 is roughly double the speed of my Core2 Quad.) Same kind of processing power for a DAW.

[Jabberwalky]

Nistegmos, for music stuff, you're right. I think computers have basically peaked for audio processing. I've never had enough plugins running to bog down my old pc. What I'm mainly looking for is a PC that is fine with audio, but more robust and faster for 3D work. CPU speed is for rendering speeds, and gfx card is for editing the 3d projects. I also was forced to move to 64 bit to get past the 4gb RAM limit.

[sol-bass-rec]

Don't know if this warrants a seller thread, but I have a Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti (2GB) I need to part with.

Geek out in HD on 4 Monitors. This thing owns. Also have lots of USB/Firewire cables.

[Thefumigator]

Nistegmos, for music stuff, you're right. I think computers have basically peaked for audio processing. I've never had enough plugins running to bog down my old pc. What I'm mainly looking for is a PC that is fine with audio, but more robust and faster for 3D work. CPU speed is for rendering speeds, and gfx card is for editing the 3d projects. I also was forced to move to 64 bit to get past the 4gb RAM limit.

Good choice, I like the richlands A8 and A10s, they are quite good for the money. Of course there are better options.
Note that the A8 processor already got a GPU integrated, and I believe it can be turned into a FirePro (Quadro competitor) with a driver hack, but not sure. I actually own an FX 8320, bargains are bargains. It does the job. Intel got really good processors lately, it will take a while for AMD to catch up, so they just dropped the price on their processors.

Sheesh I've been out of VSE for years. I've abandoned everything synth related til I got an arturia minilab past month and a pair of new electric guitars.

[Ashe37]

But for 3d, you want floating point performance, not integer...

[Thefumigator]

But for 3d, you want floating point performance, not integer...

If there's hardware acceleration in its 3D software (Like in 3D studio max) then you want a good 3D videocard. What he got actually is perfect for the money spent. Its way better than his old core 2 duo, integer or floating performance.

Of course there's nothing that matches a core i7, its the king of the hill, but yet still it may be 20 to 30% better than an FX 8350 which is, maybe half the price or a little more, so the differences aren't insanely catastrophic like people tends to think. A Pentium M is a catastrophic processor.

[Ashe37]

For actual rendering, unless you're using iray or vrayRT, there is no GPU-based hardware acceleration. Actual modeling operations, like Booleans, are not GPU-accelerated. (If you are using OpenSubdiv subdivision surfaces, the subdivision portion is indeed GPU accelerated)

[Thefumigator]

For actual rendering, unless you're using iray or vrayRT, there is no GPU-based hardware acceleration. Actual modeling operations, like Booleans, are not GPU-accelerated. (If you are using OpenSubdiv subdivision surfaces, the subdivision portion is indeed GPU accelerated)

Uhmm, I get it now. I'm not into 3D actually, I do only 2D renders but actually I just cut video that I capture from old VHS tapes. Sometimes they ask me to encode into an MP4 file and there my FX8320 shines compared to my old Phenom X4. Audio editing is also a lot faster, specially when encoding into whatever.

Actually, I really thought (that by these times) 3D rendering was hardware accelerated in most 3D software suites and in all cases. Still, the richland processors aren't bad at all, of course they are slower for anything compared to a core i5/i7 or FX, but the whole platform is quite a bargain for the performance you end up getting. You could spend like 3000$ and get a quad 16-core opterons (totaling 64 cores) to create a monster workstation that is unmatchable for that price, and I can make for certain there's no core i7 reaching those levels of performance at home. Only with Xeons and if you have the money. And if you can find them...

[Ashe37]

Actually, I really thought (that by these times) 3D rendering was hardware accelerated in most 3D software suites and in all cases.

Don't worry about it, lots of people think that... hence why they don't get buying old off-lease servers as render nodes.