Help!! Animation Computer Configuration

elendil850 · Post by **elendil850** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 6:43 am

I'm building a computer for my fiance, she is an animation student in college and uses Maya, Flash, and Photoshop and needs a faster system.

I am thinking about building a computer on the Intel i7 platform, but need some help picking components. I've built many computers for general use and for gaming, but never one designed for animation.

What components deserve attention concerning animation work? Does she need more memory, fast hard drives, a large cpu, powerful gpu, a mix of these, or all of the above!!

Her current computer has these specifications:
Core 2 Duo E6600
6 GB DDR2 800
250 GB SATA II Western Digital (windows and apps)
1 TB Western Digital Green (storage)
Nvidia 640MB GeForce 8800GTS
Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit

I'm thinking of building her a system similar to this:
Antec P183
Antec CP-850
Asus P6t SE
12 GB DDR3
2X Nvidia GeForce 260 896MB
Intel i7 920
2X WD Black 1TB (RAID 0)
Generic DVD Burner
Scythe Mugen Cooler.

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 7:21 am

If your budget allows it, then definitely an SSD for applications and the operating system. Maya especially will benefit more from a single Quadro than two GeForce cards in SLI. You didn't mention RAM, but as far as that is concerned, 6GB will be the sweet spot.

These are just suggestions and if you want to build the perfect PC for your fiancÃ©e, then please do ask her in detail what kind of work she does with Maya, Flash and/or Photoshop. For example there are very different solutions for accelerating Photoshop performance ranging from RAM usage optimization to the extremely expensive Quadro CX. Ideally you want something in between, what it is however, depends solely on what your fiancÃ©e will do with the PC.

elendil850 · Post by **elendil850** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 7:49 am

LodeHacker wrote:If your budget allows it, then definitely an SSD for applications and the operating system. Maya especially will benefit more from a single Quadro than two GeForce cards in SLI. You didn't mention RAM, but as far as that is concerned, 6GB will be the sweet spot.

These are just suggestions and if you want to build the perfect PC for your fiancÃ©e, then please do ask her in detail what kind of work she does with Maya, Flash and/or Photoshop. For example there are very different solutions for accelerating Photoshop performance ranging from RAM usage optimization to the extremely expensive Quadro CX. Ideally you want something in between, what it is however, depends solely on what your fiancÃ©e will do with the PC.

I edited my previous post. I'm looking at 12 GB of DDR3.

judge56988 · Post by **judge56988** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 8:08 am

For about the same cost as the two Geforce 260 cards you could get a mid range Quadro like the FX 1700 - optimised for graphics applications such as Maya. If she's not gaming, that might be a more productive route to take. Also less power consumption and probably a lot less noise.

Matija · Post by **Matija** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 10:15 am

Where's the bottleneck? Is the CPU pegged at 100%? Is it using 10 gigs of memory? Lots of HDD access? Need better GPU acceleration somewhere?

Building a new computer for the sake of building a new computer is rather silly. Identify the bottleneck and see if something can be done about it... And it probably can.

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 10:37 am

Matija wrote:Building a new computer for the sake of building a new computer is rather silly.

Exactly what I said, I agree with Matija 100%. Given the little information it is really hard to identify the troublemaker. Also, depending on what his fiancÃ©e will do with Maya/Flash/Photoshop, there might be a more efficient way for achieving better performance.

Also, I'm pretty sure you don't have an infinite amount of money, so where's the line between reasonable and expensive?

elendil850 · Post by **elendil850** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 10:50 am

She says she has trouble animating within photoshop, and that when she has photoshop and flash open at the same time the computer sometimes lags.

danimal · Post by **danimal** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 11:14 am

tell her to look at the hdd lite when it's lagging... is it lit up solid? hdd speed could be an issue.

if not, see if overclocking the q6600 helps... that way you'll know if it's a cpu bottleneck.

Matija · Post by **Matija** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 12:12 pm

elendil850 wrote:She says she has trouble animating within photoshop, and that when she has photoshop and flash open at the same time the computer sometimes lags.

Women say a lot of things

Go there, see what happens. This looks like a RAM issue. Photoshop defaults to 55% memory usage IIRC (so it won't use more than 3.3 GB on her system), and if it goes over that, it starts using scratch disks.

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 12:18 pm

Matija wrote:
elendil850 wrote:She says she has trouble animating within photoshop, and that when she has photoshop and flash open at the same time the computer sometimes lags.
Women say a lot of things Go there, see what happens. This looks like a RAM issue. Photoshop defaults to 55% memory usage IIRC (so it won't use more than 3.3 GB on her system), and if it goes over that, it starts using scratch disks.

If Matija is right here, then it's an issue of Photoshop being 32-bit. Only Photoshop CS4 currently is available in 64-bit form, are you sure that your fiancÃ©e has the 64-bit version of Photoshop?

Matija · Post by **Matija** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 12:39 pm

Ugh, I haven't even thought of that... That would even lower the amount of memory Photoshop can use to 3 GB.

elendil850 · Post by **elendil850** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 12:40 pm

LodeHacker wrote:
Matija wrote:
elendil850 wrote:She says she has trouble animating within photoshop, and that when she has photoshop and flash open at the same time the computer sometimes lags.
Women say a lot of things Go there, see what happens. This looks like a RAM issue. Photoshop defaults to 55% memory usage IIRC (so it won't use more than 3.3 GB on her system), and if it goes over that, it starts using scratch disks.
If Matija is right here, then it's an issue of Photoshop being 32-bit. Only Photoshop CS4 currently is available in 64-bit form, are you sure that your fiancÃ©e has the 64-bit version of Photoshop?

She has CS4, it's 64 bit.

elendil850 · Post by **elendil850** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 7:21 pm

Found out an interesting thing while tooling around with her PC today. Settings were "mysteriously"

reset in the bios and the RAM wasn't running as a full 6GB, but only 3GB.

Fixed the settings, and voila! Vista and Photoshop are QUITE a bit happier!

She says it runs better now, shame I won't get an excuse to build a beast machine!

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 12:29 am

elendil850 wrote:Found out an interesting thing while tooling around with her PC today. Settings were "mysteriously" reset in the bios and the RAM wasn't running as a full 6GB, but only 3GB.

Fixed the settings, and voila! Vista and Photoshop are QUITE a bit happier!

She says it runs better now, shame I won't get an excuse to build a beast machine!

...so upgrade your PC

elendil850 · Post by **elendil850** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 6:49 am

LodeHacker wrote:
elendil850 wrote:Found out an interesting thing while tooling around with her PC today. Settings were "mysteriously" reset in the bios and the RAM wasn't running as a full 6GB, but only 3GB.

Fixed the settings, and voila! Vista and Photoshop are QUITE a bit happier!

She says it runs better now, shame I won't get an excuse to build a beast machine!
...so upgrade your PC

Oh I'm definitely thinking about bumping her up to a Quad core, maybe a Q9550.

Trav1s · Post by **Trav1s** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 7:28 am

I can take that e6600 off your hands if you do upgrade

elendil850 · Post by **elendil850** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 9:25 am

Trav1s wrote:I can take that e6600 off your hands if you do upgrade

Oh yeah?

danimal · Post by **danimal** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 10:35 am

are you near a microcenter? q9400 for $159:

http://www.microcenter.com/single_produ ... id=0301968

i'm running that chip at 3.42 ghz, with the mugen 2.

Trav1s · Post by **Trav1s** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 11:24 am

elendil850 wrote:
Trav1s wrote:I can take that e6600 off your hands if you do upgrade
Oh yeah?

Well.. there would be some compensation involved

elendil850 · Post by **elendil850** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 1:20 pm

Trav1s wrote:
elendil850 wrote:
Trav1s wrote:I can take that e6600 off your hands if you do upgrade
Oh yeah?
Well.. there would be some compensation involved

Haha! I sent you a PM.