I'm in the market to buy a new computer. I have about $2 Grand max to spend. I have the 19" monitor and a 100mb zip drive I will be swaping from my current machine. I'd like a dvd player as well as a cd-burner. Ample amount of HD space with some speed (7200rpms and up). I use mostly Maya and I use it mostly for animation if that matters. I want to run Win2000, unless you guys think XP is better? I'd like if possible around 1 gig of ram as well as a decent video card. Any ideas? What do you guys suggest? Thanks in advance for any help...I know a bit about computers but I'm sure you all know more than me. Thanks again in advance.
Oh yea...pre-built or having someone build it for me is better/easier. I've never put together a computer so I'm kinda sketchy about doing it myself. and of course the lower the price the better. I have a keyboard, mouse, wacom, etc. etc...I just need the main box.
I am a hardware consultant that has recently fallen in love with 3d... I use maya myself... I will give you my opinion and tell you what I plan on purchasing real soon (waiting for market to drop a little, which it will very soon once again...)
That should be around 1970.00 without tax but priced high... any good company would build it/test it for you... try a2zcomputers.com, but I'm not sure they have all of it for these prices...
If you wanted to save money and get faster video card, you could get a Geforce 4600 128MB card instead of 750 xgl and "hack" it into a 950xgl (move a resistor and viola), which does work, you would save about a hundred dollars and get a thousand dollar card out of it... This isn't for the faint of heart though. I would also say to go with 2000 if you don't play many games, but XP if you still like to fire up games alot since XP better emulates 9x. The dual AMD processors are getting awesome 3d rendering timed reviews everywhere (Even beating intel) and are just as stable... the nvidia is the only way to go, period, especially for doing 3d paint work or even maya artisan. The hard drives are very fast/reliable and inexpensive.
Hope it helps, and I know it is a bit more than 2k, but you can mix and match parts... you might want to skimp the ram down to a gig to save 200 more and throw 2k/xp on it.
Awesome thanks...yea I'd only need about a gig of ram for now. And I'd rather have Win2K than Xp. I've always had Intel so I'm skeptical about changing to AMD but they look like they are stepping up and making some great progess so I was thinking about changing...plus they seem to be a bit cheaper. Thanks again for the help...and I agree about NVidia....ever since I got my first NVidia card I've never changed graphics companies. Thanks again.
there conclusion is that your better off buying a 900xgl to get the performance of an XGL , as the hack doesn't work ......
Also can't find a "PNY Nvidia 750XGL" for $575.00 at http://www.a2zcomputers.com either. they have it there for USD$741.00
if you could tell me where you found one for USD$575, as this is an extremely good price for one ..... and for that even I would buy one .... best price I have found so far has been USD$640.
NP for the help, hope it helped. I used to run only Intel myself since it was the only stable platform available. Then the Athlon came and they got some get right =)
I got a 1 gig on a via chipset (avoid the older via chipsets as they are unstable for 2k/xp kt133 random freeze anyone?) I now have a VIA kt266a based chip (MSI kt266 pro) and a 1 gig Athlon oc'd to 1.6 running smoothly with no recent crashes/lockups whatsoever. I would say that the MP's have been getting such awesome reviews and ram for the board is relatively cheap, I am staying with AMD. Intel still rocks though and you would be fine either way. Good luck to you!
I have a GF2ti200 from ASUS that used to give me 10fps in maya using artisan and I performed the hack... It registered as a quadro2 pro and now it runs pretty smoothly for me. Maybe they have locked it down for the ultra highend quadro 4 though, not sure...
This benchmark is done by specview, and is done without any dollars behind it, unlike a review website... the tech-junkie guys probably depend on products to test from nvidia, so I wouldn't exactly take their word for it
=)
not that there's some conspiracy going on, but maxtreme installs just fine for me, as well as the quadro2pro bios/drivers/utilities, etc. No chip company has two fab plants unless they are seriously bigtime, and Nvidia isn't as big as Intel yet... the quadro came out within too close a gap from the geforce chip to be a different chip. Maybe the higher quality fab chips are given to the quadros like all PIII's are internally the same but marked differently after testing for stability. Think of it like this, Quadro drivers are customized for quadro cards and aren't included in the nvidia unified architecture. If the chip was really different, it would probably crash constantly or not run at all, which my gf2>quadro2 hack does not.
Hope I gave some insight to you, I would personally just buy the wildcat 6210 and a renderdrive if I had the money, but unfortuanately, I am a ways away from that =)
I've never put together a computer so I'm kinda sketchy about doing it myself. and of course the lower the price the better. I have a keyboard, mouse, wacom, etc. etc...I just need the main box.