Hey guys I wanted to know if any of you could give me any suggestions on a new system that I want to build for a buddy of mine. He is majoring in computer animation and will be using programs such as 3D Studio Max, photoshop, and all those other graphic intensive software apps that computer animators use.

The question I have is what components would make up the best system for him. I'm leaning towards building an intel based system since there real good when it comes to handling apps, but I've also been looking at an AMD 64 system since there really bad ass when it comes to running apps too. Plus I have an Amd 64 system I built for myself and it's awesome, but mine is mainly a gaming rig.

So if you guys could give me any suggestions such as what type of Cpu to use, how much memory would be good for a system that's going to be handling a lot of graphic intensive stuff, what type of graphics card would be better such as either an Nvidia card or an ATI card, the type of motherboard even though I think I can pretty much handle that decision on my own, and how much storage as far as HDD space he would need.

Well thank you in advance for any suggestions you may have and please respond as soon as possible.

3.4GHz P4 1.5/2Gbs of ram and a 6800GT I think would run well.

Or

3500+ 1.5/2gb of ram and a x800Pro/XT

Both are good, depends on how much you want to spend.

The Photoshop will not create a drain or strain on your PC. The ones you will need to be concerned about will be the 3DS Max, Bryce, Poser or any other 3D software. Animations are just that much more of a strain.

If you go here:
http://www.discreet.com/support/max/
You can see what is or is not good to use with 3DS Max.

If you use Bryce it has something called Bryce Lightning. This allows you to use two CPUs to render an image. Which can come in handy when it is a detailed image.

I understand that Bryce 5.5 will render much faster, but it has recently been delayed.

You can't own too much CPU, too much memory, or too much vid card when doing computer animations.

Places you can scrimp - don't get the 6.1 speakers; make do with the two cheep ones.
Gigabit ethernet is not necessary, make 10/100 do.
Dont buy a modem - if one comes with the system fine

-MF

duel opteron with any high end ati x800 video card is the best bang for buck config.

1 or 2x opterons,2gig of ram, 3dlabs Realizm or other good card for rendering (which a X800 or 6800 is not good at).

Just so everyone is clear on what's going on. I will be building this system myself and my friend mostly uses 3DS Max right now, but I want to build this machine with the capabilties to handle anything else that he throws at it later on in his aspiring career as an animator. Also cost is not an issue the only import thing here is a very well performing machine for computer animation. I have been thinking of doing dual opertorns and I just wanted to know what advantages the opertons have over the xeons. I also wanted to know if any of you know of any particular graphics cards produced by nvidia or ati that are specifically manufactured to handle high rendering tasks when it comes to software that is designed for animation.

If you know of any other companies that produce graphics cards specifically for these tasks please let me know of them and where I can find more information on them and how they work.

Thanks again for the help guys and you've all given me a better idea of how I want to build this system.

2 opteron 250s, a wildcat relizm 200 or 800 if u really want it to do ANYTHING, 2 gbs of ram,2x300gb hard drives and a 16x dual layer dvd writer.

I wanted to know if anyone knows if you can use a wildcat realizm graphics card that is manufactured for professional graphics processing such as 3DS Max and also use it for gaming as well. I was thinking yes but then again I was thinking that the drivers might conflict with the games see as how the drivers for these types of cards maybe specifically written to just render graphics in certain applications such as 3DS Max. If anyone knows please let me know. Thanks

When it comes to animation/graphical design your CPU can never be too fast, the faster the better to calculate all the complex images etc.

lots of ram is very important. i used 3ds max on my laptop, didn't work so good! lol