PC Spec to make Terragen fly

[buchvecny]

yeah

[otakar]

I stopped checking prices quite a while ago and I almost fell out of my chair seeing something like the AMD X2 6400+ for $180 shipped. Couple that with a $120 MOBO and $100 in dual channel 2x2GB RAM sticks and you are truly flying with TG2 once released. Can we have another Christmas real soon? 

[Blonderator]

Honestly man, don't waste your money on anything more than 2GB ram.

I built a top of the line gaming computer (3.0 Ghz dual core, 8800 GTS 512, 4GB ram) I have 4GB of ram, and running 2 instances of Terragen and doing 2 full quality renders at the same time, Terragen only utilizes 30% of my RAM.

A better processor has a much larger effect on render time than more RAM, seeing as Terragen is only allocated a certain amount of RAM. Additionally, when you increase RAM amounts past 3GB, you have to purchase a 64 bit operating system to use it.

However once Planetside optimizes Terragen for higher amounts of RAM and multi-core processors, 4GB of RAM may be beneficial.

[rcallicotte]

@Blonderator - Thanks for sharing this experience.  Very helpful.

[cyphyr]

Oddly I would go the other way and say that RAM has more influence over performance than Ghz. I would however wait till the new iteration of TG comes out before committing myself. One thing that will make a difference is the complexity of your scene, for example, a highly complex nodal structure with many function nodes will benefit from a high Ghz chip, conversely a scene with many objects loaded into it will benefit from lots of extra ram. The new version of TG will support multi processors and ram over the 3 gig limit so this will change everything, if you can afford it get lots of everything!!
Richard

[Njen]

I agree with Blonderator. I repeatedly see TG2 max out my CPU, but only make a dent in my 2Gb of Ram.

Can I just add that Alienware laptops are based on the Clevo standard of laptops. Clevo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clevo) laptops are used by many companies that rebadge them, and add in a few extra customisations of their own. But basically most Clevos are the same. What does this mean? Alienware laptops are some of the most expensive Clevo laptops on the market. You can buy extremely similar laptops from other suppliers and save a whole lot of money.

I have a Clevo laptop that is released by Sager (http://www.sagernotebook.com/default.php). At the time I was shopping around for a new laptop, the one I am using now was about $400 more expensive at Alienware, than it was at Sager for basically the same Clevo machine.

Anyway, make sure you do your own research, but I strongly recommend that if you are after a Clevo based laptop, stay away from the overpriced Alienware label, and go for another less expensive label, which would basically be the same machine.

[rcallicotte]

@njen - What about us poor souls who do not find a laptop that useful?    Any suggestions of something that would be better than Alienware, without building my own?  I built my last machine about two or three years ago.

[scott8933]

Interesting note here, I pitted my laptop (1.7ghz Pentium M, 2G ram) against my desktop (3.2ghz P4, 2G ram). Laptop won by several seconds. It was around a five minute render, I didn't work out the exact percentage.

[Oshyan]

The Pentium M is a lot more efficient (more work for equivalent CPU frequency) than the P4, so that explains the majority of the disparity. Although that does seem a bit more than I would have expected.

- Oshyan

[DiscoBall]

Hey, you DID say money was unlimited right?

http://ftp.tyan.com/html/pr06_typhoon600_ocs.html
http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/16/tyan-typhoon-600-series-reaches-256-gigflops-for-personal-super/

How's £10,000 for a Tyan Typhoon 600 series computer which can reach a maximum of 256 gigaflops?

Or maybe if you work at IBM you could sneak in, install Terragen 2 and use the IBM Blue Gene/L to render your awesome scene at 280.6 teraflops? xD

[buchvecny]

yea petium 4 sucked so much... when u bought athlon with 3GHZ you were twice speed as if u bought pentium 4 3GHZ