Upgrade info please

[bobbystahr]

Here goes.
With the release of TG4 rapidly approaching I would like to ask for recommendations on hardware upgrading, ie: number of cores recommended, preferred cpu, the least expensive on up, graphics card with how much graphic card RAM, basic machine RAM, as I feel certain a number of us will need to upgrade to support all the coolness I saw in the preview. Thanks in advance.
If this belongs in another section please move, but I posted here as this seems to get the most traffic I think.

[archonforest]

Well minimun a quad core CPU with minimun of 8Gb ram. But since ram is not very expensive these days you should go for 12 or 16.
As far as I know TG4 will not utilize newer GPUs to render faster. (At least this is how I remember from a thread.) Nevertheless if u have a super basic card now with very little ram like 128Mb or so it would be beneficial even for your OS to get a newer basic card with 1Gb ram on it.
Dunno your budget on cpu but I think your minimum should be a quad i5. Look for an earlier generation rather than the latest one as with this u can save some money.

[WAS]

Well minimun a quad core CPU with minimun of 8Gb ram. But since ram is not very expensive these days you should go for 12 or 16.
As far as I know TG4 will not utilize newer GPUs to render faster. (At least this is how I remember from a thread.) Nevertheless if u have a super basic card now with very little ram like 128Mb or so it would be beneficial even for your OS to get a newer basic card with 1Gb ram on it.
Dunno your budget on cpu but I think your minimum should be a quad i5. Look for an earlier generation rather than the latest one as with this u can save some money.

There are 1GB Blue-Ray cards you can get cheap. I got one 5 years ago that was at 60 dollars. Not bad cards at all, it worked well even with gaming for awhile such as StarCraft II.

[bobbystahr]

Thanks guys, I suspected as much so it means a new MoBo and CPU with a new vid card as well...have a 1G Radeon but it was from when my CPU was AMD and it seem'd to work better but this intel chip is slower than the AMD so I'll look into Radeon compatability  5 years service on the card now so that says a bit.

[Oshyan]

You will almost certainly need a new motherboard and CPU, probably a new power supply as well. There may not be many components of your existing machine worth keeping, to be honest.

If you have the money I think the "sweet spot" for price/performance right now is a 6 core Intel CPU (yes, Intel; they've got the fastest CPUs right now, benchmarks don't lie ). The best thing to do, I'd say, is look at the Terragen 3 benchmark results and then check the price of each of the top performing single CPU systems that are not overclocked (overclocked systems are marked in red): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eX9Ltn3_9BjsamA0Pxeflv5AKrjkgViEY8VuetB8e3k/edit
And you don't want a Xeon. So for example the Intel i7-5930K, 6 cores, 3.5Ghz, $580 and a benchmark time of 5.5-6 minutes. There *is* a single AMD FX result up there with the 5930K but *none* of the other AMD results of a similar CPU are anywhere near that, so I have to assume that result is not correct (which is why it's highlighted in yellow; we'll follow up with the person who submitted it).

For RAM definitely get at least 16GB, and RAM is currently pretty cheap so I'd say go for 32GB if you can afford it.

Graphics card will actually be even less important in TG4 than in TG3 since the new ray-traced preview is all based on the CPU, whereas the current 3D preview is OpenGL, which uses your graphics card for many functions (mainly object drawing). It may still be useful to have a reasonably good video card, but it's far from the most critical component. Any mid-level current card from Nvidia or AMD should be fine, don't spend more than $150 on it.

Also if possible I would recommend an SSD. They're pretty affordable these days and it will boost overall system performance. It won't help TG performance much, admittedly, but you'll appreciate the super fast boot-up speed, app launch speed, and working with any files that are on the SSD. The overall operating system performance is just better.

- Oshyan

[bobbystahr]

Thanks Oshyan...late at nite now so I'll come back to this tomorrow. I'd already assessed that I'll be needing a complete system replacement and am thinking of the current machine as an internet only one when I get the new machine. Well duh, I'd love a xeon but, while I may be a bit lucky sometimes I am alternately cursed or just plain unlucky with hardware. Best set up I ever had went out my kitchen window in 2010 in a burglary and everything I've been able to afford since then has seemed sub standard. But I'm not giving up..a xeon is in my prayers each nite, heh heh heh.

[archonforest]

I got a second hand system with a dual quad Xeon set up. U might look up for companies who sells second hand stuff. I found one in England and they have very good prices. U might find one similar in the US.

[bobbystahr]

I got a second hand system with a dual quad Xeon set up. U might look up for companies who sells second hand stuff. I found one in England and they have very good prices. U might find one similar in the US.

Or perhaps Canada where I am....worth a thought.

[archonforest]

I got a second hand system with a dual quad Xeon set up. U might look up for companies who sells second hand stuff. I found one in England and they have very good prices. U might find one similar in the US.

Or perhaps Canada where I am....worth a thought.

I think so. I got a monster PC and the price was very friendly