A few questions

[sparta2020]

Hi, I'm new to this forum, I have literally spent hours roaming and marveling at what this community has done. I've been modeling with blender and xsi mod tools for a while now. But due to the limitations of my pc, I have only been able to do so much. I'm starting to learn Zbrush now and would like to know if my pc meets the right requirements. I'm about to upgrade and would like to know how far must I go.

I know my pc is a little on the low end

Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E4500 @ 2.20GHz (2 CPUs)
Overclocked 2.4
1536MB RAM
Geforce 8600gts 256 mb
300gb SataHD

[Lamont]

Your computer is dated, but still very usable. How much you willing to spend?

[Mrpearlzildjian]

I would upgrade your RAM and gpu first and foremost. I have something a little better, but not far from the AMD equivalent of what you have.

Depending on what you're willing to spend on a gpu, and what company you like - for nividia, I would go with one of the GTX series, or if you can't afford it, one of the GTS series cards. They are both great cards. For ATI, a Radeon HD 5000 or above. Both of those cards sit around the $250 and up range, depending on what model you get.

Zbrush is a very RAM intensive program. I would suggest no less than 4GB of RAM, either DDR2 or DDR3, whatever your mobo supports. I currently have 6GB of DDR2 800 MGhz. It's sufficient enough to work around the 5 million poly range. If your mobo supports DDR3, 4GB as well.. aim for 6-8GB in the long run for both though.

Hope this helps.

[sparta2020]

I really only able to spend 500$ which sounds like enough. I'm mainly going to focus on up grading my ram. My motherboard barely supports 4gigs and runs at capacity at 2 gigs. I might just have to wait to get a new gpu with at least 1gig of memory.

[Zurar]

If you want a powerful video card that won't break the bank, look into an ATI. I used to hate ATI for the longest time until i got a Radeon 4850 back when the 4000 series was still the highest. I got my card from MSI and it only has 512MB ram on it, but it runs a lot of games at some fairly high settings. Right now, you can get a 1G 5750 (not at all the best out there, but still very powerful) for about $140 US.

Other hardware? Definitely upgrade your system RAM. I run 4GB right now and wish i had more sometimes. If you're still on a 32-bit OS, 3GB is the highest you can utilize, so no need to go overboard. RAM is fairly cheap as well, unless you go for performance memory... but right now you're limited more by the amount than the performance of each stick. CPU depends on your motherboard. If yours can't handle over a dual-core chip, you might want to consider a motherboard/CPU/Ram upgrade before a video card upgrade. I have a classmate right now that has a laptop with a mediocre video card (i think the mobile version of yours) and an 8-core intel (architecture is quad, but windows sees it as octal) and his ZBrush will handle 16 million polys easily. Anyway, hope this helps you decide what route to go.

[OneEyedJack]

Seriously, I would keep what you have and save up to about 800-900bucks and invest in the new architecture.
You wont be able to run an i5 or i7 or any of the relatively new CPU's on your old motherboard.
And to save money on your next upgrade, I would totally upgrade to the new Tech and open up the possibility for even further upgrading later on.

I'm sure you can get an MB and a decent quad core CPU for 500bucks.
And the ATI 4850 is dirt cheap and a seriously good GPU.

There is a huge misconception on what matters in hardware as well.
People seem to have the idea that the better your graphic card is and the more ram you have, the better your system will perform.
2gb - 4gb ram is more than enough to run Maya and Photoshop (among various other apps like msn or itunes)
And I do think your graphics card should be enough to do modeling.

I'd put my money on an MB and CPU :/

[Gochillis]

I completely agree with ONEEYEDJACK. I would say save money and upgrade everything minus your hard drive. If you absolutely feel the need to upgrade something than mother board and processor are things to spend your money on. All the ram in the world (including your GPU memory 'cause that gets mixed into the pot) won't get you anywhere if you don't have the processor to support it and bigger processors need bigger mother boards!

TIP OF THE DAY: Think of your processor as a hose and ram as water. The bigger the hose the more water you can run through it but a small hose will only let so much water through no matter how much water you have. Your mother board would be the bucket. Bigger bucket, more water and bigger hose, if hoses connected to buckets :)

one last thing a 32 bit OS will only support so much ram, 4 gigs total, that's including your GPU ram. In your case 256 mb. So if you have 4gb of ram, equal to 2048 mb. Than you subtract your 256 GPU ram, you only be utilizing 1792 mb of your 2048 mb of ram.

[Gochillis]

SORRY! I <3 computer parts! so the mother board and processor are what I am running, and I love them to death! I have never had a machine run as fast as this one. I bought all my ram (8 gigs worth, 4 2 gig sticks) when newegg was running some crazy weekend sale. its all OCZ top notch shit! What i found is Kingston, which is a decent make, 2 gig sticks. I think three sticks will cap out your budget, giving you 6 gigs total. which of course will do you no good on a 32 bit OS. I would say get what you can use now and then save your pennies for more ram and a 64 bit OS.

mother board (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138184)
processor (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115131)
ram (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134632)

[sparta2020]

Right now I am currently running an optimized windows xp 32bit
My motherboard is a asus p5kpl-cm which supports up to quad core(i think)

[OneEyedJack]

Right now I am currently running an optimized windows xp 32bit
My motherboard is a asus p5kpl-cm which supports up to quad core(i think)

It can very well support the old low-end quadcores, but I doubt it'll support anything mid-highend as they use the new Tech.

[sparta2020]

So right now i bought upgrade to 3gigs of ram
I say the geforce 210 512 mb on sale so imma invest in that and a sli motherboard to use it with my current videocard(if thats a good idea). the processor is gonna have to be last on the list cause I want the i7 core but thats 1000+ dollars as I seen so far.
I

[BrendanBax]

My friend / classmate just built a beast tower from the ground up. I think total it was $800 for it all, but he was able to reuse his Win7 install disc and some misc. parts.

Phenom processor on an Asus mb, 8 gigs of DDR3 ram, and 2 nVidia cards. One was salvaged from his HP... Its pretty beastly but that particular line with HP has a bad bearing in the fans.

So I guess I'm saying I'd do what everyone else is saying and upgrade the main components first... like the CPU and motherboard. They give that room for expansion later. Then in 9 months you can give your first born for 8 Gigs of ram haha.

[OneEyedJack]

An i7 uses the 1355 socket Motherboard, Which only supports DDR3 ram..
so if you just got new ram.. is it DDR3? if not, you can just throw it out again.
Or invest in an i5 which uses another socket that I THINK can use DDR2..

And the i7 is far from 1000bucks..
I can get an i7 930 for 300bucks and computer parts are in general more expensive over here compared to the US.

[Vailias]

Upgrades are good, but you original posted specs are very spec to what I'm using, and have used for the past several years.

Athlon 64x2 5000+ OC'ed to 3.1 ghz
3.25 gigs ram (4 but only that gets seen)
Geforce 8600gt
1.2TB hd space.. big drive died a few months back.

But still, this setup can push about 1.5 million non instanced tris in max before it starts to lag a bit, 3million gets pretty hard to work on, and I've had heavy instancing up to about 15million with some lag but still useable.
Zbrush works fine up over 10 million tris, UT3 runs at a steady 30fps with frame tricounts up to 3 million.

So get to making art! :) Your tools are fine, though I'm sure an upgrade would be welcome.

[sparta2020]

At my local store for computer parts, they only had the i7 extreme which was 1000, Online though I saw the i5 and i7 for for 200-300, And thats really the cheapest I've seen out of those. My memory is DDR2 whichis now a bummer, so i'll switch to the i5 since by budget isn't that huge.

[sparta2020]

Upgrades are good, but you original posted specs are very spec to what I'm using, and have used for the past several years.

Athlon 64x2 5000+ OC'ed to 3.1 ghz
3.25 gigs ram (4 but only that gets seen)
Geforce 8600gt
1.2TB hd space.. big drive died a few months back.

But still, this setup can push about 1.5 million non instanced tris in max before it starts to lag a bit, 3million gets pretty hard to work on, and I've had heavy instancing up to about 15million with some lag but still useable.
Zbrush works fine up over 10 million tris, UT3 runs at a steady 30fps with frame tricounts up to 3 million.

So get to making art! :) Your tools are fine, though I'm sure an upgrade would be welcome.

Its really the ram and processor im worried about(well, not the ram anymore) But its that slowdown that's really annoying, Im trying to learn zbrush to improve my portfolio for school and I haven't even started yet.

[redpandafire]

Agree wholeheartedly with Vailias.

Your hardware is fine. Would save the money or invest in artbooks.

[Giometric]

Agreeing with Vailias and redpandafire; from what I understand Zbrush doesn't really do anything at all with your video card, and either way what you have should be fine (I worked on a Radeon X1800 for a few years, a bit slow AND very glitchy in Maya :lol: ). But with a dual-core CPU and the 3GB of ram you got, you should probably be ok for decently big models. Better to save your money until you can get a completely new system that'll last you longer in the long run.

[sparta2020]

Either way, Im gonna have to get to work soon, Thanks to everyone that help, this is a great site and hope to hear from some critiques when my work is good enough to be posted.

Now to start saving for that new mobo and cpu...