The most optimum hardware

[steve harlan]

I'm a new Lightwave user currently using a Sony laptop just to learn the software. My question is what is the best hardware/Ram
/Memory that I need to complete complex architectual renderings.
I want to get a screaming system but need some advice as to
what to purchase.
Thanks
Washington DC

[Earl]

LightWave is optimized for the Pentium 4's SSE2 instruction set. As such, the best performance you'll get with LightWave is with some sort of Pentium 4 system (whether it's dual P4's, or single - as budget allows). The more CPU's the better. And, the more RAM the better. With a P4 system, you're usually limited to about 2 GB of memory. But that should be pretty sufficient. If you're rendering high-res images for print, I'd try to max out your system's RAM as high as possible.

[mattclary]

Within a week I will be ordering the following:

Intel D875PBZ motherboard (supports hyperthreading and 800mhz bus, dual DDR memory. Chosen for stability and good performance out of the box)

Pentium 4c 3.0ghz (hyperthreading, 800mhz bus)

3D Labs Wildcat VP 970 video card (128mb RAM, primary use is LightWave, should be respectable for current games, probably will suck for Doom III, but never been a big fan of FPS games) :)

Kingston KVR400 PC3200 ram (1 gigabyte, 2x512mb modules)

[Earl]

Sounds great Matt! Hey, from what I've read, HyperThreading (although great for running multiple apps as once) actually adds to LW rendering time slightly (making it slower by one or two seconds). Have you heard the same? I think I read that on TomsHardware (http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20021114/p4_306ht-19.html) .

Hmmm, looking back at the benchmarks, I guess the difference in rendertimes wasn't all that noticeable (1.4 seconds out of 181.3 = 0.8% slower).

[pixym]

Hi,

I have a DELL Dimension 8250 with P4 533FSB 3.06ghz HT - 1,5Gb ram - ATI Radeon 9700 Pro - Windows XP pro
This computer has changed my life because I worked on a Power Mac intosh dual 867 mhz - 2 Gb ram and nvidia Geforce IV mx video card...
The dell is about 3 times faster than the power mac... on some rendering and about 1.3 faster for radiosity rendering... the Open GL display is very very fast!
When Hyper threading is on, It is about 17% faster than when it is off with 2 threads on the rendering panel.

I make architectural modeling and rendering (90% of my production) and the more ram you have and the better it is specially for Print, You can also render with 2 or more segments memory if you do not have enought ram...

Lightwave rocks in architectural visualization.

[mattclary]

Earl, I have read conflicting reports on HT and LightWave, so I'm just going to have to test it myself. I believe you can toggle it off and on in the bios, I'll post my results when I do it. FYI, I used to use Tomshardware all the time, but based on some info I found on CG Talk a while back, I've pretty much boycotted them.

[Earl]

Really? What info was that? (I'm curious)...

[mattclary]

I'll try to find it. You can go over there and do a search on the forums for tomshardware and you'll find it pretty quick. It was a rude awakening for me. :eek:

[bloontz]

I have a dual xeon dell precision 350 and it seemed to slow renders slightly with hyperthreading on. I turned it off...