New System - 32 or 64 bit?

[JBT27]

Hi,

We're looking at buying a new system for LW, partly to handle a fairly demanding project that we'll be getting imminently. We have all Intel here at the moment - 5 machines which are used for various things but which are all used to render via BNR, and all 32-bit, and we're thinking of an Intel dual core 3.0Ghz P4, 4Gb RAM and a Nvidia board, maybe a Quadro 3450.

We were not going to buy into 64-bit for awhile yet, but maybe we're wrong thinking that we need to wait still before we can buy into a system that is as stable and supported as 32-bit......bearing in mind also it has to work alongside 32-bit everything else.

Also the 4Gb RAM....waste of money? ....or can LW actually address a full 2Gb leaving the other 2Gb for the OS and whatever else? Never really clear on this.

Thanks.

Julian.

[JBT27]

4Gb seems OK - geez, pages and pages and pages of waffle and contradiction...blah, blah, blah.

What twit ever said that computers will turn our lives around and make so much of our work so much more creative.....probably some twit. I went in our local art shop the other day, to remind myself of the days when making pictures involved buying illustration board and tubes of gouache, and airbrush spares.....yeah, yeah - messy and nowhere near as exciting as cgi (to me anyway)....but simpler.....

Sorry for the rant - frustrating trying to pin down all this before committing to buying new hardware!

Julian.

[Skinner3D]

I know what you mean about major decisions. I am currently starting the process of creating a personal renderfarm, sort of.;D With the 64 bit thing it will definately help your system go faster, because it can basically bite off bigger chunks. The only problem is that you really have to be into the 64 bit thing. ie WindowsXP 64, Lightwave 64, etc. I can't remember if it also supports 32 bit in the process:grumpy: I just took class on this too. In the ram department I say get as much as you possibly can. I don't know about the addressing a full gig set. From experience I can tell you that I am only running with 1 gig at the moment and I am still able to manipulate windows while rendering (albiet a little more slowly than normal) That is why I want the rendering farm. That way I can work well while I render.:)

[ACLOBO]

You can actually run 32 bit lightwave on a 64 bit machine. However, running 64 bit version would be better. Also, the thing to remember is that many of the plug-ins that you may use might not work under 64-bit.

Really, 64 bit chip not faster in terms of horsepower, but nicer in terms of memory access and handling. The great thing about Newtek is that that they provide you with both the 32-bit and 64-bit version without any extra charge.

-Adrian

[JBT27]

Thanks for the advice. This is a stop-gap machine that we need right now for upcoming projects, so unfortunately we can't wait for bigger and better cpus...to be honest as long as it can perform significantly better than the main box we have now, we'll be happy - and as far as I can see, it should do.

64-bit next year for us I think - we did toy with it now, but there are still too many gaps, and the problem with plugins, and so on.

I may be way out of date, but with everything else we use being 32-bit Intel based, I was inclined to go down that route....there used to be occasional issues with renderings done across mixed farms of Intel and AMD, different results from the same scene, or enough to screw up a job, so as we don't know any more about this, and have never used AMD, we're sticking with what we know for now.

That said, when we buy into 64-bit as I say, we'll look carefully at both and then decide.

Julian.

[Captain Obvious]

Athlon64 X2 or Opteron. To "heck" with 64 bits right now. They just kick "behind".