dynamoanders Posted March 18, 2011 Share Posted March 18, 2011 Hi guys. I´m going to by a new computer to simulate fluids and FX stuff with and I searched articles on odforce and sidefx site. I´ve compared price vs speed and found that a i7 with 2 x 1TB HDD 24 GB Ram and kinda basic graphics card would do the trick. The question then is... would it help me the have the c:drive on an SSD drive? It´s going to be on windows 7 OS. It´s not going to help me when I´m caching out, but I wonder if there´s any performanceboost when I fiddle around doing some testing out to RAM. What do you guys think? Thanks //Anders Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pclaes Posted March 18, 2011 Share Posted March 18, 2011 I don't know how big that ssd would be, but you can partition it and perhaps give 50-100 Gig to a "DUMP" disk. I tend to do that with my raptor drive as it does speed up the IO. For big sims this won't be enough, but this should do fine for most smaller projects. Sometimes windows will reserve virtual memory on disk too... I don't remember how much exactly (you can set that), but by default it's around the size of your ram... so if you see 24 Gig "disappear" all of a sudden on your c: drive, that's where it is going. You might want to take that into account when partitioning. I noticed this when I upgraded to 22 Gig of ram. In terms of speed an ssd is around twice as fast as a 10.000 rpm drive, I'm waiting for the price of a 300Gig ssd to come down, but then I will probably add one as a cache drive. I find that as a houdini td I'm doing a lot of IO. Processing lots of data a few steps at a time, so a faster drive will help you. As an alternative you could also go with a small raid 5 external disk -- but I don't really consider that any more for mere "home useage". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dynamoanders Posted March 18, 2011 Author Share Posted March 18, 2011 Hello pclaes. Thanks for your reply. Yes, I´m actually thinking of having two SSD drives raided. That would be perfect, but the question is how big the speedboost will be compared to HDD drives? I´m going to use it for high-end work. Just to do some proper job applications, I´ve been working as an Maya FX TD for two years and wanted to go into Houdini, and now I find that the time is good. I learned as much as I can on my macbook pro, and now need to implement it and I have some interest from variuos studios, but I want to get some Houdini work into there too. //Anders Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt_K Posted March 18, 2011 Share Posted March 18, 2011 Hey Anders, I have to agree with Peter: I have just upgraded my system, and have two extra 200GB drives that I use as 'scratch' drives (fast 10 000rpm HDs), and the speed gains I have seen have been great. I toyed with (and tested) a serious raid system, but the gains were not worth the extra cost. I guess it helps to not have Houdini's caches etc on the same drive as the system, as there'll be less competition for read/write cycles between the system and Houdini. And yes, once the price of SSDs drops enough, you can bet I'll be onto some of those as from what I've seen and read, the speed gains are really, really good! Later, Matt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lukeiamyourfather Posted March 18, 2011 Share Posted March 18, 2011 SSD at this point in the game is a waste of money. If performance is what you're after then the money would be better spent on a better processor or better memory (or a dual socket system). Agreed though when prices comes down on the SSD they will be worth it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mangi Posted March 18, 2011 Share Posted March 18, 2011 SSD at this point in the game is a waste of money. If performance is what you're after then the money would be better spent on a better processor or better memory (or a dual socket system). Agreed though when prices comes down on the SSD they will be worth it. Hi There. At my job pocoyo.com, we have purchased for our production, 2 DELL computer SSD, I am not at work today. RELAX time But, I can tell you the configuration the CEO made, has no words to discribe the preformance. I never believed computers could go that FAST. The last production manager wanted to test a SSD system. I can get the specs on monday, It also has the quadro 4000, that new one they have. I think that ever little bit of more preformnace, is important for the creations of CG images. they where 4500 euros a peace, no monitors. that of cource with a the discount they made, we have alot of computers mangi Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dynamoanders Posted March 19, 2011 Author Share Posted March 19, 2011 Hello again. Thanks for all your replys, very useful and helpful for making my desicions. This time it comes down to bang for the buck, and I´m just going to use it for a few months, then probably sell it when I land the next job. I got a setup with the i7, ok graphics card, 24 GB RAM ad 2 1TB HDD for just over 1000€. I think that´ll do for now. But again much appriciated for your thoughts Cheers //Anders Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smaugthewyrm Posted April 10, 2011 Share Posted April 10, 2011 as a simulation is often done using a single computer, these sgi altix uv1000 look amazing. they use off the shelf linux or windows server. 4096 threads and 16TB ram on a single computer. now that is what i call a simulation computer! lolz sgi altix uv page sgi youtube chan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cosku Posted April 11, 2011 Share Posted April 11, 2011 0_0 So how much does it cost? As the old saying goes, "if you have to ask, you probably can't afford it" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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