Motility Posted January 2, 2006 Share Posted January 2, 2006 Wondered what folks thought as best enhancement for my AM experience. Currently have a Geoforce 4 Ti 4600 Video card with 128 ram and have a p4 2.53 processor with 512 ram. Having only been working with AM for ver 12.n for about two months so I was curious what would be best choice to get a better video card with maybe 256 mb of video ram or increase my system ram to 1gb. Sometimes for me choreography is a little jumpy when I have a number of items on screen especially with textures and sometimes my model manipulating seem a little quirky . So wondered of these two choices what might be best. Overall I am having great time learning AM. And I know a faster cpu is always cool but that is not in cards at this time. Anyhow would love to hear from some foks what they thought. AM rocks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stuart Rogers Posted January 2, 2006 Share Posted January 2, 2006 This is an interesting question, to which I won't be giving a solid answer (I don't much keep up with graphics cards). If screen updates were particularly sluggish, and the graphics card was an old one, I would get a better card. However, my personal choice would be to increase system memory so that I could run both A:M and, say, Photoshop without causing the PC to start swapping to disc. Of course it does depend very much on such things as decal sizes, etc. I wonder if the guys at Hash have any figures on memory usage that could help determine the break-even point for system memory. For example, the 'standard' measure of A:M/system speed is to render frames 98 & 99 (?) of the Toys project (from the CD) to disc and note how long the second frame took to render. Maybe the Hash guys could take a measure of peak memory usage for the same test project. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dhar Posted January 2, 2006 Share Posted January 2, 2006 I've upgraded from the original Win Me edition to Win XP Pro and that seems to improve the performance tremendously. I'm sure I could do better with faster cpu & memory, but until then, I'm OK with what I've got. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric2575 Posted January 3, 2006 Share Posted January 3, 2006 I upgraded from 512k to 1.5GB and very honestly did not notice a significant improvement in running AM. You may want to invest your money into a new graphics card unless you intend to run other apps with AM. Btw, my rig is a PC. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted January 3, 2006 Hash Fellow Share Posted January 3, 2006 The last time I heard a Hash person speak on it, they said that A:M doesn't really benefit from a top-of-the-line card. It doesn't depend on the video card for performance as much as other 3D apps. If you have a 128 mb card you're probably set. increasing your RAM will probably let you run more apps with A:M better, but won't increase performance unless you have complex elements that exceed your RAM and the computer has to begin swapping from the hard drive. Hard to predict the tipping point for that. going up to 1GB probably isn't too expensive though. But really, a faster CPU (and motherboard and RAM) is most likely to produce perceptible gains. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric2575 Posted January 3, 2006 Share Posted January 3, 2006 I would agree with Robcat on motherboard and ram to a point as I said above. It's also true about the graphics card. Swapped my 128MB card for a top of the line ATI XT800 and did notice an improvement, but hardly worth the money paid for a high end card. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
heyvern Posted January 3, 2006 Share Posted January 3, 2006 I have been running AM on my Mac for years in 512 - 640 ram range with out complaints... ...However... I would very much like a better video card... I would lean towards a better card... or split the difference... get a better card AND some more ram... I think rendering speed is based on the processor not cards or ram as much. Modeling and having large complex projects would like more ram. Real time display while animating and modeling likes the better card... so those would be your options. I have a wimpy card on my Mac and PC so I tend to model and animate in wire frame mode. Both the Mac and PC have the same ram... and I can tell when they struggle with large complex projects. Vernon "!" Zehr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Motility Posted January 4, 2006 Author Share Posted January 4, 2006 Hey Guys...thanks for all your input. I really appreciate all your feedback. Helps me decide which way to go and maybe trying to swing a lesser better video card and more ram at same time might be the thing to do. Thanks and when I do something will post my own findings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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