I've been learning more about particles and have been able to make some basic things but am noticing that some things seem out of reach with my current system. Currently I have 8gb ram, a duo process of some sort and when I take a shape that isn't even all that complex and turn it to particles it will sometimes not work at all, (just continues counting up with that little timer thing), also after I have created a particle shape, when I go to change the frames it will sometimes be very slow, sometimes not work (so I can't see all of the animation in the viewport)

Basically what I'm wondering is what are the recommended computer specs for dealing with particles so that I can plan for the future.. or maybe there is some performance bottleneck with my current setup that I need to figure out.. any help is appreciated.

I just saw this post, http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_forum&Itemid=172&page=viewtopic&t=16528 [sidefx.com] … I am wondering if this relates to this in some way.. do I need to devote more memory to my particle SOP or something along those lines?

I work on a quad core with 8 gig ram under 64 bit ubuntu 9, graphics card is 8800GTX. There's a couple of good threads on odforce on this stuff.

My next machine would definitely be an 8-core machine, probably have to build it myself or it will be pricy. Nvidia graphics card, 16 gig ram, raptor drive 300gig, and a terrabyte for storage.

If I would not be building it I would consider a Mac and dual booting it with linux - but as I am not a mac user I would have to carefully consider this first. The hardware cost for their 8-core machines is alright.

Ok so I'm guessing its mainly the processor that matters then for this stuff, 8 core sounds like a really good idea, will have to get that as soon as I can afford it, thanks for the input.

Found this ad at Frys for $1200 (but you can find it online or elsewhere too) and you can't beat it for what it includes:

http://www.frys.com/product/5944184?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG [frys.com]

This would be a pretty kick-ass setup for most of your needs and the price is amazing for this power.

It's quad-core, but HyperThreaded and will run 8 threads (within certain limitations, of course).

By the way, my measly 2 year old 2 GHz. Dual Core laptop with 2 GB of RAM can throw a ton of particles around quite quickly. POPs is quite fast- It really depends on what you are doing- there are a lot of things that can bring a sim to a halt that you can't really blame Houdini or PC. You have to understand what it is doing and how to optimize it (avoid calculating unnecessary things, keep complex expensive calculations to a minimum, etc.) to get a high performing particle sim.

You should have more than enough specs with that machine rdane.

Mine is a

Conroe Core2Duo E6600
4GB Kinston Ram
8800 GTS
Vista x64 - Dual boot Ubuntu 9 linux x64
500GB Seagate somethingsomething HDD

And I have more than enough for almost everything Ive simmed, or done. Something take longer to initally start, I.E: Massive amounts of volumes take a while to calculate, expecially at rendertime.
Dont think ive ever had a memory allocation error on this machine.

EDIT: I have to say there is a greater speed increase on Linux than Windows.