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trini
Hey everybody,

First up .. I am a Mac user so bear with me because I have been spoilt by having only one company to buy my hardware from.

I need buying advice from those of you that use Houdini on Linux. I need to purchase a system to run *solely* Houdini and I need some advice. I am going Linux because I think I would be more comfortable with that. Also I just got out of school so I cant really afford anythign more that $2000 Cdn = approx $1200 USD. Help me out here:

Athlon vs P4? ..how much Ghz?
NVidia vs ATI ..which card?
SD RAM vs DDR …how much?

I cant get the top of the line but basically I am sticking with the cheapest soundcard, no speakers, just CD-ROM drive to install Linux and ethernet and 20Gb HD. I plan on getting a big CRT monitor for approx $400 - $450CDN. I wanna focus on Monitor, VideoCard and RAM. Let me know what works with Houdini and what doesnt…
trini
one more question…

what the difference between and MSI GeForce chip and an nVidia GeForce chip.

eg:
MSI: http://www.msicomputer.com/product/vga/vga_detail.asp?model=G4Ti4800SE-VTD [msicomputer.com]

nVidia: http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce4ti.html [nvidia.com]

whats going on here?

oh yeah … one more thing… motherboards confuse the hell outta me also.
MichaelC
My personal preference

I'd get a PIV rather than an Athlon. Athlons are cheaper and faster in some cases, but I always have issues with them. Anything over 2 Ghz is great. I f you can afford a PIV that does Hyperthreading go with that.

Get a motherboard with an Intel chipset. The 875P is good. Intel D875PBZ Motherboard would be a good choice. It has onboard sound as well so you won't need a soundcard.

RAM, go with DDR (make sure you get a board and CPU that support it) 512 Megs is OK, a gig is even better.

Nvidia provides chips to manufacturers like MSI, PNY, etc. I don't think the manufacturers even really change the reference boards other than using different memory or changing the color of the board. In the case of Quadros I think Nvidia is actually building all their own boards and selling them to manufacturers who put their label on them and resell them. Since you want a computer strictly for Houdini in Linux, it's probably be best to go with a Quadro 4 750 at least. The Geforce cards can run Houdini, but it will run much better on a Quadro. If you can afford it, the Quadro FX 1000 is really nice, otherwise the 750 and 980 XGLs are great. If you want the newest latest hardware features and can't aford the FX 1000, the FX 500 will provide about half the speed of the 1000 for less than half the price, but it's probably actually be slower than the 750 XGL.

So, in USD

Linux - free
MainBoard (Intel D875PBZ) ~ 150
PIV 2.6 Ghz 800 FSB ~220
1 Gig PC 3200 DDR RAM ~ 220
120 Gig HD ~ 100
Quadro 750 XGL (the newer FX 500 is about the same price) ~ 350

That'll run Houdini great and you'll have enough money left to get a decent case and powersupply to put it all in, plus a keyboard, mouse, floppy (you may want this since you will be using Linux) and a CD Drive. You may also need an adapter for your Mac monitor. You can save a 150 or so dollars if you go with AMD or a smaller HardDrive if you like.
trini
i have been reading about and realised that ati has been giving some of you guys trouble. however can someone clrify the diff between a Quadro XGL and Quadro FX…

Michael, what kinda of issues you have with Athlon? Crashing or poor performance?
MichaelC
The FX is newer hardware which fully supports DX 9 (which you won't care about if you are using Linux) and will supposively fully support Open GL 1.5 and 2.0 (which you may care about with future Houdini releases). Other than that the FX is supposed to have better precision and a larger instruction set for shaders, etc, all of which may not make a difference to you as Houdini isn't riding the bleeding edge of Hardware rendering. If your only concern is Houdini in Linux, you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference performance wise between a 980 XGL and an FX 1000 unless you ran some benchmarks.

My main issue with the Athlon is cooling. I don't overclock but these Athlons run really hot anyhow. I have one machine I can't run when the temperature is above about 82 because the machine will overheat. I've tried all sorts of different fans, but unfortunately the only ones that can keep it cool are also very loud. Also, every Athlon I've ever bought had stability issues which mostly stemmed from the motherboard bios and seemed to get fixed after a bios update or two. Currently I have an Athlon XP 2200 that runs ok in Linux, but has some infrequent trouble in Windows. It was retail and the fan and Heatsink it came with weren't enough to keep it cool as Summer temps started to rise. I had to spend an extra 40 dollars on a cooling system to keep it running. I can't trust either of these machines to stay up rendering for any length of time. To be fair the last Pentium I used was a Pentium III, but it never really gave me any trouble, and I have to believe the Pentiums IV's aren't as much of a hassle as these Athlons have been for me. I'd rather sacrifice a bit of performance and spend a little extra money if it meant my computer would be more stable.
trini
Just in case getting a Quadro is out of my budget , do you suggest that I get a GeForce video card?
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