I am looking to buy a PC on which to learn Houdini. From the currently available graphics cards, is there one which is guaranteed to work with Houdini without costing the earth. Or can anyone recommend a PC which will work off the shelf.

Hello,
I have AMD XP 2200+, 768Mb RAM, GeForce4 MX440 (this is a low budget system ), it takes a while rendering but for me, as a beginner, its just what I need.

Cheers,
Romulus C.


P.S. I'm thinking to upgrade to GeForce FX 5500. Does anyone know how Houdini behaves with it?

Narr go for something a bit better than a 440 mx the Linux drivers for it have issues with the 2.6 kernel i have a NVIDIA 5900 xt but I am shore there is something in the next bracket above the 440 mx… But if you won’t be using Houdini in Linux it does the job in windows.

radeon 9200SE to replace a geforce2 GTS that didnt make it.. both work fine for basic stuff, houdini is very light on resource use.

Thanks for the replies, guys.
Not being very well up in these matters, it was a little mind-blowing to find that the PC's and video cards recommended by Sidefx were either too expensive or out of production. If I did find a suitable card it would be AGP, when all the current motherbards seem to be PCI-express.

Best Regards

Peter Agombar

a nVIDIA FX5200 128meg or better should get you going without a worry and anything better is gravy

unles you are going to get a Pro card you are best getting a nvidia gameing card.

and i thought radeon cards didnt play well with houdini.

It's not really so much the video card as their opengl driver. I believe there are some versions of the Catalyst driver which are suitable.

yeah houdini doesnt run so well in windows with the radeon, smooth as in linux though (ubuntu set OpenGL up automatically too which is nice).

Houdini works great on the NVidia 6800 here at work.

By the way, I have a 512 MB 3dLabs Wildcat VP990 Pro that I am interested in parting with for $350.

-Craig
(craigleehoffman@aol.com