Equipment advice please...

I am running an AMD 2400 XP with 1gig ram, a 80G SATA 7200 drive and a
GeForce3 Classic AGP with SWX 2005 0.0 . I don't have any real complaints
about speed but was looking for the groups opinion about what I would need t
buy to get a real noticeable speed increase.



I am using this for relatively complex solids but no complex multi screen
assemblies and only one screen open at a time.. Rendering is a priority and
it this machine is just a bit slow. All other programs the machine does
quite well without any complaints. I haven't kept up with the available
chips and graphics cards. I appreciate your help.

 

See the "New Gaming Rig" thread for some comments about high-end dual
video cards.

Most people use the highest end or nearly highest that approved on the
official SolidWorks list, with nVIDIA seeming to be the preferred ones.

Bo

 

For rendering it's all about the CPU. Have you looked into
overclocking? That's free if your current motherboard has those bios
options.

Read this great article about your CPU.
http://www.cluboverclocker.com/reviews/cpu/amd/xp2400/

 

Rendering is one of the very few places where more than one CPU really
helps. Does your mother board have two CPU slots?

Use the task manager to check on your virtual memory usage. If you are using
any more memory than your physical memory, then adding another gig of memory
should make a big difference. If you are using more than 2 GB of memory than
add 2 or 3 GB.


Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"