3D & Video Upgrade

[treebus]

Hi all,
I' looking to upgrade my system a little for use with 3D and compositing software. I'm considering either more RAM or a faster hard drive setup. I predominantly use Maya and Aftereffects.
So what would increse performance in these programs more hard drives or RAM?

Here's my system:
I7 920
ASUS P6T
4870
Corsair DDR3 1600
Western Digital 800GB SATA2
PSU Corsair 620HX

Thanks in advance.

 

[treebus]

Sorry I have 6GB of RAM

 

[skora]

6gigs is a good start and unless you're using large project files, you should be fine. You can do a simple check by loading up your main apps all at once, load files, and check taskmanager performance to see how much physical memory you're using. If you're using well below 6, then ram isn't the issue.

Not sure how HDD setup effects maya, but I know a workstation GPU will do wonders for it over a gaming GPU. Granted, its the same hardware, but the drivers are what makes the difference. Nvidia puts a lot more into their drivers than ATI, so I'd look there. Here's a benchmark review of the workstation cards.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/quadrofx-firepro.html

And there's always OC'ing the CPU. You should be fine at mid 3ghz on the stock fan or spend a little like the Hyper 212 $30 and can get closer to 4ghz.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103065&cm_re=hyper_212-_-35-103-065-_-Product

 

[treebus]

Thanks for the reply skora.
I have Photoshop, Aftereffects and Maya open right now (Maya is batch rendering), using 4.81gb. I usually reserve a core for other apps when rendering.
Yea, can't really afford a workstation card right now, but I've herd you can softmod consumer cards. This could be an option.
I would consider OCi'ng but I don't really like my temps at stock speeds. When rendering my core temps push 72C using COGAGE TRUE. I think I might have got a hot chip?

 

[kyzar]

IMO overclocking any machine used for productivity over leisure is just asking for trouble - but then I'm an IT manager that has to look after dozens of PCs and servers, what do I know?

Also - having been there - I'd live with your gfx card if you can't afford to change to a productivity GPU - for the same reasons of reliability. Personally I'd look at a cheap RAID0 setup (with backups!) - as I've mentioned somewhere else today, I moved my home machine from a 2 x 500gb RAID0 on the normal mobo controller to a single 300gb raptor - the slowdown moving to the raptor is still annoying me, 6 months later...

 

[treebus]

So what kind of drives do I need for a good RAID setup for video editing, and what's the 01 thing? Is it difficult to set up?