OT: Hardware opinions sought

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 12 April 2006 05:17, Anne Wilson wrote:
>My grandson is about to embark on a university course for computer
> graphics and animation, and as such, he keeps an eye out for graphics
> card developments.  He has spotted that cclonline are offering a
> 512MB graphics card for under £100, but on investigation it turns out
> to be PCI Express, which his motherboard doesn't support.  Upgrading
> card, mobo and cpu (and possibly RAM) is beyond his budget.
>
>The question, then, is whether such an upgrade would provide a truly
> useful improvement, with regard to his uni work.  I am happy to
> finance the move if it does, but not if it only improves
> game-playing.
>
>I'd appreciate any comments.  Reply off-list, if it seems appropriate.
>  Thanks
>
>Anne

Generally, render time is cash time to a graphics production facility.
We have such a pci-x system running at the tv station, not sure of the 
actual card involved, but the whole system runs on an Apple G5, with 3 
monitors, and does from scratch animation renders at about 1/2 real 
time, cacheing the results to hard drives.  The previous system we had 
to do that ran on x86 stuff and the render time was at least 10 minutes 
for a 30 second spot.  I believe this one also can directly output the 
mpeg2 video, but its quicker to pipe it to a realtime vela encoder card 
in another machine.

I can remember when such a project, done on an amiga, was a weeks work 
or more, done in its spare time on a 24/7 basis.  So it might have 12 
to 18 hours a day to devote to the graphics rendering.

However, to consider that systems use for a student isn't at all 
practical since that systems costs ran well into the 5th digit in 
dollars.  One should add that just because a system is fast, doesn't 
make it automaticly high quality, that can only come from the hands 
doing the compositing.  Slow systems therefore encourage the student to 
do it right the first time and might well be the better teacher at the 
end of the course.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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