Replies – Forums – Todd Werner

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Todd Werner
June 9, 2014 at 2:10 pm in reply to: New system – which GPU

[John Rofrano] “The ATI Radeon HD 6970 is the latest card that works with GPU rendering. Cards from the 7000 series and beyond will only accelerate the timeline playback but don’t seem to work with the MainConcept AVC encoder which I use a lot.”

Hi John,
I ordered that HP z420 with a Xeon 6-Core E5-1650 v2 3.50GHz I had asked about. It was 47% off, so I figured it wasn’t worth waiting for a better deal.

I now want to get a GPU for it just for preview. I see lots of R7 250x and 260x cards around new for $95-110, and the 6970 for only a few dollars more. On AnandTech’s Vegas rendering test the 260x and 6970 are close, the 250x is a little slower, but uses significantly less power. Power use was around 190W, 223W, 314W on those 3 cards on their FurMark test.

Since I’m only going to use the GPU for preview, is it safer to go with the lower powered card for system stability and less heat? Between the 250x and the 260x, it almost seems like I should just go for the 260x since they’re about the same price, but I wonder about the wattage given the power supply is only 600W.
Todd Werner
June 6, 2014 at 2:52 pm in reply to: Absolute Newb asking for computer advice.

I decided to go with a 6 z420 workstation. Found one new for 47% off with that 6 core 3.5GHz processor and not much else. 8MB ram, 500GB drive.

I’ll add a 250Gb SSD drive, a wi-fi card, and maybe 8Mb more RAM (if you guys say I need more RAM). I’ll render without the GPU so I guess the question is do I need a GPU for previewing, or is a fast CPU enough?

Thanks again for the guidance!
Todd Werner
June 5, 2014 at 3:30 am in reply to: Absolute Newb asking for computer advice.

Thank you. I’ll check my budget and look a bit more if the CPU is the most important piece of this puzzle. There are some close-out z420’s with the 3.5 GHz 6 core xeon around, but they are pretty stripped down in my price range. No GPU, only 8mb memory, and only 500gb drives. I don’t know if a 6 core CPU means I won’t need a GPU, but I guess I could add an inexpensive GPU if it’s mandatory. One nice thing about the z420’s is the 3 year waranty!
Todd Werner
June 5, 2014 at 1:01 am in reply to: Absolute Newb asking for computer advice.

I also found this, which has a better warranty:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/271500293950?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
but I thought it would be a much slower computer.
Todd