building a pc for 3d studio max

[bris0022]

I plan on building a pc to support 3d Studio Max. Does any experienced users out there have any advice on the minimum requirements for components? Thanks!

[DrZaius]

Hi bris0022, welcome to the PC Mech forums!

3D rendering systems require a lot of horsepower, the faster the processor the quicker the render times. The first thing you need to decide is if you want to use an Intel or AMD processor. 3D Studio Max itself has been optimized for the Pentium 4, but I have seen the new Athlon XP processor beat it in benchmarks with a slight margin (about 3%.)

If you go with the Pentium 4, I would definately use RDRAM since it yields the highest memory performance. That means you'll need an good board (Intel, Abit, Asus) with the Intel 850 chipset like the Asus P4T-E.

If you use the Athlon XP then you'll want to use DDR memory. The KT266A chipset has the high performance scores and good board include the Abit KR7A and EPoX EP-8KHA+.

Either processor you choose, the system will need a lot of memory, at least 512MB (RDRAM for the Pentium 4, DDR for the Athlon XP.) You'll also want a big and fast harddrive, a Maxtor or IBM (avoid the 75GXP drives) around 40-80GB, ATA/100 or 133 and 7200RPM. If you want to spend more you could even go the SCSI route.

If you want a high end system then you'll also want a good 3D video card. The best are the ELSA Synergy Quadro2 cards (nVidia chipset) and the FireGL cards from ATI.

Hope that helps.