Can you better this spec for 3D/Video work?

[dbh]

Thanks Shaithis I do remember reading about this as you used to be able to do it with FireGL and certain Radeon cards will have a read into it!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

There is also another version of the Gigabyte motherboard which has USB3.0 too:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/198314

The Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H is cheaper but the Asus motherboard is better it seems:

http://techreport.com/articles.x/18539/1

[Pob255]

Speaking to a friend of mine who is in the industry, he says that viewport speed is what all the fuss is about.

The quadro/firegl viewport speeds are insane compared to the gaming cards.......we are talking 2 generation old WS card gigantically out-performing todays flagship gaming cards.

Pay attention to this, graphics cards still do almost nothing in 3d rendering, it's just the viewport (ie the working view)
That said the issue is not the card them selves but the drivers, a while back there where hacked drivers you could use to turn a ati radeon into a firegl card.
not sure what the current situation with gaming cards is, from my experience it's not so much slowdown as lack of features, although most of the stuff I do would be called low ploy these days.
(this is one of the thing I dislike both ati and nvidia for, producing workstation which are little more than gaming cards with better drivers and at the same time undercutting and driving out of business the few couple of companies who where still leading the way with top end 3d workstation cards)

There are a couple of things that can use GPGPU, namely physX (yes 3d software can use it for physics, although it's generally seen as not as good as cpu based default systems), there are some CUDA things as well (a couple of post effects if I remember correctly) and some lighting effects can also be offloaded onto the gpu in the post pass.
For which card to get I'd look into what exactly you plan to use and what works best.

I'd deffinatly go for an i7 or phenomII x6 cpu as that is where the major work will be done.
putting in two drives on raid 0 is a good idea more for emergency than anything else, don't want one to die half way through a major render and then be stuck waiting for RMA before you can continue, also stuff will get big and trying to shift gb's of data across a network is a major load.
Make sure your connecting via a gigabit switch, if the switch (at your end or any on the path to the server) is an old 10/100 then it's going to take ages to shift data about.



On the subject of Case, the elite 370 is decent enough for what you want, add 1x140mm for the front and 2x120mm for the top (long renders will thrash the cpu, memory and hard drive)
I'd not go for a tricool as the big advantage to them is the speed switch, but you'll not want to open up the case to change the speed setting.
Also that case is going to be a bit of a dust magnet. (it'll get sucked in via the side panel vents)

I'd say a Lancool K62 http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Compo...ource=googleps as a complete case with no added bits needed.

The HAF 912+ would be another good probable option, but it's a bit pricey when you have to add in extra fan costs.

Bit expensive, so how about the Silverstone Precision PS03B http://www.scan.co.uk/products/silve...r-case-w-o-psu you'll want to add 1x120mm and 1x140mm to it, should be enough cooling with the added fans and the only intake is the mesh front which is filtered, so long running with less dust issues. (and it'll not look like you've spent money on a gaming case )