Rendering times

[monoflap]

I've just started modeling in blender and I was wondering what affects render times the most? I was also wondering how my video card would affect the speed and if getting a rendering card would be worth it. Right now I'm running
athalon XP at 2.44 Ghz
geforce 6200
2Gb of low latency patriot ram
maxtor parrallel ata 160 Gb hard drive

Thanks for the help?

[danthegeek]

I believe it is a combination of both video card and cpu power. Although I do not use any rendering software and could not tell you for sure, I think your system would not benefit enough from a new card to justify the price. Your XP processor would most likely be a large bottleneck for the GPU. I would still wait for a second opinion though.

hope I helped.

[.Maleficus.]

Main hardware that affects it: CPU, RAM, and video card.

But, it depends on what you're rendering. I was rendering an image on the system in my sig, using the Indigo renderer and glass effects, and I had it rendering 100% power on everything, for 24 hours, and it didn't even get 1% done.

Your video card now doesn't warrant an upgrade. It's AGP, correct? Not worth it. You'd need to upgrade your processor to keep up, and that'd be an upgrade of dead tech, so you should either stick to what you have or get an entirely new system, like a C2D, X2, or Pentium D.

[monoflap]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I'm going to make an entirely new rig (really dumb of me). It will be socket 775 so I can go quad core later. I was just wondering If I should even consider buying a video card specifically for rendering. Thanks for the help though!

[Airbozo]

FWIW; Some graphics companies use headless clusters to render animation and other effects. No graphics card at all, just heaps of memory and cpu's... I do not have any direct experience with rendering stuff and could not say if the gpu even gets heated. I do know that the disk subsystem, cpu and memory are really driven during rendering cycles. I suppose that if the program was written right, the gpu would be used.

[rendermandan]

in a realtime render situation such as using Navisworks the video card is doing all the processing. the amount of ram is what allows you load more objects into the scene. of course the cpu works together with both. However in a true Rendering situation, where the computer takes 1-2 hours to generate 1 image. that is strictly CPU dependant. A video card will not make one bit of difference there. The ram will make some difference as the cpu uses ram for the 3d model.

Hope that helps.

[monoflap]

Thanks guys, you saved me a ton of time searched the web. I knew you would come through!