Hi guys

Right now I am using:
Quad core 2.9
6 RAM
Quadro 1700

I can't work smoothly with simulations. (Fluids specially), I am thinking about buying a new system but I have a doubt.


What will be the best for sims in Houdini ?

CPU's or RAM ? I know that the two are relevant but here is what i have in mind.

Option 1

Workstation Xeon 2ghz x 2
Nvidia Quadro 3800 1 Gb
12 GB Ram

Option 2

PC i7 Over-clocked to 3.2
1.8GB NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 295 (This means 2 video cards ?)
24 GB in RAM

They share the same price ratio and as you can see one is giving me more RAM and the other one more CPU's.

Is it worthed to jump and buy this system, or you think is not going to have a high impact compared to what I am using. (I seen in another topic that I share similar specs with a lot of you guys but I don't know if I am the only one running slow sims )


Thank you for your time and opinions.

I can't work smoothly with simulations. (Fluids specially), I am thinking about buying a new system but I have a doubt.

Can you really ever have enough ram and processor power ? . I wonder if you can do a distributed sim with the Amazon ec2 cloud ?

Rob

I think it is not related to your system ….. you already have a good workstation, the issue is you have to adjust your simulation to use most of what you have.
have a look at cache memory MB.
there is a fantastic tutorial about Fluid Dynamics in Houdini …
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1301&Itemid=262 [sidefx.com]

cheers

circusmonkey

I can't work smoothly with simulations. (Fluids specially), I am thinking about buying a new system but I have a doubt.

Can you really ever have enough ram and processor power ? . I wonder if you can do a distributed sim with the Amazon ec2 cloud?

Rob

The cloud is wonderful but for what I understand you can't use it with simulations right now, can you ?. (Coming soon)
(I have a bad understanding of english some times on some words)

Thank you.

mabulazm
I think it is not related to your system ….. you already have a good workstation, the issue is you have to adjust your simulation to use most of what you have.
have a look at cache memory MB.
there is a fantastic tutorial about Fluid Dynamics in Houdini …
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1301&Itemid=262 [sidefx.com]

cheers

That is good to hear.

Now, the cache memory is not only for preview during simulations.

I mean if I change the particle separation parameter to 0.01 it takes forever to move one frame even if I increase the cache memory to 3000.
Is this not only for telling houdini how much of the sim to store in may RAM? Or this parameter actually affect the speed ?

I am going to whatch the videos to.

Thank yoou.