Using Vista with 3D content creation

[Guest]

A question for Microsoft. Which version of Vista and how should it be setup
to provide maximum performance to 3D content creation programs like Maya, 3DS
MAX, Cinema 4D, Poser, Vue and other similar programs? Please note that such
programs need the largest possible amount of physical RAM they can get and as
little background processing other than themselves as possible to keep
rendering times from being excessive. I say physical RAM as use of virtual
memory slows rendering by a large factor. Note also that at present most such
programs are not yet 64-bit capable. Thank you for any help you can give me
with this.

 

[Robert Moir]

A question for Microsoft. Which version of Vista and how should it be
setup to provide maximum performance to 3D content creation programs
like Maya, 3DS MAX, Cinema 4D, Poser, Vue and other similar programs?
Please note that such programs need the largest possible amount of
physical RAM they can get and as little background processing other
than themselves as possible to keep rendering times from being
excessive. I say physical RAM as use of virtual memory slows
rendering by a large factor. Note also that at present most such
programs are not yet 64-bit capable. Thank you for any help you can
give me with this.

I would have said one of the business editions, as these would have the
minimum amount of "fluff" running that would distract from the main purpose
of the machine.

Other than that, you'd build the system the same way you would with XP as
your starting point right now, buying hardware parts that would work well in
a 64bit configuration so that you can upgrade just as soon as your software
of choice becomes available in a 64bit edition.

 

[Robert Moir]

Well, it's an ASUS P5LD2 motherboard with a P4 930 dual core, 2GB of
RAM, over 500GB of hard drive and a 7300 GT PCI-express video. I know
the 930 is capable of E64MT. I'm not sure if that's 64-bit capable or
not. It's also running 2000 at the moment. I'll have to do some
research.

Actually, you may well need some driver updates and possibly a bios update,
but i'd say you're pretty much golden with 32 or 64 bit vista at your
conveniance.

 

[Fat Bastard]

The kernel for Vista is basically the same regardless of whether you use
Ultimate or one of the lower end versions, so none of them is going to be
inherently better than the other for programs like that. Even though the
programs aren't natively 64-bit, I would still recommend using 64-bit Vista
due to it's better handling of large memory. Unless of course you have
hardware that does not yet have 64-bit drivers available.