I know I'am ;) so no need to boil up :)
btw. take a closer look at the spec of the your board and the board that I suggested and pay attention to the slots for instance.
badbyte wroteI know I'am ;) so no need to boil up :)
btw. take a closer look at the spec of the your board and the board that I suggested and pay attention to the slots for instance.
Why would he need the highest end board of 2004 ?? Give me 1 single reason ? The B75 chipset is way better than the P45.

Please explain to me, why the diddly do is your suggestion better ? When he has a massive budget ? Just give me 1 reason.
Adding another Graphic card along with the one existing?
Lets just agree that in the cpu intensive uses like rendering you are totally correct.
And when it comes to office use and servers I'am correct.
You are wrong in both cases.
Adding another graphics card ? Anything more than a 285 will cause a bottleneck. So that's useless.

Office use? You can get a Pentium for cheaper and it will still be faster.

Core2 series are dead. Admit it.
For what it's worth I agree with badbyte.

There's a trend in getting the "latest" equipment every time manufacturers get something out. Of course Intel loves it since it means higher sales and higher profits.

@AvoK95: You're arguing that Core2 are outdated simply because there's something newer. You're not even tackling the real issue of whether a Core2 is enough. I'm no expert, but I'm assuming that since most of the processing will be relegated to the GPU (or some graphics component), your CPU won't be the bottleneck. I might be wrong, and I'd love to hear the counter argument, but arguing that you should buy the newer simply because it's newer is ludicrous. There's a lot of hype in this industry, and we're throwing away perfectly good components simply because there're newer ones.

@Mr.Issa: Buying the latest gear might work for you, but it's also a sure way of throwing a lot of money out the window. Instead, I suggest you spend some time identifying which are the components that you should improve and enhance your computer one part at a time.

I have no idea how to do this on Windows, but you want to profile the execution of your software. Do you need more cores? Another graphic card? Or maybe it's disk/memory access that's taking more time than it should? Modern systems are so complicated, it's virtually impossible to predict where your problem lies exactly. We may have a hunch, but from experience, the only way to know for sure is to profile.

Throwing away your current system because of slow(-ish) rendering time, is like buying a new house because you found a water leak next to the bathroom. There are ways to fix your problem without costing this much money and teaching you a lot about your system on the way.
badbyte, stop recommending buying Core 2 CPUs for anything. DDR2 RAM is more expensive than DDR3 RAM, the boards are low in stock and are more expensive than budget boards for LGA1155 that have newer features and support newer CPUs anyways, and the CPUs themselves are more expensive in general than Sandy Bridge / Ivy Bridge Core i3s which are faster, no matter how you spin it, than Core 2 Quads, since they come close to, if not exceed, twice the performance PER CORE at the same clock frequencies, and we all know those Core i3s run above 3GHz, killing off most Core 2 Quads that are non-Extreme purely in clockspeed.

@rahmu: It's more a case of: I have a CPU with older architecture, and a CPU with newer architecture. The new CPU is faster than the old CPU. It also costs me less. I want to buy a CPU, and I want to use it to decorate the room or attach it to my keychain. I would still pick the new CPU over the old one.

Even if the older CPU is cheaper than the newer one, and I don't need performance, I will have to factor in power consumption, and that can change things. Newer CPUs are much better at idling than older CPUs. New power gates are more advanced. So is power management itself. Under load, the new CPUs consume less.
When there is a component which is faster than another component there will always be bottleneck no matter what the situation is.
Rendering or even gaming both need higher end processors than the Core2 series. People don't throw away their PC's just because it's old or slow, they throw them out because they won't be able to upgrade to anything better or faster. Because by doing that, they have to upgrade their motherboard thus also their CPU and RAM, since most LGA 775 (Core2 socket) CPUs use DDR2 memory or even they did have DDR3, they will be limited to 1066 due to the limit of the chipset's front side bus.

You can get more expandability, cheaper price and far better performance, not mention reliability and the fact that you'll have something cutting edge new, for the same amount of money.

Now I don't see why should anyone waste money on something slow and old with the possibility of spending more money on upgrading it when they can directly get something newer and better and even cheaper for the same price.

But when it comes to the fact of buying something that costs cheaper and older but have the same socket and almost the same performance is something different. For example, I am building a very budget gaming machine for a friend and I'm using an H61 board instead of a B75 board (H61 is older) But due to the fact of H61 being cheaper and not effecting the performance and the user experience I don't see any reason to spend $90 more on a B75 motherboard when the user won't feel any difference.
Same story in the case of CPUs. Some people tend to buy older architecture CPUs to save a bit of money on something like a graphics card. But they do that because Intel has a "Tick Tock" strategy where the "Tock" has major architecture changes (Performance wise of course) and the "Tick" is just an architecture shrink (Like Sandy Bridge vs Sandy Bridge). In this case, buying an older architecture CPU will be far more cheaper and will have almost the same amount of performance.
Not to mention with today's new "i" series of processors being insanely cheaper and faster than Core2 processors. It doesn't matter any more whether to get the latest or the older architecture (This is in case of the "i" series). Because an old 2500K (Second generation i5) can still handle up to 3 or 4 high end graphics cards without having a hiccup where something like a Core2Quad can barely handle an old GTX460, due to bottleneck. And a GTX 460 is now too old of a card to give great performance in 1080P games, due to the fact that games and programs are keep getting more demanding. Max Payne 3's recommended requirements suggest you use a GTX 580 with a 3930K (A $600 processor) A 3930K scores 12089 in CPU mark whereas the Core2Quad 3GHz scores just 4,057 CPU mark points.

The Core2 Quad has the power of an i3 and costs double of an i3. The Pentium G850 @2.9GHz scored 2,662 where the Core2 Duo E8600 @3.11 GHz scored 2,406 CPU mark points. The Pentium costs 60~ish dollars and the Core2 Duo costs 280~ish dollars (At that time)

And don't let me get started on power consumption...

Look at it yourself @ http://www.cpubenchmark.net/
i wont get into all this technical argumentation, it's totally beside the point of the topic.

The way i always do it is keep a few machines for rendering and one machine for modeling. Keep the downtime of waiting for a render to a minimum, and increase performance.
If your aim is to get into decent modeling and animation, start putting a budget for a small render farm, my guess would be something like 4 to 6k. u can build smth smaller and increase.
As for your main modeling machine, the one ur currently using and planning to use, that will depend on the workload.
How many polys are we talking about ? what's the target render time per frame ? What are your typical settings in VRay ?
Lets take it from a different angle. Lets say you have an Core2-Duo or whatever laying around and just catching dust. OK? And here is what I only say:
IF you want to use it for simple stuff like office work, C# or programming of this sort of work then YES. When it comes to gaming, it is a preference of the user himself, of what is really satisfying for him and not the opinion of others.
When it comes to 3D modeling, and 3D animation where I can imagine that this needs serious number crunching, then yes. The reason why I said to take a look at the specs of the 2 mobos is that you can only add 1 nice card onto it. I prefer to have open options, and srious gamers invest into a mobo with 2 pci express slots like this one which I find it as cheap:
http://www.alternate.de/html/product/GIGABYTE/GA-Z77-DS3H/993354/?

Now don't get irritated from the german language, if you want to see the full specs then click onto "Datenblatt" it will spill you out the specs of the board.

Then you have a micro-itx here
And this one I'll personally go for when I would get a nice gaming machine.

When it comes to gaming everyone will have to know himself. If someone is playing the same games everyday like the koreans with starcraft 1 + 2 AND this person is NOT interested in getting the latest games, and even he gets one of the latest game he or she will be judinging him- or herself if it is time to upgrade or not.


If you get a monster graphic card + a fat CPU why not, mabrouk really.
And agian I say, you are NOT wrong or right this is just a matter of satisfaction of each PC owner himself. Or lets put it into your words, it really depends if the user notices the bottlenecks or hickups.
You just changed your suggestion.

When you have a Core2 Duo machine that satisfies you, there is no reason to get a new one. Where you can just upgrade your RAM.
But having a choice of buying a Core2 PC vs a brand new PC for the same price. The brand new PC is the way to go. Weather it's for gaming or even office work. New always beats old. It will be cheaper, faster, smaller, more efficient and just better in all corners.

Also, buying 2 cards will be slower than buying 1 faster card. And it will cost the same. And draw less power, meaning less stress on your CPU, motherboard and PSU, for better performance.

The board you mentioned is a Micro ATX. Not ITX.


You are correct about the differing to the user, but that's still not something to consider buying a used PC vs a new one. There's always something to buy no matter what the price is. You can get a CPU from $40 up to $3000.
But even for games like WOW or Starcraft will have updates in the future and will be more demanding in due time. WOW used to run on a Pentium 4 with a 32MB TN2 Geforce card where now it can barely run on a GT610 (Which is more than 10 times faster)

You can't get a cheap old CPU and stick a monster graphics card. It will have a bottleneck. That's when one component is faster than the other.

As you can see, lots of data is trying to be processed when the opening is small (In this case the CPU being slow) So less data is being processed (To the GPU).
GIRLS ! Take ur debate out please and lets just help the guy out.:P
Padre wroteGIRLS ! Take ur debate out please and lets just help the guy out.:P
Hahahaha, good point!
I must admit that this discussion is getting off topic so sorry for that in advance
Plus I love the cute pix :) and I know what a bottleneck is XD
And I know all the form factors :)

Now refering to my post #30, I mentioned a PC that is catching dust etc etc etc and what not...
since you have a PC, I admit that it considered as OLD when it has a Core2-XXXX but it does the job. Just like a screwdriver and a electrically driven screwdriver. They both do the same job where you have with the manual one more control of the torque.
And yes it makes a difference when you run 2 graphic cards with of the same type, they distribute the workload.
@Padre: I think he got his question answered, and we should move our discussion to another thread...
badbyte wroteI must admit that this discussion is getting off topic so sorry for that in advance
Plus I love the cute pix :) and I know what a bottleneck is XD
And I know all the form factors :)

Now refering to my post #30, I mentioned a PC that is catching dust etc etc etc and what not...
since you have a PC, I admit that it considered as OLD when it has a Core2-XXXX but it does the job. Just like a screwdriver and a electrically driven screwdriver. They both do the same job where you have with the manual one more control of the torque.
And yes it makes a difference when you run 2 graphic cards with of the same type, they distribute the workload.
Both get the job done, yes. But which one does it faster ? :D Sure, if you already own a screw driver there's no reason to buy a new one. But when you're going to buy a new one and the electric one costs the same and does a better job, I don't see any reason why you should get an older screw driver.
Thanks for your help guys I'll build what Avo has suggested.

@Padre: Is there any render farms in Beirut where you can pay and render complex scenes ?
This is the exact turning point!!! If you just want to screw driver where need to put 100 screws into a wall as soon as possible, then yes your choice is the correct one. And yes I can do it manually but ill way slower but in the end "both get the job done", only difference is that one gets it faster done than the other. And since someone doesn't want a screw driver and throws it away AND it still FUNCTIONS why not?
But if you want to screw one of the fine little ones of a case of a microcontroller then it isn't really a good choice since you can break the screw and probably never open the case again. So here a manual one would be more preferred in this case.
badbyte wroteThis is the exact turning point!!! If you just want to screw driver where need to put 100 screws into a wall as soon as possible, then yes your choice is the correct one. And yes I can do it manually but ill way slower but in the end "both get the job done", only difference is that one gets it faster done than the other. And since someone doesn't want a screw driver and throws it away AND it still FUNCTIONS why not?
But if you want to screw one of the fine little ones of a case of a microcontroller then it isn't really a good choice since you can break the screw and probably never open the case again. So here a manual one would be more preferred in this case.
Bad example.
Good morning, hope that you had your coffee. :)
I know why you had see this as a bad example cause I got my point cleared out here.
Now if you have some Hardware laying around that you consider as obsolete like the Core2Duos or Quads, let me know. I'll buy them off of you for 10$ or 20$ no problem.?:)
Do you do any case mods btw.?