I guess this is the place to post this. I will be building a new pc very soon and I have Received some suggestions and would like to hear from you guys. I want to build it more as a workstation but would like to play a few games on it as well. (oblivion, TDU, and maybe an mmo)

This is the build I designed a few months ago. Tell me what you guys think. At the time I designed this build I was working with a budget of $500-ish, now I think I can comfortably go up to about $1,000
My PC Build
I will be using 3Ds Max 2008 and Photoshop cs3 mainly.

3Ds Max 2010
Vista Home Premium
Intell Core 2 Duo 3.16 GHz
Gigabyte EP45-UD3R motherboard
4 Gig Ram
GeForce 9800GTX videocard

It is actually “on topic” for this forum (Installation - Hardware - OS) so I moved it here for you.

There are many, many threads in here about speccing out new systems for Max - have a read through them for ideas and information on what others are buying.

Max 4.2 through 2013.
XP-64 (SP2)
NVidia 9800GTX-512 (Driver 266.58).
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX9.0c.

Thanks, I’ll do a little digging around and see what I can see.

3Ds Max 2010
Vista Home Premium
Intell Core 2 Duo 3.16 GHz
Gigabyte EP45-UD3R motherboard
4 Gig Ram
GeForce 9800GTX videocard

Hey guys I have one question that I don’t think has really been asked. I am not all up to date on the newer tech. First off here is what I came up with for a build:

Case

Video Card

Power Supply

Memory

Mother Board

CPU

Now for my question. Since I will be running DDR2 memory, will the video card not be compatible since it is DDR3? I am aware that 32bit only sees 3.2 gigs of memory also, would getting 2 gigs be better then getting 4? I figured since it is so cheap might as well get as much as I can

3Ds Max 2010
Vista Home Premium
Intell Core 2 Duo 3.16 GHz
Gigabyte EP45-UD3R motherboard
4 Gig Ram
GeForce 9800GTX videocard

Hi, noreflection.

To answer your last couple of questions, yes DDR2 memory is compatible with GPU’s DDR3 memory no problem with that. And in 32 bit Windows, each application can use up to 2GB of RAM but get 4GB if you can, cause Windows uses by themselves couple of hundreds of RAM, Vista even more than XP. So get 4GB, they are cheap these days and you will use it if running multiple applications.

Your setup is quite good, but for some work in Max and also gaming, I would suggest Quad core processor, cause they are much faster in rendering. In my country you can get new Core 2 Quad 8400, which should be about the same price as Core 2 Duo E8500 that you mentioned. Q8400 is also very good in games. Also if you like AMD, Phenom II 940 BE is also an option, but a bit expensive here, you must check prices in your country.

Here is a good review in which all of these 3 processors are listed. You can see 3ds Max benchmark and also couple of games, so you can decide for yourself.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3559&p=7

Motherboard and Memory choices are very good as well as the graphic card.

Hope this helps.