Topic: Help Me Buy a PC dedicated to Lumion

[cmeed]

Hello One and All Lumion-aries- I need Help buying a Pc. I have never bought a Pc having used and owned a Mac for many years. Lumion is PC based and Graphics card lead. Updating my Macs to run Lumion is way above what I can afford. My Mac graphics cards and windows7 are letting me down. I don't have unlimited funds as this is going to be a joint venture with my set designer I work for, what we buy will be dedicated to Lumion and sketchup. I will have to look at the secondhand market preferably with a screen too. Ebay tells me that I could get something for around £600 £700 - graphics card benchmark 1300+.
When I'm looking, should i look for i7 and a high benchmark ? what would be a suitable benchmark for my pounds?  are these that the best things to look at for lumion?
Any help on this would be gratefully received
cheers
Chris

[Remko]

Most important is your GPU and enough RAM. If you are on a budget you can get a GeForce 560 or something like that. Also, the amount of RAM on the GPU is important so make sure it has at least 1GB of RAM on the GPU. The best GPU is the fastest GPU but keep in mind Lumion does not work very well with SLI so a 590 or dual GPU setup does not give you extra performance over a single GPU.

[darbo]

I recently upgraded my video card to an EVGA 3072mb GTX580. I think it's the best video card for Lumion as it has the processing power and onboard memory suitable for both rendering and navigating the Lumion interface. If you get a GTX580, be sure to have a suitable power supply. Minimum is 600 watts. Mine is 650 watts and I've not had any problems; 750 might be safer.

[cmeed]

I recently upgraded my video card to an EVGA 3072mb GTX580. I think it's the best video card for Lumion as it has the processing power and onboard memory suitable for both rendering and navigating the Lumion interface. If you get a GTX580, be sure to have a suitable power supply. Minimum is 600 watts. Mine is 650 watts and I've not had any problems; 750 might be safer.

Do you think I'll find a machine with a GTX580 card secondhand for the price - £700 ? mmmm

[cmeed]

Most important is your GPU and enough RAM. If you are on a budget you can get a GeForce 560 or something like that. Also, the amount of RAM on the GPU is important so make sure it has at least 1GB of RAM on the GPU. The best GPU is the fastest GPU but keep in mind Lumion does not work very well with SLI so a 590 or dual GPU setup does not give you extra performance over a single GPU.

Is this Spec any good? but is this the "SLI" you're advising to stay away from??

Extreme Gaming PC i7 2600k Quadcore 3.4ghz, 8GB RAM, SSD, 1TB HDD, GTX 570 1.2GB QUAD SLI

[Morten]

...is this the "SLI" you're advising to stay away from??

Yes, SLI cards are a waste of money when you're using Lumion (3D software and games need to be modified in order to take advantage of SLI cards since they use more than 1 GPU).

...keep in mind Lumion does not work very well with SLI so a 590 or dual GPU setup does not give you extra performance over a single GPU.

The fastest graphics card with a single GPU is currently the AMD Radeon HD 7970 followed by the Nvidia GTX 580. These cards (and Windows 7 64-bit) will enable you to push Lumion to its limits.

[cmeed]

does it matter, from a lumion point of view, what the processor is? I only know Intels, coming from my mac background, is there much difference - AMD - athlon, phenmon then theres AMD FX. Intel i7's i5's have 4 cores while AMD go further with 6 - i suppose the more the merrier?

I'm now looking at websites that you can customise/build your own desktop. they are nearly fitting into the budget - even with a monitor.

They're not screaming but they shift....

EDIT: - all the intel i7 processors score much higher on the benchmark test - http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

[Morten]

Yes, an i7 CPU is a good choice, but the CPU is less important in Lumion (the CPU is used when you compress MP4s for example, but it's a small fraction of the total render time per frame).

[viet]

Hello One and All Lumion-aries- I need Help buying a Pc. I have never bought a Pc having used and owned a Mac for many years. Lumion is PC based and Graphics card lead. Updating my Macs to run Lumion is way above what I can afford. My Mac graphics cards and windows7 are letting me down. I don't have unlimited funds as this is going to be a joint venture with my set designer I work for, what we buy will be dedicated to Lumion and sketchup. I will have to look at the secondhand market preferably with a screen too. Ebay tells me that I could get something for around £600 £700 - graphics card benchmark 1300+.
When I'm looking, should i look for i7 and a high benchmark ? what would be a suitable benchmark for my pounds?  are these that the best things to look at for lumion?
Any help on this would be gratefully received
cheers
Chris

Same like me , I want to buy new PC too .....have no more choice for money ...when you have your PC please sent to me...Thanks you...i try we have no more money 2 option:

Option A: We have 550 USD
Mainboard: AsRock H61M-VS – 1.400.000 VNĐ
Chipset: Intel Core i3-2100 Sandy Bridge – 2.600.000 VNĐ
Ram: 2 x 2 GB GSKILL NT DDR3 1333 MHz – 850.000 VNĐ
Card Graphic: Asus HD 6850 1GB GDDR5 – 4.100.000 VNĐ  = 140 USD
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+HD+6850
(Can be push Radeon HD 6870 + 20usd not so faster)
HDD: Hitachi 500 GB SATA2 – 950.000 VNĐ
Power Supply: FSP Saga 450 – 750.000 VNĐ

Total (not case case and ODD): 10.650.000 VNĐ = 530 USD

Option B: We have 750 USD

Mainboard: MSI H67MA-E35 (B3) – 2.300.000 VNĐ
Chipset: Intel Core i5-2400 – 4.200.000 VNĐ
Ram: 2 x 2 GB GSKILL RIPJAWS 1600 MHz – 1.350.000 VNĐ
Card Graphic: MSI GTX 560 Ti Twin Frozr II 1GB GDDR5 OC – 5.750.000 VNĐ
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+560+Ti

HDD: Hitachi 500 GB SATA2 – 950.000 VNĐ
Power Supply: FSP BLUE STORM 2 500W – 1.320.000 VNĐ

Total (not case case and ODD): 15.870.000 VNĐ = 750 Usd


Lumion have topic: http://lumion3d.com/forum/index.php?topic=2548.0`
Minimum system requirements
OS: Windows XP, Vista, 7 (32- or 64-bit) and DirectX 9.0c or later
System memory: 3GB (for simple scenes)
Graphics card: NVidia GeForce 9800 GTX or similar ATI/AMD, with at least 1GB memory
Harddrive: 5.5GB of disk space (non-FREE versions)

Recommended system requirements
OS: Windows 7 64-bit
System memory: At least 6GB
Graphics card: NVidia 460GTX / ATI 5850 or faster, with at least 1GB memory
Harddrive: 5.5GB of disk space (non-FREE versions)

[cmeed]

Thank you everyone, I bought a customised pc today i7, ATI hd6850, 8mb (room to expand this later) and monitor. Delivery will be on Friday or Monday so very excited about using lumion.
Thanks again for the help, I'm looking forward to my first gallery post..... Cheers c 

[viet]

How much money for yor PC?

[cmeed]

£900. decided that this was going to be the best option, i couldn't get what i wanted at £600-700,  luckily myself and the guy i work for are sharing the cost.
now if lumion free works out there will be the basic and plugins cost on top......cross that bridge later......