| For rendering, you obviously want lots of RAM and a good processor. Your best shot is a quad core Q6600 G0 (make sure it the model number is G0, this is crucial as you can overclock it right up to about 3.4ghz very easily in the bios). Mobo needs to be a fairly decent one (ask if you can change voltages, one with an Nforce chipset is probably best - good thing to search for in google is a good intel quad core overclocking motherboard). I'd also suggest between 2-4gb of ram, compatible with your motherboard. The timings/clockspeed of the RAM isn't so important - its the processor that counts.
Graphics card again is not important, a sub $100 one will suffice unless you want to play the latest games.
To power this, a 500-600watt will probably take it.
I'd also suggest you get XP if you can, it would literally be about 10% faster.
Now all that is useful for Max/Lightwave (they are multithreaded, each core increases render speed by 80%). For Photoshop, a large amount of RAM is even more useful (for working with big images). To supplement this, fast SATA harddisks (prefrebly two in an array) will be useful (I'm guessing you're familar with the scratch disks feature used for image cache).
For video editing, a fast HDD is key. Terragen is like max, fast processor is best. Gcard is only useful for the viewports. |