Machine Spec Recommendations?

[johncabin]

I'm sure this gets covered and lives in a thread thats pinned somewhere but I've looked around and don't see it.

I've been a FormZ user since 1993- then at a firm with Bonzai for the last 9 yrs, and now looking to migrate back to FormZ.

I lean toward PCs for CAD work but float between Mac and PC for different tasks so am not wed to either.

So without a flame war- 

And specifically as far as FormZ is concerned:

Is there any benefit to Mac or PC these days in terms of speed or stability?

In terms of performance/cost balance where is the biggest bang for the buck?

Speed? Cores? Ram? GPU? SSD?

With v-ray hopefully dropping soon is there anything to think about in terms of machine?

Thanks for any pointers!
John

[Tech]

Hi John,

 

Welcome to the forum.  You can find the System Requirements here:

 

http://www.formz.com/products/formz/formzSystem.html

 

You should be able to choose Mac vs Win based on personal preference.  

 

A single core speed will control the modeling performance in general, although some things can take advantage of more processors.

 

More processors will make the rendering faster in general.

 

See the System Specs: Video Card Benchmark site for good cards to use with formZ, although if you want VRay you should check their specs as well.

 

SSD's will make any disk access faster (and should be used for the operating system and programs, but standard drives can be used for projects -- or at least for archives.

 

I'm sure others will have opinions, but hope this helps!  

[johncabin]

I see the minimum specs but should have specified that what I am interested in specifically is rendering speeds with renderzone scenes using global illumination.

Basically wondering if this discussion from 2012 is still relevant or there have been programming changes that may utilize hardware differently in the latest versions of formz:

http://www.formz.com/forum/old/messages/49778/56404.html

 

AND!
Thanks for the fast response Z.

One of the best reasons to FormZ is so amazing is the awesome support!

[Tech]

Hi John,

 

Yes, that should still be relevant.

 

With Global Illumination, optimizing the settings is very important to get good and fast results.  If you are using Final Gather, make sure to set the Scene Size correctly (which is the width of the actual scene for the desired view at the "picture plane."  

 

For Ambient Occlusion (AO), choose a Custom Distance, and set this correctly.  For an architectural scene, this is almost always ~24 - 36" (but perhaps product shots should be more like 2 - 8").  Excluding little details from Receive AO (via Attributes, or Layer Overrides) will  also improve performance, but leave on Cause AO for performance reasons, and only turn it off when the effect is not wanted -- as in the case of exterior architectural glass).

 

Set the Quality = 1 for test renders, and only increase this if you are seeing unwanted blotches in the GI affects.  (Going above Quality = 3 is not often needed, but will add a lot of time.)

 

Does that help?

[Alan Cooper]

FZ8.5 pro runs but can struggle a little on my standard spec Dell Precision M6500 laptop but is much better on the standard spec Dell Precision M6700 and very happy with it if that is any help.