Work Station Build

[ohwell78]

I am looking to build a good, but low cost workstation for my daughter. She is into programs like MAYA and others that a dedicated build might be worth it. Now I know that many of these programs take advantage of multiple core cpus. So the standard benchmarks for gaming CPU's wont be what I would want to look at. However I can not afford a $500 xeon or opteron processor. I already have the case, hardrive, powersupply, and ram. I was looking at the AMD 100-505637 FirePro V3900 graphics card. From what I have read it is faster than a Radeon 6870 in 3d applications. So basically I need to know what chip for less than $150 or so would be the best. Would it be a AMD fx bulldozer 4 or 6 core? Or would dual core sandy bridge still be faster for this type of work?

Also if you are aware of a place we can get free software of this nature that is fun and easy to learn on please let me know. She is starting her junior year in high school and is eager to learn.

 

[t53186]

I am looking to build a good, but low cost workstation for my daughter. She is into programs like MAYA and others that a dedicated build might be worth it. Now I know that many of these programs take advantage of multiple core cpus. So the standard benchmarks for gaming CPU's wont be what I would want to look at. However I can not afford a $500 xeon or opteron processor. I already have the case, hardrive, powersupply, and ram. I was looking at the AMD 100-505637 FirePro V3900 graphics card. From what I have read it is faster than a Radeon 6870 in 3d applications. So basically I need to know what chip for less than $150 or so would be the best. Would it be a AMD fx bulldozer 4 or 6 core? Or would dual core sandy bridge still be faster for this type of work?

Also if you are aware of a place we can get free software of this nature that is fun and easy to learn on please let me know. She is starting her junior year in high school and is eager to learn.

Autodesk has educational versions of all software http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=17355061

 

[t53186]

I am looking to build a good, but low cost workstation for my daughter. She is into programs like MAYA and others that a dedicated build might be worth it. Now I know that many of these programs take advantage of multiple core cpus. So the standard benchmarks for gaming CPU's wont be what I would want to look at. However I can not afford a $500 xeon or opteron processor. I already have the case, hardrive, powersupply, and ram. I was looking at the AMD 100-505637 FirePro V3900 graphics card. From what I have read it is faster than a Radeon 6870 in 3d applications. So basically I need to know what chip for less than $150 or so would be the best. Would it be a AMD fx bulldozer 4 or 6 core? Or would dual core sandy bridge still be faster for this type of work?

Also if you are aware of a place we can get free software of this nature that is fun and easy to learn on please let me know. She is starting her junior year in high school and is eager to learn.

Good free for ever software is http://www.blender.org/

 

[dedekind]

If you leave near a micro center you can get a good quad-core i5 for $160

You also have some nice combos for a motherboard.