Perfect Graphic Design System

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Just wondering what your guy's perfect setup for a graphic design computer would be. Processor, video cards, motherboard, ram, the whole shibang. I am looking for the ultimate setup. I am basically searching for some ideas of what to aim for and the ballpark price I can be expecting for something top of the line when it comes to a graphic design computer. I am designing the computer for a friend and I am clueless when it comes to the best hardware for a system built around graphic design, help me out, so I can help him out. Let me know, any input would be much appreciated.
 
strictly 2d? if so, no great vidcard is necessary. 3d graphics/animation would get you into the $1.5k range for the vidcard alone (for the perfect setup). I'd go for an E6600/4gb.ram and a high end card instead of a firegl/quadro, though (those cards are just expensive).
 
Define Graphics design. What software is he going to be running. What kind of budget do you have. How fast do you want to go. Will he be upgrading to Vista (that will affect the RAM choice), or for that matter, is he running Linux?

If he is working with 3d moddeling, it can get expensive in a hurry. :p
 
yeah it will be 3d graphics design, sorry for not mentioning that before. I think right now is he using 3d Studio Max, but in the future he will be using whatever he needs to be to complete his career. He has been saving up for awhile, so he has a decent amount to spend. Yes, definitely Microsoft Windows
 
A C2D E6600+, >2GB DDR2-533+ memory, Quadro card, LOTS of monitor real estate, sufficient storage.
 
Various components will affect 3d modling/animation/rendering apps in various ways. Its a matter of weighing what is important to you.

CPU - CPU speed will largely affect how fast things will render. If your friend doesn't do tons of test renders and routinely renders things overnight then this can probably be slightly compromised. Also, almost all graphics programs have support for multiple processors or cores so definately go for something dual core at the very least.

RAM - The amount of RAM will affect how large scenes can be and how large renders can be. If your friend routinely has scenes in the millions of polys or renders thing for print resolution then lots of RAM will be necessary.

GPU - The video card will affect how quickly things will update in the interface itself. It will control whether or not things can be playback onscreen (in the interface not as a rendered sequence) in realtime or near realtime.

Storage - This will depend laregly on what he is rendering and what resolution he renders at.

For animating, to me RAM, GPU, and storage are the most important things. For high res stills, I would tend to go more for CPU and RAM.

I personally would go for a dual socket dual core woodcrest system with 4+ GBs of RAM and a high end gaming card with a fast application drive ike a raptor and a large 500 GB storage drive if money were no object.

If a budget is in place, I would go for a mid range Core 2 Duo, 4 GB of RAM, a mid range gaming card and two hard drives (one for storage and one for apps).

Notice, that in both of *my* configs, I did not go for "pro" video cards. This is because the apps that I use (Lightwave, Silo, ZBrush) aren't optimized to really take advantage of those cards and will do just as well on a consumer level card. I'm not sure if 3d Studio MAX is the same way or not.
 
well, if he were to want to go with dual Intel Xeon 5150s, what motherboard would you recommend? Thanks for the comments thus far!
 
For that question, you would be better served asking in the Multiprocessing Systems subforum, or on 2cpu.com.
 
If you just have more money than you konw what to do with, you might look into using a Tyan K8WE motherboard and a couple of dual core Opterons. Match that up to 8 gigs of ECC ram and a couple of raptors set up on a raid card and you have a pretty good start.

If you have to make house payments like the rest of us, Maybe an ASUS P5W64 WS pro motherboard with an Intel e6600 core2duo processor and 4 gigs of PC6400 ram. a low end areca raid card (or Highpoint) with 4 320gb Seagate 7200.10 in raid, set up a single WD 150gb Raptor for the OS, and throw in a gigabyte IRAM card with 4gb's of pc3200 to hold the windows swapfile. Expensive but very fast.

The advantage of ising the motherboard above is that you can run 2 video cards off the PCIe bus and still have room for the raid card. That means 4 cheap 22inch LCD's for the work area

There is alot of wiggle room there, but I have something similar here at the house, and it flat out lfies.
 
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