Thanks Fletch for that well put together response!
and notareal for verification.
I spent the entire weekend on TomsHardware, CG Architect and google researching and what you say really helps solidify my weekends research.
First - we are a Dell office - 98% of our machines are from Dell, so purchasing is really easy and the Precision workstations work pretty good for Revit and AutoCAD. I am currently running a Box workstation, it's a Dual Opteron dual core - so 4 cores total...but am working in 32 bit so that is a bit of the drag. I haven't been overwhelmed with the Boxx system since day 1...figured it was going to blow my previous machine away...but it really didn't. Was a little more stable, but never got the performance out of it that I thought I would.
I did read on the Tom's Hardware site that Cyberpower was a great value machine...meaning, it didn't win any of the benchmark tests, but it held in the higher middle of the group...but it was a fraction of the cost of the machines that were being compared with it...holding it's own with $5k-7k machines.
Thanks for the link that Vosko posted about a company that overclocks and uses SSD's. That is basically what my research lead to from this weekend.
http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/37163-nee ... storm.html
The owner of CG Architect has a facinating thread about his current build and the SSD issue was brought up - which I had never heard that argument before...very educational thread!
I also ran across a thread about SU and really opened my eyes to faster the processor the better for rendering and for SU since it really only relies on 1-core...which I hadn't heard that before....
http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/37578-hel ... thers.html
BrianKitts
Sketchup does not support multi-threading (doesn't support hyperthreading either), so it can only utilize one processor (core) for processor intensive work such as the import exporting that you are attempting. Which means in a dual core you could hit 50% (100 divided by 2), but in a dual quad you won't top 12.5% (100 divided by 8). That being said the fastest machine will be the one with the fastest single core. If you bought a cheap quad core processor, it won't be faster using sketchup compared to a higher end dual core processor.
As for the modeling and working tasks that is solely dependent on your graphics card, better card = faster it can handle the graphics, this part has nothing to do with your processor.
So -that leads me to the question of Video Cards...which do you feel are the best for a SU/Twilight/Kerkythea machine?
CG Architect has a good sticky thread that covers a lot...but still left me wondering if the one they suggest is still the best for my use.
http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/29581-sti ... dvice.html
I have read that the video card doesn't have an effect on the render times...but then some threads that say that it is necessary to get a quality card for rendering...so that leaves me a little confused.
Also - would I get any advantage out of a dual card setup?
Thanks for the responses so far, It's been so long since I have spec'd a render machine 3+ years and it is pretty amazing of what has come out since then.