X5 beta

[Doug Park]

Whether one upgrades or keeps old hardware running is mainly a matter of choice. How one goes about it is also mainly a matter of choice.

There is no right or wrong way to move your hardware into the future.

Certainly if you don't have a lot of computer savvy buying a new system can be a less risky way to go, but I've also seen people buy a new system that the salesman say's will run Chief only to find out the hardware is poor compared to other choices in the same price range.

I've also seen money wasted trying to upgrade an old system. For example putting a high end video card into a system that can't take advantage of it.

For Chief there are several components of the system that affect performance in different ways. The video card affects rendering time, the number of cores affect ray trace time, the hard drive speed affects the time to record changes for undo, and the memory speed affects pretty much everything.

If you upgrade one component you may or may not see the benefits you expect due to the interaction of all the parts in the system.

And if you buy a new system based solely on the video card you may find it doesn't provide the speed that others running the same card are getting.

Since Windows machines have such a wide range of components it is important when buying, building or upgrading a computer to run Chief to know what you are doing or consult with someone who does.

If you don't know what you are doing, don't want to learn and don't want to consult with anyone, just go out and buy a high end gaming computer and you will likely not go far wrong.