BEAM

I am in the position where I need a new computer for a productivity boost. I am planning to buy a Dell Precision as my main workstation. Please refrain from suggesting that I build my own, as I am doing this for tax purposes as well as time and support issues. xp 64-bit and will use Cinema 4d, Rhino, and Photoshop the majority of the time.

The problem is that I am not sure if I should buy one high-end dual xeon workstation, or one midrange workstation and a cheaper render box.

My concerns are initial cash outlay, scalability of the render network in the future, and workflow optimization.

alex3d

how big you plan your company is goin to grow?
if you are giving your first steeps as a rendering company you better save your money for the future. there is a lot of factors and variable in a business that you have to experience first doying your first steps. even this is not the best moment to do big investments in nothing.
i better keep a humble workstation, maybe a quad core, windows xp, 3gigs of ram, any hihg end gamer nvidia card, ship sata hard drives, buy a 16 ports wired switch (not less than 400 bucks)(you will notice the diference with a nice $1000 switch), and maybe a couple of old dual xeons (no dual core) single core dual xeons, for your render farm,
i know dell have good deals on ship computers, but they go really nasty when you are talking about a workstation pro. they have to feed thousand of people, i know. i would rather save my money and build it.
also i would wait for the new operative sistem from microsoft. is always the same, next one is goin to be perfect. they have apple almost equal in sales, becouse the stupid windows vista, but i remember same thing happen when windows 98 loosing clients, they came with windows 2000, stable and strong.
dont go for windows vista 64. it sucks

__________________
If A equals success, then the formula is:
A=X+Y+Z, X is work. Y is play.
and Z is Keep your mouth shut.
Albert Einstein.

BEAM

thanks for your reply. however, let me clarify.


I am lucky to be working in Europe, where the slowdown is not as severe as in the US. The other positve aspect of working in Europe is the abundance of competitions that keep architectural visualizers busy. Couple that with the large amount of small architecture offices and you could quite possibly make your living just doing visualzations for competitions. One problem that has already started to happen is European architects hiring US renderers because the the steep discount at the moment. However, as an architect who has worked in many offices here in Vienna, I have a very strong network of architects to lean on.

I appreciate your opinion, but as I stated the my OP, my decision is already made to purchase as opposed to build.

As stated in my OP, I am going to use XP 64-bit.