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If you just want speed and you are ok with 1.5GB of video memory, by all means for for 2x GT580,
that is a very fast setup.
If you can find the 580 cards with 3GB video ram you will have the best setup.

Radiance

Yep the best Octane card albeit a costly one would be the Palit 3GB GTX580- around £420 GBP.

Fast and plenty of memory.The only other 3GB 580 is by Gainward and you would pay extra on that because of the specialized Cooling system.

What are all the specs for a box with 2x 580? eg motherboard, power supply?
Sounds like a great machine.

Also, just wondering if even 2 460's would give decent performance for Octane.
Have to balance cost vs performance.

My ideal spec would be:
8GB ram (2x 4 GB ddr3 modules) 1600MHz speed.This leaves 2 slots free for a further 8GB if needed.
probably quad core processor (intel I2500 sandybridge) - Overclock to 4.7GHZ
2 x 3gb gtx580's - Palit GTX 580's

1000watt high quality power supply - consider corsair/enermax gold certificate (IE 90% efficiency)

Someone has pointed this motherboard out to me that looks very good - See this link

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/3795/a ... index.html

Coolermaster tower case

Thermaltake Frio CPU air cooler with Arctic Silver 5 Compound

Samsung F3 - 1GB hard drive.Perhaps an OCZ SSD 128GB to boot from if you want a fast startup and can afford it.

That lots probably around £1300/£1400 GBP without a monitor

That lots probably around £1300/£1400 GBP without a monitor

-Jaberwocky

Whoa! =O
Sounds sweet, but my wife would go ballistic. =)

I just got a new ASUS last Nov, so it's difficult to justify another computer (at least to her),
so I need to build a box that can handle Octane reasonably well without causing marital
instability.

Later...
just looking for a GTX460 with 2gb ram...only found this Palit model

Where do you look for a 2gb card? At the manufacturer's site, a vendor's site, or Google?
I thought there would be more 2gb cards available.

megacal wrote:

That lots probably around £1300/£1400 GBP without a monitor

-Jaberwocky

Whoa! =O
Sounds sweet, but my wife would go ballistic. =)

I just got a new ASUS last Nov, so it's difficult to justify another computer (at least to her),
so I need to build a box that can handle Octane reasonably well without causing marital
instability.

Later...
just looking for a GTX460 with 2gb ram...only found this Palit model

Where do you look for a 2gb card? At the manufacturer's site, a vendor's site, or Google?
I thought there would be more 2gb cards available.

If my Memory Serves me then the only 2 GTX 460 - 2GB models around are the Palit and the Gainward models.Just google either of them for your local suppliers or ebay for 2nd hand models.

You can do a lot with 1GB if you reduce your textures size.

Kevin replie to
my thread about Octane at Carrara Discussion forum...

A 1gb card will probably be adequate for my purposes, at least for now.

re: Palit.....one review I saw (will have to retrieve the link) said the Palit heat sink was not nearly as
good as others.....ASUS? NVidia? Also, not sure about tech support for any of the makers.

So many variables! Hope to get it all together sometime this week, though.

Really appreciate all the helpful suggestions, tips, and info here...good group.

Hope to be an Octaner very soon, and help others get up & running.

Please bear in mind that if you are buying and running a 1gb card for both display and octane use, that you consider the memory on that card that is used to power the displays.I run a 460 1gb together with a 24" - 1920 x 1280 display and a 17" - 1280 x 1024 display.That's around 200MB gone of the 1GB before Octane gets it's hands on the card.

Ok, thanks for the heads up.....was going to get this GTX460 w/2gb, based on Odeas's earlier post, but
may get the GTX560 2gb if it's 2x faster.....still debating over it.

Later...
Ok, finally decided to get the eVGA GTX460 2gb at Amazonand save $60 (edited)

Now for the motherboard!

Just price'd up Jaberwocky's spec listed earlier and came out at £1492 without an SSD (+£100 to £200 for ssd).

Nice choice, glad I could help out.

For your second display card (if your going to use one) a used card from ebay etc is probably going to be your cheapest bet.
If you only want new then something like the GT 430's are around the $60 mark and should be fine as its only for light use (displaying the screen, openGL etc in modeling apps)

For motherboards i'd personally recommend Asus or Gigabyte.