Is it good enough?

This next year I'm going to be taking a lot of animation classes for my major, Virtual Technology & Design. In fact, thats what I'm going to be doing for the next 3 years.

Heres my question: does my Inspiron 1720 with a T7300, 8600M GT, and 2gb of memory have the power for what I'm doing? We will primarily be using 3Dmax, and probably some other stuff, like Maya.

 

I'd recommend a Quadro type card for working with those sorts of apps. Short of that though, I'd guess that you'd be ok with an 8600.

 

RAM and CPU upgrades would make your work w/ such programs go much quicker,, it all comes down to how quickly you wanna get things finished

it should work as is... just a tad slow... IMO

bigO

 

I could always soft-mod my 8600 into an FX 570.

 

Maya needs lots of memory and cpu power.
If you play your cards right, lots of nbr members are going to be selling/upgrading their systems because of the new monteveins platform and the fact that the other socket p mobile processors should decrease in price from that. In July you should be able to pick up a faster t8300/t9300 for about $200.
At that point I would pick one up. The extra processing power will be beneficial with heavy software like maya.
You should probably upgrade to 4gb memory, since its only like $80. Or you can wait until independence day for great sales, so you can upgrade for less.

I would keep an eye out on the buy and sell section, cause sometimes their are really good deals on cpu's.

K-TRON

 

Oh yeah, you will almost definitely want more RAM. A faster proc would help too. I didn't even notice to think about that. Good call, bigozone.

 

yes it does, but i'd recommend upgrading processor to a penryn

 

Yes it is-


I run Solidworks 3ds max and sometimes maya on my 1520 with the same specs. They all run fine. I do have XP SP 3 though.