Day 209

I spent a few days figuring out what computer I should buy. Since I have limited funds, I wanted to make the best choice. The most cost effective method would have been buying all the parts separately and building the computer myself. Not only would this have been cheaper, I would have ended up with a more powerful computer compared to a similarly priced pre-built one. However, I didn't want to do that. Even though I probably would have been successful and there's plenty of guides and information out there along with friends that have built PCs in the past, I just didn't feel like it. So pre-built computer it was.

I wasn't looking to spend a lot of money. Considering my brother's five year old laptop could run Mudbox decently enough, I figured any current computer set up would probably work. I was just looking for 8 gigs of ram and a dedicated graphics card. I found a set up that looked pretty good but it was a AMD processor instead of an Intel and the graphics card was technically integrated and not dedicated. After doing some research on the card, I found out that it's much more powerful than Intel's integrated graphics card and was comparable to other decent dedicated cards. So it seemed good enough but I was worried about how Mudbox 2012/2013 checks the graphics card before loading and if this one would work. Despite that, I still bought the computer and if I needed to buy a new graphics card then I was ok with that.

A few days later, the computer arrived, I installed Mudbox 2013 and.... it worked. It handles the program much better than my brother's laptop. I'm just estimating but it seems at least five times better based on how long it takes to save big files and how it handles multi-million polygon models. If I ever do need more power, I can still get a new graphics card and upgrade the ram too. The only downside is that I bought only the tower so I'm using my TV as a monitor. My TV screen is more than big enough but the resolution isn't that high. It's not that big of a deal except for different things on the interface like menus and buttons being too big. But overall, I'm happy with the computer. Hopefully, technical problems will now be a thing of the past.