What type of Desktop should be purchased for rendering?

[Kimberly Rodgers]

I will be buying a desktop, what qualifies a desktop as a good system for fast rendering?

[Chas / Aug Posekany]

Rendering work with Nxt is horsepower based. The more processors the better, speed is everything. From what I hear a pair of the latest intel multiprocessor units are tops.

[George Ioannidis]

Some time ago there was a small, discreet mention from Roy about GPU "help" in rendering process. If it finally will ever happen then it would be wise to obtain also good professional VGA card with the known GPU acceleration capabilities. And of course, LOAD of FAST RAM. (8GB minimum, 16, 32 or even 64GB for best results :-) )

[akinlolu olugboji]

http://www.boxxtech.com/products/3DBOXX/3DBOXX_Series.asp

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

There's a decent discussion here.  GPUs (graphics cards) don't matter to nXt but do matter to AutoCAD and WalkAbout.  The rule of thumb mentioned in the link above of actual (not hyper-threaded cores) x clock speed is a good one.

[Ros. Riha]

To summarize the obvious stuff not mentioned yet:

1. 64bit OS
2. At least 8GB RAM
3. fast HDD -ideally 2: SSD drive for system, regular fast HDD for data

[pun1407]

at least 4g ram and more, more and more cores and Hz of cpu