HI i am an animator on a robotics team and I will be upgrading my computer

I use 3ds max normally and I have a some questions

1. Does 3ds max use 4 cores?

2. Would a dual core with higher clock rate do  better?

 

Here are some of the options i am thinking

 

Core 2 Duo E7300 Wolfdale 2.66GHz 3MB L2 Cache LGA

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115132

 

or

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Wolfdale 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115037

or

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Quad-Core Processor

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115017

 

 

Which would be best?

3D Studio will use up to I think 16 cores. (I remember a review of 6core Xeon processors in a 4 socket server board, and they noticed that 3D Studio, along with some other software would not use all of 24 cores.

In any case, for you it's irrelevant. What's your current setup, and how does it take to render a single frame? Also, when doing animation, what resolution are you usually shooting for.

EDIT: Here are some CPU charts just to give you an idea.

I think Quad core will enhance the performance;

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000942.html

coding horror:

3ds Max 9 SP2

4.95

6.61

33%

 

For multitasking the Quad core will perform better than the Dual core and doing animation with 3D is a demanding task which will take full advantage of the Quad core. If latter you want to improve on that performance you could add DDR2 1066 RAM and start looking into OCing, my Q6600 is running at 3.2ghz now and with 2 units of F@H 1 CPU and 1 GPU it must be stable to do this.

Yeah，I also agree with Q6600, more threads task processing ability, especially for mass caculation, full use of 4cores.

In addition, easy to OC, no doubt.

Anyone who deals with multimedia will want a quad core PC...period. Even if the apps you use aren't multi threaded themselves, the operating system itself will spread the system load out evenly as possible across all 4 cores. (Vista does this best)

Agreed.

Although, if you can afford it. I would go for a Q9450, the difference is BIG.

Atleast go for the new Q8200 CPU as its betters the Q6600 as well.

The price of the Q9450 is a bit steep though but good recommendation nonetheless.