[Radiance-general] PC hardware advice

[Robert Kentridge]

I'm interested in using RADIANCE for visual psychophysics. I've done a 
little bit of experimentation with an old laptop running Linux and now 
want to set up a dedicated RADIANCE system. The work I'm intending to 
carry out involves producing fairly large numbers of short animations so 
rendering speed is important but, as I don't want to spend large amounts 
of money, I'm thinking in terms of a consumer-type PC running Linux. Am 
I correct in assuming that rendering performance will be almost entirely 
determined by CPU and memory? I'd be glad of recommendations 
(specifically for using RADIANCE) about CPUs (basically Pentium 4 vs 
Pentium D) and memory (I assume 2G is ample - my scenes only contain 5 
or 10 objects and one or two light sources). Some PC graphics cards 
(e.g. nVidia 6800) claim to handle more that 24 bits per pixel and hence 
support HDR imaging - will these improve the pixel-depth of my RADIANCE 
renders? The system will be calibrated with a spectroradiometer so we 
really can exploit improved colour resolution if it is there to be had!

many thanks,

Bob Kentridge
University of Durham