Welcome to Fractal Forums

Hello Everyone,

I normally build high end gaming computers for my personal need, but my mother fell in love with creating fractals. What I am looking for help in is the basics of what is stressed with when using fractal programs.

• CPU - Core speed - #Cores
• GPU - Clock Speed
• Memory - clock speed

that should give an idea of the information I am looking for, also is it worth investing into a Xion processor if the application is CPU based? Once I have the pc built I will take pictures and post the build with spec sheet.  :beer:

It really depends on what kind of fractals your mother wants to make on her computer. However, I can give you a few pointers.

If she wants to compute Mandelbrot Fractals, (eg. with Kalles Fraktaler or Mandel Machine), make sure she gets a processor with high single core performance, but high multi-threaded performance, as well. I would recommend an Intel 5960x or a 4790K, as they are a very great processor.

Only some programs can use the GPU for computing, and they are mostly 3d fractal programs. Fragmentarium uses the GPU, so it would be great to get a high-end gpu, like a Nvidia 900 series. Personally, because I don't use my GPU a lot, I use a gtx750 ti.

I feel that memory speed is not that important, but it is important to have a lot. I would recommend at least 8 gb, although 16 is preferred. I have 16, and I have only once ran out of memory.

It is only really worth it to get a Xeon if the application is really optimized for many lower performance cores.

Also, welcome to the forums!  :beer:

Hi, and welcome :)

I think the requirements are virtually the same for gaming vs fractal rendering, high performance gfx card and CPU with lots of ram. I put together a very reliable system, GeForce GTX 760 2G, Xeon 4 core 2.8Ghz, 8G ram, Asus PK5 motherboard overclocked to 3.2Ghz with liquid cooling for the CPU. I use Fragmentarium almost exclusively for fractal exploration which has "tiled" rendering directly to EXR format files so no image size limit ;), the largest image I've rendered was 3.1G @ 64000x36000.
I think your Mom would probably be happy with a budget game box just for exploring but if she wants to make movies and get into production quality rendering she will need something above average unless she doesn't mind waiting.