I am not an expert. So can sombody explain it to me in "normal" words what he meant? And how much that cost?
I am an expert when it comes to computers, I have built my own machine a number of times, I went to school two years for it, and I have multiple related certifications in it.
His workstation currently has TWO RTX 2080 Ti graphics cards. What's a graphics card you may ask?
I'll explain to you all the parts of a computer.
Cooling: There are multiple parts of the computer that heat up with use. Overheating is bad just like the engine on a car overheating. The Power supply, and Processor both have there own cooling. Additional cooling also helps keep things cold, and running smoothly. A colder computer works better.
Case: The box in which the machine is housed. It directs cooling flow and offers some protection from sunlight, dust, foreign objects etc.
Power Supply: Much like the charger for your phone. That's what gives it electricity.
Motherboard: This is the glue that holds the whole machine together. It's a board covered in integrated circuitry that connects the processor, ram, hdd, drives, gpu, ports, and has expansion slots on it often times to add additional components such as additional graphics cards or hard drives or ram. The Mother board also holds the chip set. (The chip set is like the manager for data flow. It's Think of it like a bouncer outside of the processor as if it were a night club deciding what data is allowed in and out) The Mother board also holds the CMOS and Busses and there may be something I'm forgetting. (cmos is a little battery for time keeping, and busses help get data from a to b like on a bus)
CPU / Processor: This is the calculator of the machine. The processor performs the vast majority of processing on a machine. However, just solving a problem means nothing if the information is not getting to and from the processor fast enough. Some folks like to "over clock" the processor and make it work harder. This causes it to heat up more rapidly and is not advised without additional cooling to compensate for that.
Rom / BIOS: Standard stuff the basic input output system. They now call this UEFI on newer machines but it's basically the same thing. It's what lets you actually boot the machine up. I'm not sure of the difference between UEFI and BIOS don't really care I think they are the same thing. UEFI is newer and does the same thing a tiny little better for some reason. I think it stores information on a partition of the hard drive or something, but they perform the same exact job. I could look further into the difference but even experts like myself don't care to go off on that irrelevant tangent.
RAM: this stores the data that is being actively accessed by the CPU. For example, when a game is opened on the computer it takes up memory; this is stored in the RAM until the game is closed. It allows for the perpetuation of processes.
Video Card.... Finally the Video Card / Graphics Card this is something added on to the mother board to do the specific task of help with graphical processing. It has it's own Graphics processor and Graphics Ram and can be thought of as a sort of outsourcing from the processor. The video card is like a slave that the rest of the computer can boss around and get it to do work for it so that can be done in a more timely fashion. It's very important for rendering pictures for instance.
What video card is currently used by L&P?
two RTX 2080 Ti
Are those good? Oh yes, very good. They are near top of the line and there is not one, but two of them. They were like $1,000 each when brand new, but I'm sure now they maybe like 600-700. These are an Nvidia GeForce product which makes them a name brand. They are over priced.
L&P Wants Titan RTX with 24 GB VRAM times TWO... Those cost $2,500 each and would get 48 GB of VRAM... A bit of an improvement over there current setup, but the cost is outrageous as it would also be more than that for added cooling and when you run multiple video cards in tandem it causes problems sometimes... Think of it like overclocking, but done by a crack head. It can be bad. Think Tim the Tool Man Taylor saying "More Power" on Tool time... Not good! It draws a lot more power and the added performence is only a fraction of what it should be. Big head ache.
The AMD Radeon VII is my personal recommendation, and I'd go with FOUR of them, and on FOUR separate machines in a small network, not all one motherboard. I'm talking 4 different machines in a home network each doing a different render at a time dividing the work up between them. Those are about $500 each card and offer 16 GB each for a total of 64 GB which is higher than L&Ps dream build of 48 GB. When it comes to computers you generally get the best bang for your buck going with AMD.
What I recommend would be:
1) About the same price probably a little cheaper
2) Noticeably faster
3) Significantly less overheating
4) Require more power usage, but well worth it
5) If one machine fails it's okay still at 75% rendering wheras L&P is at 0% after 1 machine fail