Radeon R9 390 for Maya/Zbrush/AE

BucketOfNuggets

Hey guys I am looking to build a new PC and am stuck on whether or not to get the 390 or the 970. I have heard that there are some issues with maya and the 970. Also the 390 has 8gb of Vram which should be great for Vray, or am I completely wrong here?

It is so hard to find out facts about whether or not the 390 will work well with my 3D apps as I seem to just see a lot of Nvidia fans or AMD fans trash talking each other. It is hard to cut through the fanboyism.

Also would the Intel Core i7 4790 Quad Core LGA 1150 3.6GHz be a solid purchase or should I look at getting a 2011 chipset? Once again I am hearing mixed things.

I want a great machine for Maya/Zbrush and AE first and foremost, with the ability to play games as an added bonus.

Thanks for any help

SonicBlue

As far as I know they are very similar in performance, but you will not get any advantage on V-Ray, it uses the CPU and your system memory to do the rendering.

Another thing is OTOY OctaneRender, which uses the GPU to render and your VRAM is a very important aspect for larger projects. The only problem you'll face is that it uses CUDA, so you won't work on an AMD card.

For that CPU, you should look for the K version, 4790K, if you want to invest ~40$ more on it, and get better performance.

m4dcow

Never heard of any issues with the 970 and Maya. The thing to worry about with a new card like the 390x is that there may be some issues initially, but it is also basically an 8GB 290x so you should be cool either way. I personally prefer NVidia, their drivers have been a bit more stable for me, and they seem to be involved a bit more than AMD when it comes to delivering tools and tech for game development.

I'll echo what SonicBlue says and say get the 4970K, however the Skylake chips (6600k & 6700k) are supposed to debut at the beginning of August. So depending on your timeframe you might want to keep that in mind.

BucketOfNuggets

Thanks for the feedback guys, I was thinking the K version would be a good idea but then read that those models are made for overclocking.

Have there been any info leaked about how much better the Skylake chips will be?

m4dcow

No credible benchmarks yet, but most expect only 10% since Intel seems to be concentrating on adding more powerful integrated graphics to these chips now.

With the 4970k it is for over clicking, but its stock click is 4ghz vs 3.6 for the non k version.