The right CPU for a workstation

anMori

Hi!

 

I´m building myself a high end machine primarely for 3D (zBrush, Maya, Substance, Unreal engine), Unreal engine and secundary gaming for which I´ve narrowed down my choice for a suitable CPU on the following cores:

 

Intel Core i7-8700K (6 x 3.70 GHz / 4.70 GHz)

Intel Core i7-7820X (8 x 3.60 GHz / 4.30 GHz)

AMD Ryzen 7 1800X (8 x 3.60 GHz / 4.00 GHz)

 

Potentially also an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X 12x 3.50GHz if cores are the deciding factor.

 

I´ve done my homework and looked up various arguments regarding cores/compatibility/price and the i7-8700K seems to be a good bet being intels latest relase however it´d be a great help to hear more opinions on this.

Especially when it comes to:

-Intel/AMD compatibility experiences with professional software. Is AMD widely supported? Should I favour clock speed or cores?

 -Higher clock speeds = good for gaming and number of cores = great for a multi tasking oriented work environment (maya, Unreal etc usually open at the same time)

-If your programs only support 4 cores but you run multiple at the same time, do they still benefit from an 8 core in terms of being able to be split between them?

 

-AMD experiences so far with the new ryzen lineup

 

Looking forward to any input you can give me!

EliasWick

I'll just name the things I know when it comes to all of this:

I prefer Intel over AMD. To me, this is mostly a personal preference like Mc Donalds vs Burger King. There might be more documentation on overclocking certain CPU's so look into that if you want to do any overclocking.
I would say, go for Intel Core i7-8700K (6 x 3.70 GHz / 4.70 GHz), but that is based on the little that I know. Since you are going to be working in UE4, and I assume create games. A processor that handles games would be great and well supported.

I have and are still using: Intel Core i7 4770K 3,5 GHz (Haswell), I need an upgrade, but this has worked fine on a high workload. We are talking about milions of polygons in both Unreal and 3Ds Max, both opened at the same time.

Find a balance between Clock speed and cores.

Most software developed by a well know company, such as Autodesk and Adobe have both optimized their applications to run on a wide variety of CPU's. I can't speak for Zbrush, though. Make sure that all of the software that you are going to be using supports more than 4 cores and that the workload will be split over all cores equally. (or close)

I know that I am not giving you a direct answer to any of your questions and I believe that I will frustrate you more than helping you. Though, technology is constantly evolving and all of the CPU's that you listed will work great with what you are going to be doing. If you have the slightest interest in gaming, finding a good gaming CPU will do you great service both when modelling, sculpting and gaming.

If you really insists on finding the best core for your purpose, ask studios what they are using and look at Ubisoft, DICE, 2K, Bethesda, Disney, etc.

Obscura

Most of the games and game engines does not benefit from lot of cores / threads, unless its directly implemented in the game code. If you make a game with Unreal, its not going to do anything with the extra threads, unless you make your code supporting it and utilizing it. And it doesn't help much with rendering it either, because thats not on the cpu.

In the case of Unreal, mostly lightmass would benefit from this, and in 3dsmax, offline renderers would.

anMori

If UE4 doesn´t care much about more cores, then this would be the killer argument for me to go for a higher clock speed instead since I mostly care about realtime

Eric Chadwick

UE4 probably uses those cores when baking lightmaps.

Obscura

Yes. Thats why I said lightmass would benefit from it. You can even do distributed rendering, and from what I know you can use any amount of threads or cores. I had experience of using up to 8 computers for rendering lightmaps through lightmass, although it definitely allows more, maybe unlimited. I'm not sure about that.. Also, now I looked this up in more details, even though game codes obviously utilizes these only if implemented. It turns out that the editor involves them, and it does use the cores or threads, but not the game itself, still. So your editor would run better, if you are not bottlenecked by your graphics card. Multi threading can be implemented in game, by handling some stuff in a specific way, but this has not much to do with the graphics. If you are not going to render in V-ray and whatnot, and yor main target is good realtime graphics, just get a good videocard.

SsSandu_C

I wouldn't advise you to jump the gun right now on making a new pc. The 8700k is a great choice for its multicore/per core speed. I offers a balance for multitasking/rendering and gaming. I think you should wait until the end of 1H of 2018 and see the offerings for the z390 chipset and for the new lineup of zen+ am4 processors. The other reason is the surge in prices and lack of stock for the new z370 and 8700k's. I can't how much ram costs at this time. If amd fixes the imc problems with the new zen proc and can support 3200mhz ram on all dims then it might be a great solution for an awesome workstation. Looks like intel is trying to catch up and wants to push mainstream 8 cores next year and it might offer something really interesting. As for 3d programs, they do like higher clock speeds. If you want to render then more then more clock will help you a lot. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-coffee-lake-i7-8700k-cpu,5252-9.html The threadripper is also a very good choice for all around productivity but it's a very expensive platform right now. 

anMori

Thanks everyone for all the input! This helped me a ton.

A quick wrapup for what I settled based upon all the information I could gather.

For now, I´ll build my system around the 8700k since I am in real need of a new machine and can´t wait for next year. 

This benchmark proofed immensly helpful: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Unreal-Engine-4-16-CPU-Comparison-Skylake-X-Kaby-Lake-X-Broadwell-E-Skylake-Ryzen-7-984/

Reading this, ryzen seems poorly supported at this point (which may very likely change in the near future) but intel just seems to be the safer bet in any case. The i7-7820x delivers very strong results accross the board and I was very temped to go for it however it comes with a premium price and some drawbacks in heat and already "older" tec.

Multi core seems to be the way to go so the plan will be to get myself the 8700k, see how it holds up and keep myself the option to upgrade to ice lake next year.

Either way, I´ll follow up in a month with some experiences with the i7-8700k in case more people struggle with the same situation.