Time for an Upgrade?!

GabeLamas

Hello, all. It's been a while! I am looking to upgrade some computer parts so I am better able to run Substance Painter with little lag. I went to pcgamebenchmark.com for a diagnostic, and I'm accepting the fact that I'll have to upgrade my GPU (lookin' at "PNY QUADRO M2000" on Amazon). I have 16 GB RAM and more than enough HDD space. But I'd like to ask is there a Minimum CPU Requirement for Substance? For a low-down on the important stuff on my build see below, but I'd like to get some input. Staying far away from my Chipset and Motherboard is the optimal course. I don't trust my soldering skills to exchange my CPU from my current mobo.

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Gabe's (Current) Specs:
GPU: NVIDIA® Quadro® K600 VCQK600-PB 1GB GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 Low Profile Workstation Video Card
CPU: Intel Core i5-3350P Ivy Bridge Quad-Core 3.1GHz (3.3GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 69W BX80637i53350P Desktop Processor
Motherboard: MSI Z77IA-E53 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS
Power Supply: Corsair CX600, 600-Watt
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I also wanted to post my Power Supply specs in case in needs to be brought up for said CPU/ mobo. Any advice will help.

Thanks a Bunch,

-Gabe

PolyHertz

Please read the first post in the stickied upgrade thread, covers nearly everything you'd want to know about PC parts:
https://polycount.com/discussion/173350/upgrading-or-building-a-new-pc-this-is-the-thread-for-you/p1

Also, You don't need to solder anything, CPUs are only held in by a small latch and whatever fasteners your fan uses.
And unless your using Rhino 3D, Solidworks, or some other app designed around FP64 performance you're just throwing money away going with a single low/mid spec Quadro like that. The M2000 is about $400, for the same price you can get a Geforce 2060 Super which has double the vram and 3-5x the general performance.

GabeLamas

Wait, the Quadro M2000 is a low profile card? And here I was looking to get a higher end to not repeat what I did with my K600 (making a compromise and getting a low-profile GPU).

Aren't GeForce cards used for gaming? And don't they only render single sided-Polygons, whereas Quadro cards are able to render double-sided polygons? Plus, I'm a bit concerned for my Motherboard overheating if my CPU has to keep up with my Graphics card performance. I tend to work with Maya and ZBrush, and I'm looking to use Substance as my texturing tool.

PolyHertz

An M2000 only has 4GB of VRAM (mid-range cards these days start at 6-8GB) and a paltry 768 CUDA cores (compared to 2,176 on a mid-range Geforce 2060 Super). That's not even mentioning the complete lack of any raytracing hardware on the M2000. So yea, by modern standards it's not a very good card.

Both the Geforce and Quadro cards can display double sided polygons, the difference is a Quadro can do it much faster because it is rendering each polygon from both sides instead of treating each polygon as two. However, you need to understand you're paying a rather extreme premium for that and features you'll probably never use. For the apps you've mentioned (Maya and Substance Painter) the M2000 is going to be miles behind the performance found in a modern Geforce card of the same price. A Geforce 2060 Super would absolutely crush the M2000 for something like Substance Painter.

Btw, ZBrush is almost entirely limited by CPU performance, so upgrading your GPU wont really make much difference in that program. You'll need to upgrade your CPU if you want any improvements there.

As for overheating, that would only happen if you're PC has poor cooling (you can get a good CPU fan for like $30 so that should never be an issue) or the cooler has poor contact with the CPU (such as if no thermal paste was applied, but unless the person who put it together was completely incompetent that won't happen).

poopipe

Just want to reinforce the above. 
Don't buy the quadro, get the best nvidia gaming card you can and hope your cpu/motherboard combo doesn't bottleneck it too much. 

GabeLamas

poopipe Alright, (Nvidia) Gaming cards it is then. But just curious, what CPU/ mobo setup would better accommodate the GPU performance of a mid-to-high level card? Just curious and trying to cover my bases.

And PolyHertz , Is there any other brands that are comparable/ slightly cheaper than the Geforce 2060 Super, or are we staying within the nVidia line?

Btw, thank you both for the advice.

poopipe

To take full advantage of a new gpu you need a motherboard and cpu with all the bells and whistles - top end i7/i9 etc.  But even with the i5 you'll still see plenty of benefits. 

You want to stick with nvidia for the driver support and general reliability in dcc apps.  You'll see fixes for amd bugs in almost every painter version release notes and that's been the case for years. 

If you're looking to spend as little as possible and willing to maybe buy used a 1070  will let you work pretty comfortably at 2k in Painter for most tasks.  If you're hoping to work at 4k you need to look at a 1080.
The 2060 super should be great (on paper at least).  We have 2080 and 2080Ti cards in for testing at work and we're finding that performance bottlenecks are in the computer rather than the gpu (i7 9700k boxes) 

PolyHertz

You could go with a regular (non-Super) 2060, which could save you maybe $50, but you'd be giving up 2GB of VRAM in the process. The Geforce 1070 wouldn't be a bad choice either, but they don't make them anymore and you'd be giving up the raytracing tech found in the Geforce 2000 series.

Nvidia is really the only choice in terms of GPU brand. AMD is good at making CPUs (they're beating Intel atm in many ways) but their GPUs are just not that well supported compared to Nvidia cards.

If you plan on upgrading your CPU, I'd go with at least a Ryzen 2700X or 3600 (both cost about $150-200). Also, you should really consider going with 32GB of RAM in your next PC build, having only 16GB will bottleneck you in Substance.