Is CPU multi-core or single-core performance more important for physics simulations?
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Multi-core and single-core performance seem to have a lot of importance focused on their distinction, enough for Cinebench to maintain two separate categories and for UserBenchmark to be ostracized for their focus on single-core performance being seen as a bias for Intel CPUs or at least as a deprecated way of thinking about CPU power.
So I'm trying to understand how this applies to me as a 3D artist. Most of the info out there is catered to gamers.
What is more important? My biggest priority is being able to handle sculpting, texture painting, and cloth simulation all in extremely high resolutions. I don't do renders at all. Would the answer change if I did?
I'm using Zbrush, Substance, Marvelous, and Blender
Replies
For simulation and rendering aim for a multicore CPU.
Im running a Ryzen 5950 and im happy.
Depends on the software.
Anyone sensible will run a SIM at least partly on the GPU to take advantage of the massively parallel vector math acceleration - it's orders of magnitude faster than doing it on the CPU for operations that can be vectorised (like physics)
That doesn't mean that the software you use actually does that - a lot don't and in that case you need CPU. Of course there's no guarantee that your software will take advantage of multiple threads either - depends whether they've bothered or not.
Short answer. You want a massive GPU, a high core count CPU with high base clocks and a shit load of RAM.
Longer answer, find out how the software you're using works and buy hardware accordingly.
I guess it depends on your definition of extremely high resolution but by mine you can't do that on a desktop. You need a room full of scary looking boxes and really aggressive air-conditioning