Going to upgrade my PC. Need some advice.
polycounter lvl 12
I'm looking at getting one of the new i7 quad core processors with a new motherboard and as much ram as I can handle. I do a lot of game art and high poly rendering with Maya and Mental ray and use other programs such as Realflow and Vue.
Are the i7 processors a good choice for speeding up render times and good for 3d modeling and rendering use?
cheers.
Are the i7 processors a good choice for speeding up render times and good for 3d modeling and rendering use?
cheers.
Replies
in realflow i can simulate 200 frames of a pretty "intense" 1000000 particle simulation in about an hour and the time to mesh it is about half that depending on the final quality you are going for.
and if that still aint quick enough you can get one of the new lga 2011 cpus and from what i have been hearing the are quite the quick little things.
and as for the motherboard i have an asrock p67 extreme 6 (kinda rice but i like tri-sli gaming) and have it loaded with 16 gigs o ram... but unless i have something loaded into a ram disk i have never seen it go past 60 percent ram usage so unless you know you really need it you should be fine on only 8 gigs of ram
and yes i7 is the way to go right now, unless you are willing to shell out for a beefy amd server cpu Intel simply cannot be beat
In addition to the i7 processor I would highly recommend getting and SSD drive for your main program drive. Only use the SSD as a program drive and store all data on another drive though.
Installing those two made a huge difference in overall comp speed, including program start up, running programs, doing renderings, running simulations etc..
looking at cinebench benchmarks will probably be most revelant.
Every machine I have owned put together in a renderfarm does not equal the power of my personal machine. ( 12 heavily overclocked water cooled i7-980x threads )
which still renders 20% better at stock speeds than a 2600k
and is only 10% slower than the newest x79 i7-3960x
$1000 for a 10% cg intensive upgrade?
last chart was from an old pre-release of the cpu but the following cinebench comparison results in the same results and also includes a wider range of cpus fer comparison:
http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i7-3960x-processor--msi-x79agd65-review/15
Ivy bridge is a Q1 release, although the "E" version will probably be yet another year... I am betting that it would take at least an Ivy Bridge-E cpu to make enough distance in rendering speeds to justify the investment.
( between ivy bridge-E and Maxwell, 2013 is shaping up to be the "upgrade year" )
At least that is my strategy
for what it's worth.
I can tell you that compared to 4 core machines,
that an overclocked 12 threads on a motherboard with heavy duty japanese components will seem blisteringly fast in comparison.
Now that the 3960x sandy bridge E cpu is out you can find a lot of deals on ebay for the i7-980x ( which is 20% faster for your rendering needs than a 2600k )
Only problem with going that route is finding a seller that is selling because he is upgrading rather than someone that blew through their warranty during an Ln2 session.
Same goes for the motherboards. The ASUS Rampage series may seem like overpriced gamer bait but if you are overclocking I don't believe anyone can dispute the importance of heavy duty components to save you from overvolting ( I have run overclocked @ 4.45 Dailey for almost 2 years. Although all my components are watercooled )
I have never heard of anyone having any problems with ASUS sabertooth series either ( supposedly military grade components )
If rendering speeds are your main concern... Then anything less than the maximum number of threads comes down to performance for your dollars.
For a personal rig, I would recommend waiting/saving for ivy-bridge e.
My machine will have lasted 3 years when I upgade next year with no real competition. I am betting the Ivy-Bridge E will result in the same future proofing timing.
Ditto!
starting photoshop as easily as starting notepad does wonders fer productivity!
Fer stability and speed I recommend crucial c300 (still king for small read/writes, if u can find one ) and the crucial m4.
If you cannot afford to raid then u defintely want to get a 256meg or higher ssd drive. ( the performance boost you get going from 128 to 256 is huge )
There is a new trend of using a hdd and ssd as a hybrid ( ssd buffering to give your hdd ssd speeds! )
1 terabyte @ ssd speeds:
http://thessdreview.com/our-reviews/ocz-revodrive-hybrid-1tb-pcie-ssd-review-performance-capacity-and-value-finally/
On the other hand u might want to delay any "major" ssd purchase as well...
Not only is there a lot of turmoil lately ( LSI buying sandforce, major buggy releases this generation ) But lots of innovation in development happening at acclerated pace: ( like 12GB/s )
http://thessdreview.com/raid-enterprise/lsi-accelerating-innovation-summit-12gbs-revealed/
or LSI's hybrid:
http://thessdreview.com/raid-enterprise/lsi-accelerating-innovation-summit-warpdrive-2-hybrid/
Today if money is no object...
u could try building one of these 4.7GB/s sustained transfer monsters: http://thessdreview.com/raid-enterprise/areca-arc-1882x-2nd-gen-6gbs-sassata-raid-card-review-4-7gbs-transfer-performance/
( drool )
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1751/8/
yeah but the 2700k is just a barely overclocked 2600k thats been a little cherry picked which means not much since the 2600k and most other sandy bridge cpus can hit 5ghz with out to much hassle