New Computer Build Processor and GPU
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Thanks for all the responses. So Intel is in AMD is out! Any thoughts on GPU configurations? We all currently run the GTX 780ti, my initial thought was to pop three of them in to start (we also use Lumion and Octane on occasion)...
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@jeff hammond said:
@dkendig said:
personally I wouldn't go with either one, I would get an AMD. Their benchmarks are pretty much the same, but the price point is ridiculously lower than any comparable intel chip.
::ducks to avoid the flame war::
he has $7g though.
you're supposed to spend his money, not save it
Yeah, hard to wrap my head around having that budget for just one machine I guess. I can't say how our product performs in a production environment for any particular configuration. I use a macbook pro that's a year or two old, and a desktop I built (amd based) for DR or RT rendering. I don't get too fancy when rendering for my own testing purposes. If I had 7k, I'd build a little 3-4 computer render farm. I haven't tested it myself, but I would think that having 3 or 4 machines contributing to the render job would be better than paying 4-5x to get 2x performance boost. It also depends on what you're rendering. If you're doing more quick renders than big slow renders, then the network lag on DR would probably have an impact on performance when dealing with the farm. Otherwise I would think that having the farm would be the way to go.
One AMD FX-9590 Eight-Core (score 10,194) is $219.95
One Intel Core i7-5960X (score 16,905) is $1,011.99... so there's some improvement here, it's nearly 7,000 higher in the benchmark score (not sure how that relates to V-Ray though)... but you have to pay about 500% for that little bump...I'm also confused why intel server chips (xeon) are listed... but no AMD (opteron)... not sure why they would be omitted...
So for a benchmark that is actually related to what we do, here are benchmarks for 3D Studio Max using Mental Ray: http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/cpu-charts-2013/-26-3DS-Max-2012,3161.html
Again I'm seeing under $200 for AMD, and over $350 for intel, with similar benchmark scores.
Granted, you have a huge budget, and you already have a render farm, so by all means, go on and get the absolute latest and greatest processor you can find (or a few of them for that matter). Like I said, I just have never had that kind of budget for one workstation.
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space and power get to be a consideration once you have many boxes... also noise, heat. Additionally, you have to consider that node licensing has changed with vray 3.0 - you have to pay for nodes now, so it make sense in that regard to have fewer machines (thinking ahead at least
). @ Devin: I don't know if you realize that AMD cores =/= Intel cores. Intel uses hyperthreading, so you pretty much get double the cores in terms of processing power. I.e. - 4 cores Intel = 8 cores AMD, more or less. -
@jiminy-billy-bob said:
@dkendig said:
personally I wouldn't go with either one, I would get an AMD. Their benchmarks are pretty much the same, but the price point is ridiculously lower than any comparable intel chip.
::ducks to avoid the flame war::
Regardless of pure performance, he stated that he wants to use this machine with Vray. And in a few months you should be releasing v3, right? Which means Embree, right? Which means Intel, right?
Right?
I don't know any benchmark info at all for our product unfortunately, and I can't say exactly what V-Ray for SketchUp 3.0 will or will not have at this point, or how it will benchmark on a given configuration, it's still kind of early in the dev cycle.
AFAIK any high end cpu (intel or amd) that supports SSSE3, SSSE4, SSSE4.2, or AVX... which should be able to use Embree.
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@andybot said:
space and power get to be a consideration once you have many boxes... also noise, heat. Additionally, you have to consider that node licensing has changed with vray 3.0 - you have to pay for nodes now, so it make sense in that regard to have fewer machines (thinking ahead at least
). @ Devin: I don't know if you realize that AMD cores =/= Intel cores. Intel uses hyperthreading, so you pretty much get double the cores in terms of processing power. I.e. - 4 cores Intel = 8 cores AMD, more or less.Yeah, I'm aware that amd cores != intel cores. I believe that we charge per every 10 render nodes if I recall correctly, so yes, there is an additional cost (which could be covered by not purchasing a $3,000 cpu). Like I said, I haven't really done any benchmarks, and my job doesn't really involve rendering a ton, I just write the plugin, and talk to you nice folks
Heat, noise, power consumption, etc. I remember back before we had our in house render farm enclosed in a proper server room... Granted, we had a farm of 30+ rack mounted nodes, and not just a couple machines sitting around, but it can still be an issue with a handful I guess. I think one of our developers here has 5 computers at his desk alone, 6 when he brings in his laptop, 7 when he brings in his other one, so I don't think of <10 machines as a big issue.
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Here is a french website but with nice visual charts:
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/924-9/rendu-3d-mental-ray-v-ray.htmlThe FX9590 is 30% cheaper than the i7 4970k, but 20% slower on Vray. So indeed, it is a bit more power for the bucks, but not that much.
Btw, we can see on the link above that the gap between intel and AMD CPUs is wider on Vray than Mental Ray. (And Vray is so much faster than MR on a similar scene)
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yeah, I don't know how much of a difference that 20% slowdown makes in a real world situation. I just render scenes that customers send us when our support guys are baffled. or to verify a bug is fixed. I guess that 1 minute difference would equate to a pretty big difference for a longer render, and so the extra 30% cost would pay for itself after 1 or 2 jobs. I guess the same could be said for the crazy expensive $2,000+ intel chips. If you can shave a minute or two off a little render, then it will pay for itself after a few big renders.
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so skgator99, I apologize for my AMD tirade, carry on. Please post specs of whatever you do end up building, so we can all have a mess to clean up ::nod::
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@dkendig said:
so skgator99, I apologize for my AMD tirade, carry on. Please post specs of whatever you do end up building, so we can all have a mess to clean up ::nod::
Hahaha, no problem. I appreciate all the input, I think I have a better idea of what I want and need, though those are probably two differently entities entirely...
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@dkendig said:
I apologize for my AMD tirade
Well, you were right about AMD being cheaper for the same power!
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There's a reason people only talk about intel if you look at the hardware section in the Chaos Group forums. I don't think I've heard mention about AMD processors in years.
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it's a whole other side of the coin that I don't even think about anymore to be honest. I used to be a hardware geek, but these days I'm more of a software geek
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On the Rhino forum there's a file you can run called Holomark2 that spits out a data sheet when it's complete showing all of the components of your computer and how well they performed with a total score at the top. Real useful. It's Rhino specific, not V-Ray specific but it nonetheless provides real valuable information. Would be great to have something like that here.
Encouraged me to think my next computer is going to be a i7-4790 w/ a GTX-970
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