Need advice on budget PC for rendering

[Dimitris Tolios]

Yeah...and you are stuck with increased power consumption etc...

Darn, you make me slack @ work looking for stuff!

True, then, you can get 2x4GB used for 80-90$.

[Roodogg]

3ds Max Rendering is all about multithreading so I assume dual processors with eight cores are better than one with four. Obviously it depends on the architecture etc but the e5440 seems to still be up there with some of the fastest.

 

Ebay is littered with refurbe'd dual Xeon machines... There are plenty with decent CPUs, 1GB graphics,16Gb RAM and quality guarantees, prices going up to around £800 ($1300) - and looking at processing benchmarks at http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html I can't really see the point in starting out with a new Sandybridge or similar.

 

I think I just like recycling. These machines new only a couple of years ago were lightning fast!

[Roodogg]

Actually, it's possible to buy pretty cheap ECC ram these days, it's the price for motherboards and case for those that ups the Xeon solution into heaven (or price hell). I would already have one :- ). The only truly feasible Xeon solution today is the sandy bridge based one, and it's just so expensive.

 

Xeon 5540, is very slow and old. Both of those are about same power as i7 2600k I would say judging from benchmarks.

 

So you are saying that a dual Xeon e5540 / e5440 is the same power as an i7 2600k? This is what I concluded after looking at various benchmarks also .... But obviously refurbished Xeon machines cost next to nothing. Are you saying that once you have upgraded the GPU / RAM etc, you're spending more than on a new 2600k / 2700k system?

 

This thread is about a single budget rendering workstation, so I'm assuming power consumption is fairly irrelevant. Only when you're linking multiple PCs do you need to worry about that.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Power consumption is not a small issue…

 

The Throttling of older 45nm CPUs like the E54xx is terrible in comparison with newer Sany and Ivy bridges. You will be going through a lot of extra KWh running this thing all day – like most PC enthusiasts do…in Europe is not a small deal as electricity is quite expensive, and over the lifetime of a component, you are “buying” the original value many times depending on usage…here in the US energy bills are lower, but still…think green (or the color of your currency if that moves you more).

 

I believe it was an article in tom’s hardware illustrating how over 1-1.5 years, getting a cheap(er) pair of GPUs to use in SLI/Crossfire in order to match the performance of a newer/faster single GPU might end up being just as expensive, if not more because of the added energy consumption! You “think” your are saving money, but…it bites back!

 

Modern CPUs like the 3770K are amazing when idling, and I bet are impressively better when modeling. 3DS max rendering is all about multithreading, but modeling and general 2D editing is not, so your 2x Xeon will be throttling badly 8x cores while actually utilizing 1-2 of them the most (including background services), while the Ivy will be turbo-boosting one @ much faster levels (almost 2x the GHz, and along a way more optimized calculation pipeline), suspending power to the idling cores etc. Sandy is also better by far in that aspect.

 

The story is similar with newer GPUs, like nVidia Kepler core which do wonders in energy efficiency in comparison with Fermi cards, and the AMD Core Next (in the lastest 79xx series) is actually even better.

 

Rendering times might be the same, close to the same or even better, but when you are sitting in front of the freakin thing working on it, faster single threaded performance does count too.

In the long run there is a reason E5420s are selling for something ridiculous like $19 in Amazon.com =)

 

It might be more than decent as a rendering node for the price, but to make it a potent workstation similar to a 2600K/3770K you won’t be spending less.

(now that I'm thinking about it, i should make a fuss about it @ the office and make them change their towers, with me salvaging the old ones ofc)

[Roodogg]

I was correct in stating I don't know what I'm talking about. Having seen the performance reviews of the i7 3930k, especially with a moderate overclock, it's worth waiting a month or two until the machines creep under the £1000 mark.

[Dimitris Tolios]

I was correct in stating I don't know what I'm talking about. Having seen the performance reviews of the i7 3930k, especially with a moderate overclock, it's worth waiting a month or two until the machines creep under the £1000 mark.

The 3930K is a different beast - remember it's techincally "1.5x 2600K".

In single threaded applications (again, when modeling) a 2600K/3770K is just as fast.

The 3930K will shine when you render, when you run multiple stuff (virtual machines for example) at the same time, when you need more than 32GB of Ram, you need more than 3x GPUs, more RAM bandwidth and other extremities like that.

[jensandersen]

Sorry for stealing the thread here, but message was too long for a PM to dtolios + now others can join in

 

Hi dtolios

 

I was reading the thread you have posted in here http://forums.cgarchitect.com/70717-need-advice-budget-pc-rendering-4.html (found it by google) and I wonder if I could ask you a question similar to it?

 

I'm an architect student in Denmark currently on my 2nd year, and I'm in the process of building myself a workstation for home use (I have a 2010 MacBook pro for school use, but I'd like some more power for 3ds max and faster renders when I'm home). Oh yeah, and btw I would like to play some computer games on it too once in a while.

 

I'm on a students budget, but the setup I'm aiming for is:

CPU: i7 3770k

Mobo: z77 (maybe a MSIz77A-G45 as its cheap)

SSD: Crucial m4 128gb

HDD: some random 1tb

PSU: seasonic S12ll620w bronze certified

 

The big question is what graphic card to buy? I've been googling this a lot, but can't seem to find the answers.

 

I know most newer nvidia has cuda, but only some apps support it, so don't know if I need that. I also guess 2gb VRAM would be optimal for the viewport or if I add another monitor. At the same time I have a budget and would like okay performance in games (BF3, SWTOR and diablo3, I don't need ultra settings in these).

And then there is the whole AMD vs nvidia deal in the workstation area (don't think the brand matters much in games).

 

I've been looking at:

AMD 7770 (cheap as hell and ok performance)

AMD 7850 (x2 the price, but great performance and OC potential + 2gb VRAM)

Gtx570 (same or a little bit more expensive than the 7850, but only 1.25gb VRAM)

 

Don't know if gpu rendering would be preferred in some scenarios or not?

 

Thank you very much for your time.

 

Best regards

Jens

[AJLynn]

What software do you use? Are there any GPU rendering packages in particular that you want this to run?

[RyderSK]

Good choice on that Crucial M4. I have two OCZ vertex, but I put Crucial M4 180GB to my latest workstation and I can say it might be faster. Costed almost the same. I would also already pay those 50+ euros for 180GB, I understand price is your concern, but trust me, it's so worth it. You won't just install Windows and few programs, but you can also store you current Max files, and THAT, alone is worth it, one second autosave compared to 15 seconds freeze. Long time loading scenes (15 minutes anyone? on huge files). 180GB is also significantly faster than 128GB version.

 

All I wanted to say :- )

 

Neither of those card will be useful at GPU rendering. Only few use OpenlCL, like VrayRT, so AMD is out of choice, and outside of GTX580 with 3GB, which is out of your price range, other have way too little memory for serious use. I would say, go cheaper, and by one with passive cooling, the silence is so worth it in my opinion..

[Dimitris Tolios]

Hello Jens,

The choice is not that difficult…after one point is purely price driven.

 

• 3770K is great.
  

 

 

 

• MSI z77 mobos are pretty good. Just like Asus and Gigabyte. If you are not interested in fancy NICs etc, either would be just as good, with the “cheaper” ones beating Asus in many aspects – even Vcore ripple etc according to Anandtech which is great (for us). All of them are pretty good for the mild O/C 3770K is capable of anyways. Just get a mid-range Z77 and it will be fine.
  

 

• Crucial m4 is pretty good, no doubt (I have a m4 256 in my lil laptop – the Samsung 830 might be just as good if not better, and it’s similarly priced). I don’t believe that an SSD is a priority though, especially when you HDD is a fast 7200rpm 3.5” and not a silly 2.5”…that’s me having buyer’s remorse. I would spend those $100 or so that 128GB SSD will be (don’t know how those are priced in Europe atm) to get a better GPU any day.
  

 

• As far as GPUs go…the more ram, the better. Ofc you need something with enough raw rendering power to make it sufficiently faster than the CPU – thus some 3-4GB 64bit silly cards that have been out from time to time won’t cut it…GPU renderings are VRam limited, but 2GBs are ok I guess…you won’t be able to do really complex stuff, but you can play around. Seen amazing stuff with older cards (less than 2GB), so I really don’t know what to expect and how scene complexity is scaling up with GBs. Judging by "Octane Corners" and what Bertrand Benoit pulled out of a humble GTX 285, I guess you can do enough. I don't know how much better or worse is Octane in comparison to VRay RT, but it should be somewhat comparable.
  

 

• nVidia cards have the upper hand because of CUDA as far as GPU renderings, the former being the only language supported by iRay and Octane. VRay RT is OpenCL, meaning it works with Radeons pretty well though – you have to be lucky with the drivers for the latter but I think lately it works ok. Radeons are also said to be better for viewport acceleration, orbiting and panning around complex scenes better than nVidia (and FireGL also blowing Quadros in that aspect). As far as gaming goes, if you don’t have anything bigger than a 1080-1200p monitor, you don’t need to worry: most cards in the $200+ range fly through current games @ max settings and 60-100+ fps...
  

I would not get the 570 unless I got the 2.5GB version. The price for this card is not bad, but again depends on your local market: newegg.com has the 2.5GB around $330, while the 1.25 @ $300. At this price difference is a no-brainer.

 

Still the 570 is an energy hog, like the 580. It will get hotter and probably louder than cheaper ATIs without being really faster, but it buys you CUDA compatibility.

[AJLynn]

I think the choice of GPU renderer, or lack thereof, is the determining factor. If there's a renderer that's a priority for you that's CUDA only, you want a 500-series Geforce card with a lot of memory. (For more complex scenes, a 1.25GB card isn't going to do the job.) If GPU rendering isn't a priority, those Radeons are both looking pretty good - the 7850 for being as powerful as the 570, with more memory and a low price, and the 7770 for being really pretty respectable (a bit faster than a Geforce 550 TI) and very low power. Lower power means less cooling needed means less noise, etc., etc.

[jensandersen]

Thank you very much for the answers guys.

 

On one side Ryder praises the performance gain of his SSD(I'm not able to find the 180gb version in Denmark though), but dtolios thinks its not worth it considering how current HDDs perform - this has me biased, as my only current experience is with my 500gb 2years old HDD in my MacBook. So maybe the performance of a new HDD in the desktop would be a "good enough" boost and I could spring for an SSD for the laptop later.

 

A passive cooled GPU would be neat (noise wise) but I simply think the performance when gaming would be terrible. Also, I might just go for fair performance in games and don't bother with GPU render engines. The 3770k should be a big upgrade for me any way.

 

I might wait a week or two as I just heard the nvidia 670 will be launched tomorrow, so shouldn't we see some prices drop on the rest of the lineups?

Though I think the 7770 would be enough for my 3ds max and diablo3 needs.

[RyderSK]

Hehe, c'mon Jens, you're architecture student, there will never be any time for computer gaming anyway :- ) I had to give up my gaming too (though I partly develop games now).

I understand stance from with Dtolios is coming from, and he is very knowledgeable. My stance and priorities simply differ a bit ;- ) SSD is dream come true, I will have soon almost 6 computers in my office, and each one has SSD only (and I use single NAS disk with traditional HDDs to store textures and other datas across network).

I don't think honestly the viewport performance gets so much better and smoother with highend graphic cards, but I know the noise from them get on my nerves. SSD on other hand speeds the start of your system (which is already fast with new UEFI bios new motherboards have, my ASUS version is excellent) multiple times from HDDs, I don't consider 7200rpm HDDs to be fast at all. And the startup of Max, Photoshop and loading of huge files, gets so much quicker, saves incredible and invaluable time. Not mentioning small stuff like loading HDRis into material slots :- ) Happens in miliseconds, instead of annoying "freezes" here and there.

Even super cheap 64GB just for windows, Max and swapping, speeds everything.

 

But yes, you can choose to save on that now, and buy the SSD instead to your laptop. The slow, noisy and heat producing 5400rpm on Macbook pro is just unusable for any serious 3D work.

[AJLynn]

I recently upgraded my own MBP by adding one of these which I mounted in one of these, losing the DVD and having two hard drives. It's not as fast as an SSD but now my MBP has 1.25 TB of storage and the time to boot and run the most common programs is way down. The new drive is now the main drive and the old drive holds my Aperture library. If you care more about speed than storage capacity you could use the same mounting caddy to add an SSD, and have an SSD+HDD combo. It needs an external optical drive now, but I hardly ever use optical discs anyway.

 

My 2+ year old Acer 11.6" notebook now has a 120GB SSD, and it's perfect for those things because they're meant to be carried around, put to sleep and woken up often.

 

But I still say the gain from going with a real video card over an Intel onboard card, in a desktop meant for 3D work, is more important that the gain from going with an SSD over a good HDD. If you get any complexity at all in your Max scene, waiting around for your viewport to move or seeing it go at 2 FPS because you don't have a real GPU in there is just going to be far more time wasting and downright demoralizing than having to wait an extra minute to boot or 30 seconds for Max to load.