mondex Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 Hello! It's pretty tough keeping up with all the hardware news and advice online! I went through this forum to find some information and I came up with a config I'm planning to get for around 2500£ (4000$). All I need is expert advice because I'm not as qualified as I wish I was! I'm planning to use 3DS Max 2011 Vray 2.0 After Effects CS6 Photoshop CS6 Illustrator CS6 Right now I'm suffering with my current 5 years old configuration: Intel Core 2Duo E8500 @3.16GHz4GB RAMATI RADEON HD 3850Windows 7 Professional 64bits Here's what I have in mind: CPU: Intel Core i7-3930K Hexa-Core Processor 3.2 Ghz 12 MB Cache LGA 2011Corsair Hydro Series H80 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CWCH80)Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800) GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 680 4096 MB GDDR5 Dual Dual-Link DVI/mHDMI/DP/SLIPRIMARY DISC: Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 32 MB Cache 2.5 Inch Solid State Hybrid DriveSECONDARY DISC: Seagate Barracuda 7200 1 TB 7200RPM SATA 6 Gb/s NCQ 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare DriveASUS P9X79 DELUXE LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel MotherboardCreative Sound Blaster Recon3D THX PCIE Fatal1ty Pro Sound CardCorsair HX Professional Series 850-Watt 80 Plus Certified Power Supply Compatible with Core i7 and Core i5Corsair Obsidian Series Black 650D Mid Tower Computer CaseWindows 7 Professional 64bits I was wondering if there's any overkill or incompatibilities? My main priority is to increase my render times, and being able to work with a high poly count on screen. Many thanks in advance for your advice! Best Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmatias Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 Hi Markus. I'm running near the same config: - i7-3930K (overclocked @ 4,2 GHz) - Mobo : ASUS P9X79 WS - RAM : G.Skill RipJaws Z Series 32 Go (4 x 8 Go) DDR3 2400 MHz CL10 - 2 x Nvidia 580 GTX (3GB Ram each) Everything is fine under Windows 7 x64 for 3D applications and Adobe creative suite, and it is actually the best compromise Power/Money. If you plan to use 2 GPUs in the future for V-Ray RealTime on Cuda, buy a 1000W PSU. Regards. Carlos Matias Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fellazb Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 If you wanna work with a high polycount on your screeen then I'd advise MAX 2012. The nitrous viewport with a Nvidia card is stunning. For a review you can check I'm not much of a hardware expert, but from a first look it seems very decent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 (edited) Looks solid. Overkills? Well, ofc a $4000 / 2500 quid rig has to have some exaggerations. Lets rant: P9x79 "deluxe" is probably overkill - what do you need out of this that the Pro or vanilla version won't give you? Dual NIC? WiFi? You can def. get a better one of the latter for the money.Also I would replace the Momentus XT with a 256GB SSD or so...The XT is a great drive, but it is still based on a 2.5" 7200rpm disk... Overall an 3.5" 7.2K rpm HDD with a 30-60GB SSD caching or a pure SSD drive will be easily faster. I like the WD Blacks for the 5y warranty. I would get a Samsung M4 Pro 256 If I was going for a high-end system.H80...decent. Not that cheaper than the H100 to count, and the case you want fits both, so I would go 100 which performs better. Keep in mind that Corsair announced the H80i / H100i newer and "improved" versions for both coolers. I don't know if those will make it on the shelves before you commit tho.GTX 680: great card, good for GPU rendering - tho a 670 is so close (something like 7-8%) I would not bother with the 680. Also, keep in mind that viewport performance is nothing great with these cards. Nothing their price would suggest. Viewport performance matures much much slower than gaming performance does. That said, 3DS Max Nitrous viewport seems to work just fine with GTX cards.Sound card - meh - overrated. But I sense a gaming system behind your WS excuse... Edited November 12, 2012 by dtolios Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mondex Posted November 12, 2012 Author Share Posted November 12, 2012 Many thank Dimitris for your kind advice! It will surely save me some money! I will follow your advice then! I do have a question ref. the GPU: when you mention "Nitrus", did you mean http://www.teledynedalsa.com/mv/products/nitrous.aspx ? I never heard of this. They have an equivalent to the 670? Sorry for my silly questions: I'd rather be silly for 3 minutes than for a lifetime! lol Ref. Sound card: I know absolutely NOTHING about audio cards. It's just that I sometimes I have to do some editing and mixing, and I'm tired of struggling with my super crappy setup. I thought that little card looked sexy As for gaming, I'm happy with my PS3. I only have Angry Birds on my machine! Thanks again for your great advice! Best wishes!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott Schroeder Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 Max 2011 doesn't have nitrous, so that's why you are confused. Nitrous is a new viewport mode for Max 2012 and above. It's much faster than DirectX, though buggy at times. Here's an idea, save some cash on your soundcard and HD's at the moment and upgrade to Max 2013/Vray 2.3.etc. You'll bottleneck your rig with the slower Max 2011 and older Vray. If you are going to spend 4 grand on a system, you want to make sure you can use all of it for a proper return on your investment. Liquid cooling is all fine and dandy, but there are also some great coolers on the market for much less than a liquid system. I've got an arctic cooling setup on my i7 quad core and it keeps it at around 65C when fully pegged at 100% load, it idles around 25-30C. Much better than the 95-100C 100% load CPU temps I got with the stock intel cooler. Anything more than your run of the mill sound card is a serious waste of money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mondex Posted November 12, 2012 Author Share Posted November 12, 2012 Thanks Scott! I'l look more into my hardware needs ref. audio. I'll seriously consider upgrading my softwares too; I really want the bang for my buck! Arhhh! decisions! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevenarnold Posted November 14, 2012 Share Posted November 14, 2012 Hello Friends, Been running Sonar 6 PE and numerous soft synths on a Dell Inspiron 9100 (P4 2.8 GHz) laptop with 1 GB RAM and 800 MHz FSB. Works pretty well, but has serious limits to the number of synths, effects, etc., I can use before doing lots of creative "bouncing." I use the laptop for everything--DAW, Internet, CAD, Programming, Web, Photoshop, DTP, etc. Generally, I'm really surprised Sonar has been so stable considering the numerous hard hitting applications I have installed. I use Sonar and Project 5 as a hobby; I'm not a music/sound professional. But, for my electrical engineering degree and carerr I need something more than the old P4 can give. I am expecting a Dell Precision 690 Workstation next week. I picked the Woodcrest 5140 Xeon 2.33 GHz w/1333 MHz FSB (only one dual-core CPU at this time as money is tight). I ordered 2 GB of RAM (hoped for 4 GB but chose the better processor which cost an extra $260). The Operating System will be Windows XP Professional SP2, the same as on the laptop. For audio, since I was buying everything through Dell (I know the lectures; it's where my account was through school and I'm generally happy if I rid myself of all the crap), I picked what I considered the best of the lot: An M-Audio Audiophile 192. For the laptop, I'm using an Echo Indigio I/O (hi, Susan!). I picked the Audiophile mainly due to (1) the ASIO driver support and (2) the S/N and dynamic range specs (better than the other M-Audio stuff listed [Delte 44, 1010LT, etc.]). I have an external 7200 RPM 160 GB HDD that I can use for my cakewalk projects, multisamples, etc., as I've read that having a second drive is preferred for that. In time, I'd like to add a second, internal, 250 GB HDD and have a Linux dual-boot configuration. For now, it's just the one 250 GB internal and 160 GB external drives. Oh, video is the nVidia FX550 if that makes a difference (not to much 3D requirement here so it seemed the minimum solution). Since my OS is XP Pro SP2, I have a lot of "administrative" and security-type options. Since I have a rather large (compared to my laptop) HDD, I'd like to create various user profiles for things like DAW, Engineering, Internet, etc., to try and separate my multi-purpose machine. The big question is: does creating the various user accounts really prevent a lot of junk from creeping into the OS? From my experience, it looks like it's just a bunch of personal settings and a My Documents type folder structure that's created (I hate the My this and My that folders and don't use them). From a performance standpoint, does anyone know if it's possible to have various "OS" configurations with one license of XP Pro? Of course, any advice is always welcome as I'm pretty new to computer administration stuff. Thanks and Regards Steven Arnold Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mondex Posted November 18, 2012 Author Share Posted November 18, 2012 Ok, I've been brainstorming like crazy, and I came up with several different rigs. Hopefully there won't be any incompatibilities. Your advice would be very valuable to me! I'm hoping to be able to choose something around £1500: SETUP 1 Intel + nVidia £1882.45 • ASUS P9X79 LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard £200 • Intel Core i7-3930K Hexa-Core Processor 3.2 Ghz 12 MB Cache LGA 2011 £433 • EVGA GeForce GTX 680 4096 MB GDDR5 Dual Dual-Link DVI/mHDMI/DP/SLI Graphics Card £452 • Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory £73.10 • Corsair Obsidian Series Black 650D Mid Tower Computer Case £122.66 • Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - CPU Cooler with 120mm PWM Fan £29 • Western Digital WD1002FAEX Caviar Black 1 TB 7200 RPM Internal Hard Disk Drive £71 • Intel 520 Series Solid-State Drive 120 GB SATA 6 Gb/s 2.5-Inch £100 • 2x ASUS VE247H 24 inch LED Widescreen Full HD £147 (£294) • Corsair Enthusiast Series 850-Watt 80 Plus Bronze Certified Power Supply Compatible with Core i3, i5, i7 and platform £94 • Logitech Illuminated Keyboard Clavier Touches Rétro éclairées PerfectStroke USB Azerty Noir £43 -Amazon FR • LG GH24NS90.AUAA50B 24x SATA Bare Internal DVD Rewriter - Black SETUP 2 £1799.16 • ASUS P9X79 LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard £200 • Intel Core i7-3930K Hexa-Core Processor 3.2 Ghz 12 MB Cache LGA 2011 £433 • EVGA GeForce GTX 670 4096MB GDDR5, 2x Dual-Link DVI, HDMI, DP, 4-Way SLI Ready Graphics Card £368.3 • Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory £73.10 • Corsair Obsidian Series Black 650D Mid Tower Computer Case £122.66 • Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - CPU Cooler with 120mm PWM Fan £29 • Western Digital WD1002FAEX Caviar Black 1 TB 7200 RPM Internal Hard Disk Drive £71 • Intel 520 Series Solid-State Drive 120 GB SATA 6 Gb/s 2.5-Inch £100 • 2x ASUS VE247H 24 inch LED Widescreen Full HD £147 (£294) • Corsair Enthusiast Series 850-Watt 80 Plus Bronze Certified Power Supply Compatible with Core i3, i5, i7 and platform £94 • Logitech Illuminated Keyboard Clavier Touches Rétro éclairées PerfectStroke USB Azerty Noir £43 -Amazon FR • LG GH24NS90.AUAA50B 24x SATA Bare Internal DVD Rewriter - Black SETUP 3 £1673.5 • ASUS P9X79 LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard £200 • Intel Core i7-3820 Quad-Core Processor 3.6 GHz 10 MB Cache LGA 2011 £225 • EVGA GeForce GTX 680 4096 MB GDDR5 Dual Dual-Link DVI/mHDMI/DP/SLI Graphics Card £452 • Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory £73.10 • Corsair Obsidian Series Black 650D Mid Tower Computer Case £122.66 • Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - CPU Cooler with 120mm PWM Fan £29 • Western Digital WD1002FAEX Caviar Black 1 TB 7200 RPM Internal Hard Disk Drive £71 • Intel 520 Series Solid-State Drive 120 GB SATA 6 Gb/s 2.5-Inch £100 • 2x ASUS VE247H 24 inch LED Widescreen Full HD £147 (£294) • Corsair Enthusiast Series 850-Watt 80 Plus Bronze Certified Power Supply Compatible with Core i3, i5, i7 and platform £94 • Logitech Illuminated Keyboard Clavier Touches Rétro éclairées PerfectStroke USB Azerty Noir £43 -Amazon FR • LG GH24NS90.AUAA50B 24x SATA Bare Internal DVD Rewriter - Black SETUP 4 £1590.3 • ASUS P9X79 LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard £200 • Intel Core i7-3820 Quad-Core Processor 3.6 GHz 10 MB Cache LGA 2011 £225 • EVGA GeForce GTX 670 4096MB GDDR5, 2x Dual-Link DVI, HDMI, DP, 4-Way SLI Ready Graphics Card £368.3 • Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory £73.10 • Corsair Obsidian Series Black 650D Mid Tower Computer Case £122.66 • Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO - CPU Cooler with 120mm PWM Fan £29 • Western Digital WD1002FAEX Caviar Black 1 TB 7200 RPM Internal Hard Disk Drive £71 • Intel 520 Series Solid-State Drive 120 GB SATA 6 Gb/s 2.5-Inch £100 • 2x ASUS VE247H 24 inch LED Widescreen Full HD £147 (£294) • Corsair Enthusiast Series 850-Watt 80 Plus Bronze Certified Power Supply Compatible with Core i3, i5, i7 and platform £94 • Logitech Illuminated Keyboard Clavier Touches Rétro éclairées PerfectStroke USB Azerty Noir £43 -Amazon FR • LG GH24NS90.AUAA50B 24x SATA Bare Internal DVD Rewriter - Black SETUP 5 AMD + RADEON £1607.92 • AMD FX8350 Black Edition 8 Core Processor (4.0/4.2GHz, 8MB Level 3 Cache, 8MB Level 2 Cache, Socket AM3+, 125W, Retail Boxed) • NVIDIA Quadro 4000 - Graphics adapter - Quadro 4000 - PCI Express 2.0 x16 - 2 GB GDDR5 - DVI, DisplayPort ( HDCP ) • Corsair Obsidian Series 650D - Mid tower - ATX - no power supply ( ATX ) - black - USB/FireWire/Audio • Asus M5A99X Evo R2.0 Motherboard (AMD 990X/SB950, 4x DDR3, S-ATA 600, ATX, PCI-Express 3.0, USB 3.0, Network iControl, Windows 8 Ready, Socket AM3+) • Kingston KHX1600C9D3K4/16GX 16GB 1600MHz DDR3 Non-ECC CL9 DIMM XMP Memory Module (Kit of 4) • Kingston Technology HyperX 3K 2.5 inch 120GB SSD • Western Digital WD1002FAEX Caviar Black 1 TB 7200 RPM Internal Hard Disk Drive • Corsair TX750V2 Enthusiast Series 750W ATX/EPS 80 PLUS Bronze PSU • Coolermaster V8 Cooler RR-UV8-XBU1-GP Fan • 2x ASUS VE247H 24 inch LED Widescreen Full HD 1080p Support with HDMI 2ms Response Time Splendid? Video Intelligence Technology • LG GH24NS90.AUAA50B 24x SATA Bare Internal DVD Rewriter - Black • Logitech Illuminated Keyboard Clavier Touches Rétro éclairées PerfectStroke USB Azerty Noir £43 -Amazon FR SETUP 6 £1474 • AMD FX8320 Black Edition 8 Core (3.5/4.0GHz, 8MB Level 3 Cache, 8MB Level 2 Cache, Socket AM3+, 125W, Retail Boxed) • AMD ATI FirePro V7900 - Graphics adapter - FirePro V7900 - PCI Express 2.1 x16 - 2 GB GDDR5 - DisplayPort • Asus M5A99X Evo R2.0 Motherboard (AMD 990X/SB950, 4x DDR3, S-ATA 600, ATX, PCI-Express 3.0, USB 3.0, Network iControl, Windows 8 Ready, Socket AM3+) • Kingston KHX1600C9D3K4/16GX 16GB 1600MHz DDR3 Non-ECC CL9 DIMM XMP Memory Module (Kit of 4) • Kingston Technology HyperX 3K 2.5 inch 120GB SSD • Western Digital WD1002FAEX Caviar Black 1 TB 7200 RPM Internal Hard Disk Drive • Corsair TX750V2 Enthusiast Series 750W ATX/EPS 80 PLUS Bronze PSU • Coolermaster V8 Cooler RR-UV8-XBU1-GP Fan • 2x ASUS VE247H 24 inch LED Widescreen Full HD 1080p Support with HDMI 2ms Response Time Splendid? Video Intelligence Technology • LG GH24NS90.AUAA50B 24x SATA Bare Internal DVD Rewriter - Black • Logitech Illuminated Keyboard Clavier Touches Rétro éclairées PerfectStroke USB Azerty Noir £43 -Amazon FR SETUP 7 £1431.44 • AMD FX6300 Black Edition 6 Core (3.5/4.1GHz, 8MB Level 3 Cache, 6MB Level 2 Cache, Socket AM3+, 95W, Retail Boxed) • AMD ATI FirePro V7900 - Graphics adapter - FirePro V7900 - PCI Express 2.1 x16 - 2 GB GDDR5 - DisplayPort • Asus M5A99X Evo R2.0 Motherboard (AMD 990X/SB950, 4x DDR3, S-ATA 600, ATX, PCI-Express 3.0, USB 3.0, Network iControl, Windows 8 Ready, Socket AM3+) • Kingston KHX1600C9D3K4/16GX 16GB 1600MHz DDR3 Non-ECC CL9 DIMM XMP Memory Module (Kit of 4) • Kingston Technology HyperX 3K 2.5 inch 120GB SSD • Western Digital WD1002FAEX Caviar Black 1 TB 7200 RPM Internal Hard Disk Drive • Corsair TX750V2 Enthusiast Series 750W ATX/EPS 80 PLUS Bronze PSU • Coolermaster V8 Cooler RR-UV8-XBU1-GP Fan • 2x ASUS VE247H 24 inch LED Widescreen Full HD 1080p Support with HDMI 2ms Response Time Splendid? Video Intelligence Technology • LG GH24NS90.AUAA50B 24x SATA Bare Internal DVD Rewriter - Black • Logitech Illuminated Keyboard Clavier Touches Rétro éclairées PerfectStroke USB Azerty Noir £43 -Amazon FR SETUP 8 Intel + RADEON £1848.66 • ASUS P9X79 LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard £200 • Intel BX80619I73930K Core i7-3930K 6-Core Processor (3.2GHz (3.8GHz Turbo), Socket 2011, 12MB L3 Cache, Turbo Boost 2.0) • Asus AMD Radeon HD 7970 Graphics Card (3GB, GDDR5, HDMI, DVI-I, PCI-Express 3.0) • Kingston KHX1600C9D3K4/16GX 16GB 1600MHz DDR3 Non-ECC CL9 DIMM XMP Memory Module (Kit of 4) • Corsair Obsidian Series Black 650D Mid Tower Computer Case £122.66 • Corsair CWCH80 Hydro Series H80 High Performance 120mm Radiator All-In-One Liquid CPU Cooler • Western Digital WD1002FAEX Caviar Black 1 TB 7200 RPM Internal Hard Disk Drive £71 • Intel 520 Series Solid-State Drive 120 GB SATA 6 Gb/s 2.5-Inch £100 • 2x ASUS VE247H 24 inch LED Widescreen Full HD £147 (£294) • Corsair TX750V2 Enthusiast Series 750W ATX/EPS 80 PLUS Bronze PSU • Logitech Illuminated Keyboard Clavier Touches Rétro éclairées PerfectStroke USB Azerty Noir £43 -Amazon FR • LG GH24NS90.AUAA50B 24x SATA Bare Internal DVD Rewriter - Black Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted November 18, 2012 Share Posted November 18, 2012 (edited) If it is your single workstation, nothing beats an i7 atm. Any flavor, 2600K, 3770K, 3820, 3930K etc, has the best balance between multi-threaded performance (rendering/trans-coding video) and single threaded performance (pretty much everything else, including modeling, CAD etc) is close to the best out there - if not the best. The i5s offer amazing single thread performance (o/ced 3570K is perhaps the fastest out there, HT hinders single thread a bit for i7s), and more than decent multithread. FX8xxx are decent for multithread, beating i5s in most cases due to more cores, but their single thread performance pales in comparison. It is not day and night, most likely you won't suffer / feel anything. We are talking benchmarks here. The case that matters is always price: if you can catch a good offer on a budget 990 mobo and a 8120 or 8320 that will allow you to buy a better GPU etc that you could not afford otherwise, go for it. But if an i5 is within €/$20-30, is usually a better choice - again for anything but a dedicated render node that is specialized to do nothing but the rendering itself. FX4xxx/6xxx do not worth it. For budget boxes, an AMD APU will do better, so would an i3 or even Sandybridge Celeron. AMD is going through some tough times, any help you give them is more than welcome, but truth has to be said. For the rest of the builds you are pretty much in a good place, with myriads of details that we can discuss, but make your mind on a platform first. Edited November 18, 2012 by dtolios Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mondex Posted November 18, 2012 Author Share Posted November 18, 2012 Thanks Dimitris! I haven't checked the i5 yet! I'll see if I can figure out a better setup for my budget with that. Maybe I should also think about setups 4, 5 and 6... GPU: hesitating between QUADRO 4000, HD RADEON 7970, V7900 or the GTX 670 or 680... Gosh this is tough to choose! Even if I had 10 000$ I'd struggle to choose my parts! Thanks again!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted November 18, 2012 Share Posted November 18, 2012 Completely different GPUs and different prices... Quadro 4000 and V7900 are natural competitors. V7900 has more juice for viewport performance and supports more monitors, but Q4000 has more compatibility with CUDA, VRay RT and other real time renderers etc. GPU rendering: 7970 has the most OpenCL/computation raw performance of them all and by far the best overclockability (if you would be inclined to do so). 7970s can do close to 1200MHz - that's huge when stock cards @ 900MHz are nearly double the speed of the best OpenCL offering from nVidia till now - GTX 580. Issue is, the driver support with VRay RT - the only mainstream OpenCL GPU renderer - was just established with catalyst 12.10 and VRay 2.3...still waiting for some issues to be resolved I guess. OpenGL Viewports OpenGL performance with all AMD cards is much much better. Lastest Rhino 5 release (and 4 ofc), Blender, Maya, Ciname4D, all of them get treated better with Radeons. nVidia crippled Geforce OpenGL performance since GTX 275 or so, maintaining basic performance with them, probably in order to push Quadro sales. If you are working with those programs - think you are not - you won't notice any major change upwards choosing any 4xx/5xx/6xx. High end FirePro and Quadro cards simply rock in comparison with gaming cards, but the difference is obvious in heavy scenes. Many ppl are under the "placebo" effect using them in relatively simple scenes. That's mho. D3D Viewports 3DS supports D3D, and Nitrous with the latest versions works pretty good with GTX cards tho, no complains, and ofc VRay RT, octane and the such work fine. iRay, built in 3DS 12-13 does not work with 6xx, but work great with 4xx/5xx D3D is mostly a game related engine, so naturally Radeon cards do just as good, and ofc Firepro and Quadro cards work just fine. In general viewport acceleration is mostly about drivers and their optimizations for the related app. The GPUs do not get stressed at all in comparison with computation tasks like GPU renderings or games etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mondex Posted November 18, 2012 Author Share Posted November 18, 2012 Thanks that's awesome! Well, I'm not planning to use Vray RT at the moment, and will keep rendering with Vray 2.0 on this machine. I'm not sure about GPU rendering: it appears more costly to me, unless the minimum spec is worth it. Viewport performance: on average my scenes in 3DS reach 3 - 4 million polygons, and I'm really struggling now with my current setup. Maybe should I go for the V7900 or 7970. The GTX 670 seemed interesting too.... i5 seems to be a nice compromise too! Thx DImitris! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mondex Posted November 18, 2012 Author Share Posted November 18, 2012 This can put things in perspective too: EVGA GeForce GTX 670 4096MB GDDR5, 2x Dual-Link DVI, HDMI, DP, 4-Way SLI Ready Graphics Card £368.3 £368.3 Asus AMD Radeon HD 7970 Graphics Card (3GB, GDDR5, HDMI, DVI-I, PCI-Express 3.0) £369.24 AMD ATI FirePro V7900 - Graphics adapter - FirePro V7900 - PCI Express 2.1 x16 - 2 GB GDDR5 - DisplayPort £400 EVGA GeForce GTX 680 4096 MB GDDR5 Dual Dual-Link DVI/mHDMI/DP/SLI Graphics Card £452 £452 NVIDIA Quadro 4000 - Graphics adapter - Quadro 4000 - PCI Express 2.0 x16 - 2 GB GDDR5 - DVI, DisplayPort ( HDCP ) £500 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artmaknev Posted November 29, 2012 Share Posted November 29, 2012 Three things: 1) Get at least 24GB RAM, its cheap now. 2) Get SSD for your primary windows drive, at least 128GB, all applications will load so much faster. 3) Create mirroring Raid with your other HDD for safe file keeping. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mondex Posted November 29, 2012 Author Share Posted November 29, 2012 Thanks Art. And I'd like to thank Dimitris for his fantastic advice: your knowledge in hardware is impressive! So now here's my dilemma: 2 setups within my budget of £1500 / 1850 euros I'm struggling to choose from (only the GPU I think I want, the GTX 670): SETUP 1 (I tend to prefer that one) - Asus P8Z77-V LX - Core i5-3570K - GTX 670 4096MB SETUP 2 - ASUS P9X79 - i7-3820 Quad-Core - GTX 670 4096MB I also thought of the cheaper AMD FX8350 with a costlier Quadro 4000, but I'd rather have the better intel CPU and the GPU you speak well of, Dimitris One last piece of advice should suffice before I go to the shop! Again, many thanks for your time to reply! It's very much appreciated! Best wishes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted November 30, 2012 Share Posted November 30, 2012 If money is pushing, why go nearly extreme GPU and i5? Personally I think I've told you that I like setup #2...is what exactly I have under my home rig's hood (ok the mobo is the Pro, but makes no real difference unless you O/C hard, and hard is more than the 4.625GHz I am @ now - you need custom water cooling for "hard"). If I would go LGA1155, I would do w/e possible to stick with i7 CPU, even by downgrading the GPU to something more cost effective. GTX 580s are getting cheaper - you can get a 3GB version, or you can opt for a 3GB 660ti, should you feel that 2GBs are not enough. Dropping to 2GB GTX cards, opens up a lot of choices, ranging from 660, 660ti, 670... For viewport acceleration differences will be negligible (speculation). For GPU rendering, just scale with cuda core count. At similar frequencies you are pretty close - despite the RAM bandwidth limitations between the 670 and the smaller models. The 660/670s also are much faster than a 580 in gaming, tho the latter does shadow all 6xx in GPU renderings. For what I think GPU acceleration does good, aka light setup and production of really simple final renderigns, even a 660 will be faster than a CPU anyways, but the i7 will be all-around faster than the i5 in all CPU rendering scenarios. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artmaknev Posted November 30, 2012 Share Posted November 30, 2012 Definitely get the i7, a few hundred bucks saved now will hurt you down the road if you get just i5.. For GPU, I am really impressed with the card that I just bought last week: EVGA SuperClocked+ 03G-P4-3663-KR GeForce GTX 660 Ti 3GB ~ $320, especially the amazing 28c temps, this thing really stays cool, and under load it doesn't go over 58c, with fan speed @minimum 30%, its amazing compared to my old GTX470. This card still lags a bit on large scenes, but what card doesn't? (quadro $5000 card?) I am considering getting one more for SLI action, just not sure if it will do any justice in 3ds max. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted November 30, 2012 Share Posted November 30, 2012 SLI is not supported by any version of 3DS max for viewport acceleration - yet. So SLI will add nothing to a dedicated workstation, it is clearly a gaming feature. Additional cards can be used simultaneously for GPU rendering, but those do not have to be physically linked, nor be identical. I am also impressed by the temps with my 670 SC...further overclocked @ 1240GHz, it still idles in the 30s and I am working with productivity apps around 32oC. Under load it does hit high 60s and full load mid 70s, getting seriously louder than the rest of the tower, but...that's a common with all GPUs of that magnitude (still better than 470-480s - everything is - and ofc 560-580s). People that end up getting $4-6K quadros because they NEED them, still have issues - simply because some insane scenes cannot be solved/accelerated with a single GPU today, even if it does have 4-6GB of RAM. Those that are absolutely happy with what they have, are either realists that weren't expecting wonders, or do not push their hardware enough with such complexity. The performance/cost increase in pro cards is horrible past the $600-700 mark. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mondex Posted November 30, 2012 Author Share Posted November 30, 2012 Thanks guys! One thing I'm having trouble to get my thick head around here: when rendering, does Vray automatically detects the GPU cuda cores and use them only, or does it also use the CPU power? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artmaknev Posted November 30, 2012 Share Posted November 30, 2012 Dimitris - so is it better to keep 2 GPU's separated not on SLI, so I can use one for viewport and the other for rendering? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dimitris Tolios Posted November 30, 2012 Share Posted November 30, 2012 Thanks guys! One thing I'm having trouble to get my thick head around here: when rendering, does Vray automatically detects the GPU cuda cores and use them only, or does it also use the CPU power? VRay RT GPU, if selected as either an Active Shade or production renderer (available in Vray 2.0 and later) raytraces the rendering using brute force. There is a VRay RT CPU option, when the CPU does the same. I believe there is no VRay "module" that uses both CPU and GPU. If you have more than one compatible CUDA or OpenCL devices connected simultaneously, the renderer can be configured to use either or all of them. No physical connection is required, and you are not limited to 3 or 4 cards as you are in case of SLI or crossfireX. There are workstations out there configured with 8x dual slot GPUs that work just fine together. (the barebones that allow that are something like the TYAN FT72B7015 used in this particular case, and the realistic price for a minimal running workstation with 8x670 4GBs would be in the $9500 range or more shipped in the US, including a mid-range Xeon CPU, 24GB of Ram and a single HDD) iRay can do both CPU+GPU simultaneously, but I think the CPU contribution with faster GPUs is negligible or can even penalize performance (the CPU when under load cannot feed enough data for the GPU as it does when it is not rendering itself, so the "real player" is under-performing). iRay does not work with kepler cards - i.e. GTX 6xx cards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artmaknev Posted November 30, 2012 Share Posted November 30, 2012 Is it possible to combine different GPU's to render together from separated machines? Like Distributed Rendering in vray, but with GPU's from various machines?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mondex Posted November 30, 2012 Author Share Posted November 30, 2012 i guess I'm looking at an i7 3820 and a GTX 660 3GB... Thanks Dimitris: you're saving me money! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mondex Posted November 30, 2012 Author Share Posted November 30, 2012 Question ref. CPU: if I'm not planning to overclock my 3820, is it really useful to purchase a CPU cooler like the H80 or 100? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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