CPU OR GPU upgrade.

[tianbinchangi]

Firstly I'm not good in English. I'm Thai. -*-

 

I have a question. about upgrading my PC.

 

I've used vray to rendering for a long time with my old PC

(Q6600 + 4GB ram + 9600GT 512MB) and it works but quite slow for this era.

 

I need of upgrade my PC with limitedly price. may be around 500$

 

I've got two choices.

 

1. Upgrade my CPU to AMD 8350 and change my Motherboard PSU RAM but keep my VGA. and keep using CPU to render just like an old time.

 

2. just upgrade my VGA (give me a good choice please) then use the Vray RT.

 

I've no experiences with Vray RT and also It doesn't work with my 3dmax right now.

just need to know what is the best choice for me. my work mostly combined

with all stuffs both standard and vray stuffs such as environment ,light or object (Itoo soft, vmesh, proxy) and end it up with Photoshop.

 

I need to speed up my work. just not sure about the quality of vray RT production.

(any one using it?)

 

Thanks then give me some help.

[vinametalmetal]

Hello.

 

About this, I think vrayrt is very limited, crashes, like a beta software. The Ior values don't Works properly, he stop update active shade without any warning, etc ...

The cpu upgrade is always the better way to render, but I recomend a Intel Cpu, but i really don't know about this process to amd cpu.

[beestee]

$500 would barely get you into the range you would need for a proper graphics card to render interactively.

 

As Vina Metal points out it is better to go with an Intel if possible, but the FX-8350 8-core @ 4.0-4.2Ghz is a nice cost effective alternative from AMD that I am sure would do well if paired with the right components. You will need plenty of RAM, and if you can manage it you should try to fit a 240GB SSD into your budget eventually.

 

In this case, considering your budget, if I were in your position I would go with the AMD that you have already settled on, and be sure to get a motherboard that will allow expanding the RAM as possible.

[tianbinchangi]

Thanks Benjamin and Vina .

[theeastcoastwest]

RT is definitely not what I would ever consider to be a final render solution. It is immensely helpful in setting up lighting and other more dynamic elements by giving you real-time feedback as settings/placements are adjusted. However, in my experience, Benjamin is very correct in saying that $500 will not really cover the GPU you need to effectively use RT. I know that Nvidia's CUDA core cards are the one's RT was coded to utilize, and I am not even sure that ATI cards, or others for that matter, are compatible with RT. I am running an Nvida Quadro 4000 (~$800.00 now) and honestly, RT didn't show a performance that left me very impressed.

 

If you are working with high poly scenes it can be a great benefit to have a upper-end GPU, but for average rendering scenes I think you would certainly benefit the most from a CPU upgrade. If you have some money leftover, memory upgrades can be very beneficial. I recently upgraded to a much high quality and faster memory setup and have noticed tremendous results in task performance.

 

Hope this helps!

[negronegrous]

I bought these between january/march 2012

FX-8150 + Arctic MX-4 + Corsair H80 (before MX-4 the H80 was 2-3ºC under stock cooler and I couldn't use the CPU turbo (3.6 to 3.9 GHz) but after MX-4 it runs CPU turbo at 3.9GHz at 58~59ºC)

ASUS M5A97 EVO

8GB 1866MHz RipJaws X

Cooler master GX 700W PSU

GTX 560 Superclocked 2GB

 

Win 7 64 bits

3Ds Max 2013

VRay 2.30.01 and VRAY RT

 

I know it's old and mid level but it works well for the price.

 

I've been using it for about 1,2 years and it has never crashed. Scenes are up to 7~8M polys. A bit slow but stable.

 

Maybe you could find something like my gear for just $500