2 Workstation options for 3ds max

[randalldouglas]

I am in the process of having a new computer built. My primary use for MAX is for mental ray rendering animations for television commercials, corporate presentations, digital menuboards, etc. I usually render 1280x720, or sometimes 1920x1080. There are also times when I render much larger still images for print. Of course there is a lot of Photoshop work that is done as well, with files frequently exceeding 2-3GB in size. I also do some video editing in Premiere, mostly on the animations. Below are 2 options I have been offered. Differences in bold.

 

System 1:

Intel i7-4930k Six-Core 3.8Ghz CPU

Gigabyte X79 System Board

64GB DDR3 1600 System Memory

Qty 2 Samsung Pro 850 500GB SSD @RAID 0 for OS (1TB usable)

Qty 2 4TB SATA 6.0 Hard Disk Drive

RAID 1 for Data (4TB usable)

nVidia GTX 780 3GB Graphics Card

 

System 2:

Intel i7-4930k Six-Core 3.8Ghz CPU

Gigabyte X79 System Board

32GB DDR3 1600 System Memory

Qty 2 Samsung Pro 840 500GB SSD @RAID 0 for OS (1TB usable)

Qty 2 4TB SATA 6.0 Hard Disk Drive

RAID 1 for Data (4TB usable)

nVidia GTX 760 4GB Graphics Card

 

I am not really tech guy at all, so bear with me please. My questions are:

 

1. Will I see a substantial difference in rendering time with 64GB RAM as opposed to the 32GB system, or will there be a difference in speed while working, for instance when particles, hair, ray-traced glass, etc are involved?

 

2. I am planning on sticking with windows 7 on the new system unless there is a reason to switch to winndows 8. Thoughts on this?

 

3. It appears that the video card options are pretty good, but I admit that it is a little confusing.

 

4. Is the 1K difference for system 1 over system 2 "justified" in terms of a substantial performance increase?

 

Thank you in advance, some of the other threads have already answered many of the other questions I had going into this.

[jasonstewart]

Two 500GB SSDs in RAID 0 seems like a huge waste of money to me. A single ~250GB SSD seems to be perfect for most people for the OS and most used programs. I have Windows 7, Autodesk Suite (Max, Revit, and Autocad), PS, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and some random stuff on my 256 without any problems and with extra space.

 

The ram may or may not make a difference, it depends on if you need the space or not. From my reading it has to do with the scene, things like particles do add up. I think there are other people more qualified to answer this but the great thing about RAM is that it is so easy to upgrade. If you are trying to stay on budget buy a 32gb kit and work with that for a while and add a second kit of 32 down the road if you see a need.

 

I have not made the switch to Windows 8 yet, it doesn't seem to offer anything up that 7 doesn't do for me and I like 7 so I have stuck with it.

 

The graphics card really is only responsible for viewport performance as far as max is concerned, unless you are using a GPU realtime renderer like Vray RT. A 780 seems like overkill to me unless there is something specific to your workflow that warrants the extra GPU power. I would think a 770 would be fine maybe even the 760 spec'd in system 2.

 

I would go system 2 personally and add the extra RAM if I saw a need down the road, I would also save some cash and go for a single SSD in either 250 or 500GB and use that money elsewhere or stick it in my pocket.

 

I am sure some of the other guys will have some more input to through at you, in any case it should be a very nice build.

[RyderSK]

 

1. Will I see a substantial difference in rendering time with 64GB RAM as opposed to the 32GB system, or will there be a difference in speed while working, for instance when particles, hair, ray-traced glass, etc are involved?

 

 

No you won't, rendering speed will be identical until the delay in rendering has been cause by disk swapping due to insufficient amount of ram in first place. You should probably know how much ram do your scenes&renderings take on average ? It's completely possible to reach beyond 32 if you mention particles and hair, though it's more on the rare side and 32 is in most cases plenty.

 

It's not big deal though, most LG2011 boards have 8 memory stick slots, so if you buy your 32set as 4x8gb, you can anytime add identical set again.

 

 

2. I am planning on sticking with windows 7 on the new system unless there is a reason to switch to winndows 8. Thoughts on this?

 

 

If that's what you're comfortable with, just stick with it. Seems to be preferencial thing, slightly controversial and needlessly emotional as well...which is odd. I found Windows8 perfect from day one. I love the metro since 8.1 introduction, can't live without it, I don't use desktop anymore. It's snappier, slightly faster, with better resource management, and quite franky, it's the way how the future paves, so I don't see the need to stay behind (although XP seems pretty popular..which just baffles me).

 

 

2. It appears that the video card options are pretty good, but I admit that it is a little confusing.

 

 

In pure CPU rendering, the card doesn't affect times at all, since it's not involved. In viewport manipulation, the differences across various performance levels are drastically lower than it is in gaming benchmarks, i.e 760 vs 780 might be dramatic difference in Battlefield3, but you honestly can't notice anything in 3dsMax much at all. Because of this, it makes sense to just save that money and use it elsewhere as the diminishing returns are much higher than benefits here. The speed acceleration of Adobe Apps will be also fairly at similar level, it's not like it won't be close to real-time anyway with setup like this :- ).

 

 

2. Is the 1K difference for system 1 over system 2 "justified" in terms of a substantial performance increase?

 

 

In the light of above, no, it isn't. Performance will be the same.

I would like to tackle one more thing, I wouldn't really pair SSD's in any type of Raid, neither 1 or 0 conservatively. You paired them for capacity, but you can buy 1TB directly for the same amount of money and with lesser problems down the right. If you opted for performance gain instead, you would find SATA6 to be already limiting factor, hence the directly paired SSDs (like controversial REVO), are PCI-Express connected.

 

Another notes:

 

Asus LG2011 boards are generally considered superior to Gigabyte. Not that Gigabyte is bad by any means, but the Asus X79 fare better in reviews and user experiences. With your budget in mind, I'll suggest my favourite Asus x79 Deluxe, which is the most recent high-end board in this regard.

[Dimitris Tolios]

I pretty much second Juraj's assessment.

 

• The performance differences with "RAIDing" latest generation SATA SSDs are diminished, as the single drive performance for 250/256+GB drives (540MB read / 520MB write) already approaches the saturation point for SATA III (600MB/s). Adding more than one in RAID, introduces overhead/latencies that are not there for the single drive (will hurt some latency metrics).
  

You will be pushing more MB/sec, but unless we are talking large raw video footage in multiple streams etc, I don't know many fields where you will see tangible benefits (outside loading those Battlefield 4 maps faster! - talking general CGarchitect related apps).

• The 2-3GB PS files, won't care about GPU that much...I doubt you will be stressing your 32GB "limit" with those either, unless you have many of them open simultaneously. GPU(s) will also have little to no impact in the average post processing work ArchViz jobs require.
  

I would suggest going for the second config, with the option for switching the 2x RAIDO 0 512GB 840 Pros, for a single 840 EVO if you have to have 1TB SSD, or just a single 512GB Pro (if for some reason you are not convinced on the decade+ or life the TLC EVO will provide before any decrease in write performance). I got my 500GB EVO for $300, and I am not looking back. Performance is impossible to tell between it and the Pro (although BF4 levels do load faster than my old 256GB M4)

 

Go with 32GB of RAM too..as long as you stick with 8GB sticks, going to 64 in the future is as easy as opening the case, and snapping in 4 more sticks - should happen in less than 5 minutes if you've been there before.

 

The 760 should be a decent choice. a 780 won't give you that much of performance difference in any CG app (other than GPU rendering ofc) to warrant the double price, and the extra 1GB of RAM won't give you an edge on pretty much anything viewport wise. Also, with 8xx series GPUs around the corner, prices for mid-range GK110 GPUs like the 780 that have no niche outside gaming (unlike the Titan for example that offers the highest RAM buffer and decent FP64 performance, both almost useless for viewport) are about to drop considerably. So will the price for the 760, but in absolute values, the difference will be less substantial.