i7 4930k or Dual xeons?

[jackdicker]

Need a little help guys, just cannot decide on this, so much to take in from all over the forum.

 

I'm running sketchup 13 & vray 2.0

 

I render heavily daily, its a business PC I'm planning on building but I cannot decide on the above..

 

Some say i7 4930k some say dual xeons.. I know the dual xeons will be more money but is it worth it? and how much more?

 

Thanks guys

[numerobis]

I know the dual xeons will be more money but is it worth it? and how much more?

I would say at least 3-4 times more depending on the CPU model. The problem is that for a workstation you normally want a high clock speed and this applies only to the biggest models with 3.6 to 4.0 GHz single core turbo. And you can't overclock the current Xeons if this would be an option for you when you buy a 4930K. Two or three additional hexa core render nodes would be cheaper and even faster.

As another alternative if you don't overclock you could take only one 8 or 10-core Xeon and use it in a single CPU board.

 

One other point is that maybe in 3-4 months the first Haswell-E 8-core i7's will be released and a bit later the new Haswell-EP Xeon with up to 14 cores...

http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/intel-pulls-in-introduction-of-core-i7-extreme-haswell-e-5000-series-to-q2/

Edited March 19, 2014 by numerobis

[jackdicker]

Ok great so I found these.. They are low clocking speeds but 6 core and cheap, are u saying these are no good for my proposal?

 

The 4930k is around £400 and these 6 core xeons are £330...

 

-"INTEL Xeon E5645 CPU 6-Core 2.4 GHz 12 MB Cache LGA1366 Socket"

 

I get what u mean about the top spec xeons, for those prices I could build an additional 4930k setup and run them as nodes! Seems more viable also as I would be able to get subcontractors in to help me using my own equipment.

 

I think my budget is no more than £800.00 on processor power if it's a substantial difference then I'll push to £1000.

[numerobis]

-"INTEL Xeon E5645 CPU 6-Core 2.4 GHz 12 MB Cache LGA1366 Socket"

This one is really "old"... E56xx Socket 1366 is the same generation like the i7 980X or 970 hexa cores and this one is very low clocked with 2,4GHz. So i would say definitely not for a workstation - especially for Sketchup, which needs a high single thread performance.

And for rendering two of them will be only close to one 4930K!

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5645+%40+2.40GHz

 

I think with a budget of £1000 for the processors it doesn't make much sense to build a dual processor system. The only one that fits into this budget is the E5-2630 v2 with only 2.6GHz (all core turbo 2.9GHz, single core turbo 3.1GHz).Two separated i7 systems will give you more speed.

http://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=cpuppro&xf=820_2011~821_Dual-Prozessor-Systeme~590_boxed~1133_Xeon+E5-2600+v2#xf_top

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_microprocessors#.22Ivy_Bridge-EP.22_.2822_nm.29_Efficient_Performance

Edited March 20, 2014 by numerobis

[Dimitris Tolios]

If you are not prepared to spend serious money, don't even think about 2P.

When you go 2P, I would guess you do it to get all-around the same and/or much better performance, not just "matching" the performance of a 1P, even worse - trail it.

 

Sketchup is VERY single thread bound. Almost all its advanced operations, down to simple "open file", "prepare for VRay", Section cuts, orbits etc - all are more CPU bound than GPU or RAM bound, and of course run on a single thread/core.

 

The fastest single chip right now for Sketchup, is the 4771/4770K (Haswell) and the equiv. Xeon 13xx haswells (s1150, single CPU only).

4960 & 4930 follow behind a little bit, along with the 3770K - all based on Ivy bridge architecture.

 

The latter is also found in the latest "V2" multicore Xeons than can be configured in dual-s2011. The fastest-in-clocks chips that can boost cores up to i7 and 1xxx Xeon levels, are the E5-2687W v2 & E5-2667 v2, which would work fine almost in line with any of the above i7s - both are 8-cores. The flagship E5-2697 v2 which is 12C, will be slower due to lower clocks (yet much faster in rendering, but that's half the story as described above).

 

Regardless, the cheapest of the above, the E5-2667 v2 which is probably the best value out of the 3 for a 2P workstation that will do both modeling and rendering, is a $2000 part. Times two, you are looking at $4000 - actually $4,500 with motherboard, just to match the single thread performance of the equivalent 4930K + mobo combo that can be had for $800ish.

 

Any of the low-clocked 6-cores is not a good value - ends up being more expensive than a 1P s2011 6-core i7, it is considerably slower in single thread, very slightly faster in multi-thread, and use more power. In reality, and depending on the scene, the real completion times might be identical, as the faster i7 will prepare the scene for Vray much faster (only takes one core/thread, and there is a ~1GHz class or +30% Turbo clock difference in those), getting into MP mode faster than slow 2P systems, closing the gap.

 

That's for cheap Sandybridge and Ivy bridge 6-core Xeons (all s2011).

Compare that to even older s1366 Xeons that are clock per clock considerably slower than Ivy Bridge, and...the 4930K will probably get an easy win overall.

Edited March 19, 2014 by dtolios

[jackdicker]

Dimitris,

 

Fantastic response, I think my questions have been answered, I think over the past few months planning this I'm ready to build. I am worried I do not have a decent UPS and Others on the forum have said to me its not worth it as most just don't do the required job. Do you have any advice on this topic?

[Dimitris Tolios]

Dimitris,

 

Fantastic response, I think my questions have been answered, I think over the past few months planning this I'm ready to build. I am worried I do not have a decent UPS and Others on the forum have said to me its not worth it as most just don't do the required job. Do you have any advice on this topic?

 

Fortunately my 20+ years of PC experience where in areas of Greece that had no issues with power grid stability, and lately in SoCal "post-Enron", so again I doubt I've experienced any issues with power surges or outages that would call for getting into UPSs to begin with.

 

If what you are worried for are unstable line voltages/spikes/surges etc, but not really power outages, a good product for you could be a Voltage Regulator, like the APC LE1200 Line-R 1200VA. Normalizes power without batteries to wear out (probably with large capacitors), and give some of the benefits of line-interactive UPS (e.g. "healthier"/more constant power reaches your tower - line interactive UPSs are much more than just a "backup power source", a must for enterprise class UPS, but are expensive and rarely used by consumers) and might even keep it on for a couple of seconds during a sudden grid "deep". Won't hold it up for you to save work etc during a real power outage.

 

For the latter you will need a good UPS, but I don't have any real life experience with those.

[jackdicker]

Hi Dimitris

 

Just a quick question, I was wondering if you can help me choose a decent efficient GPU?

 

Now the aim is that I render using CPU but this doesn't mean I cut out GPU altogether does it? I currently have a nvidia 760 but is this really the best card I can get within the the same price bracket?

 

I'm wondering if there are specific cards that work more efficiently with vray ?

 

Any opinion would help me enormously :-)

[Dimitris Tolios]

I hope you mean VRay RT GPU or similar unbiased progressive rendering engines, cause otherwise GPUs don't affect rendering time what-so-ever.

 

The only card "better" than the 760 in its price bracket, is the 670, the card that technically got phased out with the introduction of the slightly slower 760, and the "rebranding" of the 680 into 770. Sales on 670 stock or used parts are pretty competitive. The other day, evga.com had new GTX 670 SC 4GB cards for $199 (limited availability I guess).

 

With Vray 2.4, the 760 wasn't the best card for compute, only the "cheapest" decent GTX that worked with Vray RT GPU.

79xx / R9 AMD cards are beasts in compute, but unfortunately only miners get to enjoy them to their fullest in GPGPU, as progressive rendering outside LuxRender was almost monopolized by CUDA optimized apps.

 

I don't know if VRay 3.0 added better RT GPU support for AMD cards under OpenCL. If so, a R9 280 (the successor of the 7950) or R9 280X (the 7970 - both are 3GB/384bit) should probably be faster than a 760 or 770 alike. Probably faster than a 780 too...it would be good to check with someone using RT GPU 3.0 or check with chaosgroup's forums (I should too).