5960 vs. Single Xeon for V-Ray Rendering

[Guest browningv]

Hi

I'm going to build a PC and my main purpose is rendering with V-ray (which is a CPU-Based rendering engine).

I also use 3dMax, Autocad, Lumion, Sketchup, Photoshop. I don't have any animation rendering.

 

Now I'm confused between these 2 CPUs.

A single 2650-V3 has about the same price of a "5960X" but it has 2 more cores. I can buy 2650-v3 in a dual socket motherboard because I think it's more future proof and maybe one or 2 years later I would be able to add another "2650".

 

Furthermore, it seems that 2650 with it's 10 cores would be a better choice for rendering than a 8-core 5960x for now. even when it is single in a dual socket motherboard.

 

what's your idea ? is it worth to buy a Xeon PC ? is it future proof ? is it really faster than 5960x for rendering ?

 

thanks.

[numerobis]

There is a reason why the 2650-V3 is priced as it is. It has a lower single core turbo with 3.0GHz instead of 3.5GHz and a much lower all core turbo with 2.6GHz instead of 3.3GHz. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_microprocessors#Xeon_E5-26xx_v3_.28dual-processor.29 ) If you compare the combined GHz the Xeon has 10x2.6GHz= 26GHz and the 5960X 8x3.3GHz= 26.4GHz. So the 5960X is faster in single and multi threaded tasks. But the biggest advantage of the 5960X is that you can easily overclock it to 4.2-4.5GHz on all cores.

 

Two more things:

Concerning the idea to buy one Xeon now and one later... it can work, but it is possible that you get two different revisions/steppings that do not work together. I don't know if this is still a problem today, but a few years ago it was a problem.

If you plan to buy a Xeon, you should look for the new Broadwell-EP, they are already available and they are partially much cheaper than their older counterparts:

E5-2680v4 14x2.9GHz=40.6GHz for $1745

vs

E5-2695v3 with 14x2.8GHz=39.2GHz for $2424

[joelmcwilliam]

For rendering only, 2 x xeon's would be nice:

 

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/1029

 

You might want to try building something with secondhand parts if that is more for you:

 

 

http://forums.cgarchitect.com/80150-cheap-16core-xeon-node-pros-cons.html#post411502

 

Below is what you get with overclocking:

 

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8426/the-intel-haswell-e-cpu-review-core-i7-5960x-i7-5930k-i7-5820k-tested/7