CPU or GPU

[muzaffarkhan]

hello everyone, i know this topic has been discussed a lot of times, but everytime i read those thread i get confused. i am a noob in all these hardware things just wanted to ask what shud i go for for better & fast rendering ( in sketchup, vray, 3ds max) ?? CPU with 32 GB of ram or else 16GB ram with 2-4GB graphic card. my budget is low so i can only go for fast cpu or medium range or cpu + gpu.

 

 

* if i take 32GB of ram with no graphic card. with i7 intel processor will my renders be fast? or Graphic card is needed compulsory?

[Dimitris Tolios]

* The vast majority of renderings is still performed by the CPU. Unless you are running GPU specific versions of rendering engines, the GPU contributes nothing to rendering speed.

 

* RAM doesn't contribute to rendering speed unless you are pushing really high resolution / really complex scenes. If you weren't to come close to utilizing more than 16GB of RAM, you could never tell the difference in rendering speed between a 16GB and a 32GB system. What more RAM allows you to do though, is multitask, having more than one RAM hungry apps running at the same time, cumulatively asking more than 16GB.

 

* A decent GPU is good to have to accelerate your viewport and allow you to work with complex scenes. Even if it doesn't contribute to your rendering speed per se, that doesn't mean that you can manipulate and navigate complex scenes without a bare minimum of GPU grunt. The on-board buffer, i.e. a "2GB or 4GB" of a card, is rarely a real tell of its performance. The on-board IGP in a 6th or 7th gen i7 is a not horrible, but I would look into a $100~150 card as a good start...GTX 1050 or Radeon 460 @ low end, GTX 1060 or Radeon 470 in the upper end of that budget.

 

Edit: I realize that the $ mentioned above might be far away from what people outside the US pay after offers and specials etc for some models of these cards, but I hope readers get the idea regardless.

Edited March 28, 2017 by dtolios

[thomasdissaux]

Can you give us a budget ? That would help.

So far I'd say go with an all-around setup (gamer type 7700k gtx1060 16gb) but depending on budget you might consider better or worse options.

For ram, go for 16gb at first, and if needed go 32gb, it's the easiest part to upgrade.

 

Might I add, consider the price of the monitor you want.

[jonasmotiejunas]

consider ryzen 7 1700, stock cooler + cheapest mobo. you get 16 threads for less $ than 7700k. its just that ryzen likes faster ram to perform better, 3000mhz or so (not in rendering, but overal performance). more ram helps while calculating light cache on huge scenes, thats about it

[thomasdissaux]

I wanted to mention ryzen but I wasn't sure. Since it's pretty new I would wait for multiple feedbacks when it comes to rendering with V-Ray before considering it. I really wish though

[xjapanese]

Hi Jonas,

 

How much does that affect rendering speed compared to using slower ram?

[Zdravko Barisic]

Hi Jonas,

 

How much does that affect rendering speed compared to using slower ram?

 

0,5-1,5%

Amount of RAM is much much much more important than its speed, every DDR3/4 module would perform just fine.

[xjapanese]

Thanks Zdravko.Yes that is what I though but was in doubt if ryzen had any specifics.. as I saw quite different results in vray benchmarks from same ryzen proccessor.So I assume users didn't mention existing overclock

[xjapanese]

So I coudn"t find any motherboards that support ddr3 ( not ddr3L) ?