Low to mid end workstation build with possible VR Rendering

[junglee]

Hi all,

 

As my office is getting bigger, I would like to order one more WS for the new staff.

I've previously ordered few sets per this forum's recommendation as following:

1. i7-7700k

2. Cryorig-A40 Liquid cool

3. Asus TUF z270 Mark2 ATX LGA1151

4. G.Skill Ripjaws V series 32GB( 2x16gb) DDR4-2800

5. Samsung 525GB Pro SSD

6. Hitachi 3TB HDD (I don't think we need this anymore as we rarely save anything local)

7. Gigabyte-GeForce GTX 1070 8GB

8. Phanteks ATX Mid Tower

9. EVGA-650W Power supply

 

I purchased those last May and it had been perfectly suitable for our daily work load, occasionally lagging in viewports for few projects and if pricing isn't much to upgrade, I would like to upgrade necessary parts to have smoother viewports.

 

Is above build too outdated as in today's standard? If so, can you recommend a build that costs less than $1,500?

Also, we are planning to do some VR service down the road and I was wondering if VR rendering requires different set up.

 

Thanks always for your help.

 

Jung

[Francisco Penaloza]

That machine is perfectly capable for 'today's standard'. Now if you would like to have more punch for your bucks I would recommend getting an AMD Ryzen CPU instead, (1700 or 1700X or 1800x) with those you can get more cores for about the same price you paid for your previews setup, as you know, more cores= faster renders.

 

Regarding the video card, what's your problem with the 1070?? I know Autodesk and NVidia won't support any GTX driver for an CAD software, 3D Max included but even with that that video card should be more than suficiant. I personally have a Quadro P4000 wish is about the equivalent of 1070, but with 'dedicated drivers' for CAD software ( or whatever that means). I don't have any problems with the viewport, and I also manage very large projects too.

The only problems that I have are 3D Max viewport problems itself.

 

Regarding VR, here gets a little tricky, for VR content creation do you mean stereoscopic panoramas??? or fully developed game engine??

If you are using the latest you'll need something like the 1070 as a minimum. If you will generating stereoscopic panoramas only, then you need more cores in your CPU so you can produce those very large renderings faster, that's all.

[junglee]

Thanks for your reply.

We use online render farm for major renderings so faster rendering isn't really necessary - thank god, render farm is quite cheap now to use.

Video card is perfectly fine most of the times, but we sometimes get some lags and flicker issue, but this could be the problem with old 3dmax version we are using - we are still using 2012. I know, it's old but we didn't have time to get used to newer version yet. As for the VR goes, I have near zero idea of how to achieve what I'm thinking. I would like to create a scene where we can walk through the space with ability to change materials using Oculus Rift.

[Francisco Penaloza]

Well, the latest version of Max had better viewport performance, but other things broke up so, is a hit and miss

Regarding the computer, if you don't rely on online render farm then just choose a CPU with High frequency, that's all. AMD still a good choice for price performance, but if you feel comfortable with Intel for some reason then just stay with the same CPU no major changes really.

 

For what you would like to do in VR then you'll need to add to your pipeline Unreal or Unity. But that's another story

[junglee]

Okay. I'll have to get back to the VR thing later

Meanwhile for the videocard, Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 8 GB is no longer available and comparable model on sale is almost $800, whereas the model I got was only for $390.

Is there any 1070 model at lower price you can recommend?

[James Vella]

The video card you have is well equipped to handle heavy workloads - your max version is probably holding you back as there is over a 40% speed increase up to 2016, not sure of how much better max 2018 but you would hope its faster again. You might also be expecting more than what todays standards are capable of, filling your scene with heavy geometry will slow down quickly regardless of what video card you have, working smart with proxies and modifiers set to view on render only (high chamfers etc) is typically an economic way of working.

 

Ive used titans, 1080ti and currently a 1060 6gb, i find almost no difference in 3dsmax, only realtime stuff that is affected by the difference in cards

[junglee]

Anyone have a recommendation which GTX 1070 8GB video card can be had under $400?

[RyderSK]

As James Vella wrote, the issue isn't in hardware, but 3dsMax itself. There is nothing that can speed-up 3dsMax viewport above the point that it's capable of.

Most of the time, the slowness of viewport isn't even tied to graphical performance, but the amount of data it shuffles for the objects in it. That's why 3dsMax suffers from high draw-call (too many objects vs few) and when those objects are tied to complex hierarchy, or have too many modifiers. It's the issue of the core.

 

The apex of viewport speed came with 2016 release which vastly improves upon anything before it. 2017/2018 offer some specific speedups with high-poly objects, as long as you have big graphic memory (These two releases are apparently problematic with graphic memory consumption).

 

Since 2012 the default DX11 based Nitrous viewport no longer benefits from dedicated OpenGL driver of Quadro, rendering the performance of Quadro and GTX identical to most workloads.

[junglee]

Thanks for the input.

I'll have everyone use later version of 3dmax to improve our efficiency.

 

Can anyone answer my video card question?

I purchased Gigabyte-GeForce GTX 1070 8GB last May for only $390 but now I search for the same part, it is no longer on sale and same model number (1070) starts from $800 range. Was there a model replacement with same designation number? If so, what did replace the old GTX 1070? Can anyone recommend a comparable video card ($300~400 range) to last year's GeForce GTX 1070 8GB?

[Francisco Penaloza]

Well, it will be hard to find any 1070 or 1080 for the same price of earlier last year. As you may learn the cryptocurrency frenzy almost eliminate any 1070 on the shelf. Because of that prices skyrocketed the same happened to RAM memory :(. I also wanted to buy a 1070 for my gaming machine but I won't pay those crazy. Altho lately you can find some decent promos.

 

For 3D Max work, I would say any brand of 1070 will do, there is nothing special about 3D Max that will dictate this or another brand, as a gamer you can get more picky, regarding cooling systems and quality of components, but for 3D Max that is does not a problem really, of course YMWV and always you get what you pay for, but I have tested different brands and all perform about the same.

As mentioned above, if you are budget tight, you may consider a GTX 1060 or even the 1050TI, if you are not doing GPU rendering, performance it should be very close to 1070

[junglee]

Holy smokes. Can't believe tech part going up in prices!!!

Thanks for your clarification.

[serious]

I Agree with Building a Ryzen based machine.

 

As far as your video card have you looked at the AMD wx7100. https://pro.radeon.com/en/product/wx-series/radeon-pro-wx-7100

 

The thing is that for a workstation you kinda need a workstation card. The deal with any Nivida based card that isn't a quadro or a pro workstation card when you get into something like maya or max and I am going to guess Cad they don't have the accuracy that you need. That is why they are always going to be sluggish when comes to pulling things like vertices in cartesian space especially when things get large and crazy Gaming cards are for translating pre determined then flattened out meshes into fast pixels so you can blast things or whatever. Workstation cards have double redundancy checks and what not so you can tool around in 3d space and actually see an very accurate representation of whatever it is you are building way faster than any gaming card.

 

The problem is that a pro Quadro card is going to set you back serious coin and it is not going to improve your gaming. The radeon-pro-wx-7100 is VR ready and reasonable. You can always stick a gaming card in your machine for down time.

[junglee]

I Agree with Building a Ryzen based machine.

 

As far as your video card have you looked at the AMD wx7100. https://pro.radeon.com/en/product/wx-series/radeon-pro-wx-7100

 

The thing is that for a workstation you kinda need a workstation card. The deal with any Nivida based card that isn't a quadro or a pro workstation card when you get into something like maya or max and I am going to guess Cad they don't have the accuracy that you need. That is why they are always going to be sluggish when comes to pulling things like vertices in cartesian space especially when things get large and crazy Gaming cards are for translating pre determined then flattened out meshes into fast pixels so you can blast things or whatever. Workstation cards have double redundancy checks and what not so you can tool around in 3d space and actually see an very accurate representation of whatever it is you are building way faster than any gaming card.

 

The problem is that a pro Quadro card is going to set you back serious coin and it is not going to improve your gaming. The radeon-pro-wx-7100 is VR ready and reasonable. You can always stick a gaming card in your machine for down time.

 

I have VERY limited knowledge about computer hardware. I've been always using $1,500~2,500 machines and I've executed more than 500 projects with those machines so far. And out of those machines, none of them had workstation cards so I'm very curious to try this out.

Is there any trade off by going workstation card? Granted, I don't play any games and all the computers are being used for only 3dmax, photoshop, CAD, and occasional illustrator, so let's base our the performance only for those programs. Would it provide more accurate viewport, and smoother navigation in heavy scene with workstation card?

[James Vella]

Ive used plenty of Quadros and GTX cards - as Juraj mentioned earlier they make very little difference in the 3dsmax world. In fact the Titan cards were the most powerful Ive used (which is only marginally better than a 1060 but only noticeable with a heavy Revit model).

 

From the tests I have done - the only difference was the Quadro outperforms in Wireframe view and the GTX outperforms in the Shaded view. If your in wireframe all day (or CAD) then maybe its worth paying the extra $2000 - but I think the marketing hype has done its wonders here, "double precision float computations", "better warranty", "display's support for professionals". Its true they work well under a heavy load (all day use), they are built with the xeon mindset - they take a pounding and last a long time - but I dont see the point if you are going to upgrade your video card once every 2 years anyway and have other purposes in mind (VR for example, realtime etc).

 

I mean the OP is worried about paying an extra $400 for his video card - I dont think a Quadro is going to solve any of the OPs problems to be frank. my 2c

[RyderSK]

There has been steady decline even in CAD world in capacity to benefit performance-wise from PRO cards like Quadro, simultaneously with growing capacity of mainstream cards.

There are some good benchmarks out there (which I am lazy to go look for) that shows it's actually some rather surprising minority of CAD suites that do benefit (Siemens NXT) while most do not that much, or at all.

 

Their benefits are ever-shrinking and are currently tied to precision that is cutoff in mainstream cards (10bit color output, double precision floating point for accuracy where needed (medical/fintech/etc..), ECC memory.

 

Those who do need OpenGL and different floating-point performance modes can actually buy mainstream VEGA card from AMD since that one doesn't restrict the featureset unlike nVidia, not much crippling going on.

 

Just look at the latest humbug around nVidia's drivers EULA explicitly forbidding 'datacenters' from using GeForce cards outside of blockchain. Mainstream cards aren't just good-enough, they're great and identical in performance unless you fall into the specific need of niche feature.

 

Regarding the sad reality of price hike, GPUs aren't even the worst offender, have a look at the cost of DDR4 memory, particularly 128 GB sets (8x16). Well priced Threadripper is hardly a boon when you'll pay twice as much for memory to accompany it.

[numerobis]

I don't know about your timeframe, but if possible i would wait a few weeks or even months to see what the outcome of Spectre and Meltdown will be. A few days ago i thought, better buy AMD, but now it seems that they are affected more than they said (at least by Spectre).

Edited January 13, 2018 by numerobis

[junglee]

Thank you everyone for the replies.

Now I'm trying to decide between GTX 1050Ti, 1060 or 1070 for intern's computer.

Prices are from $250~300 for 1050ti, $350~400 for 1060 and $900+ for 1070 or AMD wx7100 for $600.

What would be the best bang for the buck for the just 3dmax and photoshop work environment? I guess that doesn't require any GPU renderings.

Does more memory on VC give smoother viewport?

[serious]

I almost agree with you about the workstation card thing but I suggested the AMD WX 7100 (which out performed the Nividia) which could be got for around $650.00 CAD. So yes buying a $1100.00 Quadro that may seem steep. But lets say you are doing 3d and pulling around verticies so you get good polygon flow and perhaps want to unhide all of your model and spin it around without having to get up and do somthing else while your screen is frozen.

AMD WX7100. no one even mentioned Quadro.

 

http://www.develop3d.com/hardware/radeon-wx7100-cad-viz-vr-workstation-solidworks-3dsmax-vred-steam-vrmark

 

https://pro.radeon.com/en/product/wx-series/radeon-pro-wx-7100/

 

All that said I am still doing reasearch

Edited January 16, 2018 by serious

[Nikolaos M]

Thank you everyone for the replies.

Now I'm trying to decide between GTX 1050Ti, 1060 or 1070 for intern's computer.

Prices are from $250~300 for 1050ti, $350~400 for 1060 and $900+ for 1070 or AMD wx7100 for $600.

What would be the best bang for the buck for the just 3dmax and photoshop work environment? I guess that doesn't require any GPU renderings.

Does more memory on VC give smoother viewport?

 

I would suggest this card https://pcpartpicker.com/product/gL98TW/gigabyte-geforce-gtx-1060-6gb-g1-gaming-video-card-gv-n1060g1-gaming-6gd for your budget.

 

Giving a premium of 700-900$ for a 1070 (!!!) is just out of the question. I guess I'm lucky I got mine for about 400$ a year ago...

 

For 3ds max specifically I wouldn't consider buying a professional gpu at all. The reason why, is thoroughly exposed in previous posts.

[heni30]

N.

 

I'm seeing that some 1060s come in a mini version with 1 fan but still with the 6g mem.

 

Anything being compromised with this version?

[Nikolaos M]

N.

 

I'm seeing that some 1060s come in a mini version with 1 fan but still with the 6g mem.

 

Anything being compromised with this version?

 

Well, usually these versions have slightly lower clocks, lower consumption, and consequently better thermal behaviour, so a single fan is enough to keep them cool. Slightly lower clocks could mean something in gaming etc. but in CG apps the differences are minimal afaik.

[Francisco Penaloza]

Well I think today is a bad day to do a computer upgrade, with the cryptomining craziness as for today buying a Quadro P4000 will be cheaper than a GTX 1070 lol

 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100008333%20600683686%20601294637

 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100007709%20601305993%20601202919

 

So if budget is your main call, then look no further than a gtx 1060 or anything Quadro under P4000 (GTX1070 equivalent) for 3D Max work they will work the same.

This is just craziness.

[Nikolaos M]

I agree. But the real craziness is in the RAM prices. They've really skyrocketed since last year (100-120% more expensive).

I sense that this crypomining thing is going to burst like a bubble, but the RAM thing is of a different nature (Samsung is said to be mainly responsible for this price fixing).

The only part I would consider upgrading at this moment is my monitor. Prices are quite normal for 27"+ ips monitors. Even 4K's have become more affordable these days.

[junglee]

Woot!

Today memory price has dropped to normal level! Perfect!!!

Thanks all for your replies.

I ended up getting WX7100, I'll give it a try and will report back.

[RyderSK]

Woot!

Today memory price has dropped to normal level! Perfect!!!

 

Where did you see that ?

 

So far all I've read are vague predictions about small gradual price decline over the whole year. Right now locally, 128 GB set of DDR4 (8x16) starts at 1700 in market around me.

2 years ago I bought used 128 GB DDR3 ECC for 200 euros : /

 

As Nikolaos said..all I've upgraded recently was nice 32" 4k monitor as well :- ). Everything else is sky-high.