More cores or faster speed?

[Dario Arnaez]

Hi guys! I have a consultation. I'm planning to renew my computer. I use 3DS Max 2017 with Vray 4.06. My current system is a humble (old) 

- DELL Desktop Computer Precision T3500 Intel Core i7 1st Gen 950 (3.06 GHz) 12 GB 500 GB HDD Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit
And I tempted to buy a Newegg : 
- Dell Precision T7910 Workstation, 2x Xeon E5-2620 v3 2.4GHz Six Core Processors, 128GB DDR4 Memory, 256GB SSD, NVIDIA Quadro K600, Windows 10 Professional 64-bit Installed

So from a Quad core 3.06 to more cores(I see another with 12 cores) but slower 2.4Ghz. I know that for rendering the ideal system is with a big RAM... but are more cores really important? ANy suggestions??

Thanks!!!

[Dario Arnaez]

And another  I see a 2x Xeon E5-2643 v3 3.4GHz Six Core Processors, 128GB DDR4 Memory... How much energy consume 2 Xeon microprocessors 3.4Ghz? Any idea? It worth? or just a single mic with 6 cores and 128 Gb RAM is ok?  Thanks!

 

[Dario Arnaez]

Still looking in a workstation deal (New egg) for less $2000. I will consult in another 3D forum for a better luck. But thanks anyway!

[Francisco Penaloza]

This been talk a few time in this forum. But to recap.

Both are important, but mostly depend of the task you are doing.  For modeling most apps only use 1 single core, For instance 3D Max everything modeling is single core handed. In that case the faster the CPU the better.  Now when you click render, then if you have more cores it will really improve your render time.

If you are a multi task person and have many app opened at the same time, then more RAM and many cores also will help, but if you concentrate on an single app at the time then only RAM is used and a single core again.

For us 3D Artist, no machine is big enough, the limit always will be the budget, that's one of the reasons AMD system are the trend now, because the high power at lower cost compared with a similar Intel system.  If you rather buying a brand machine, a Dell with dual CPU will be great for rendering, but you should try to get a high core speed to make it worth the update.

For instance, at my office I have a Dell Precision 5810 with a 6 cores that turbo to 4Ghz. this is my daily work station machine, but when I need to render I send to our little render farm that consist on 3 custom build dual cores Xeons @2.4.  The frequency on those render nodes is slower than my work station, but since they are dual cores CPU multi thread so I get a total of 56 thread per machine, and that really speed up our renderings.

 

BTW the NVIDIA Quadro K600 it is a very old Video card, it is ok for basic task but for anything demanding I would recommend to get at least a RTX 2060 super. a RTX 2080 should be a better choice or anything over that, depending on your budget of course.

 

 

 

[Mamoon Bestani]

On 6/29/2020 at 9:19 PM, Dario Arnaez said:

Still looking in a workstation deal (New egg) for less $2000. I will consult in another 3D forum for a better luck. But thanks anyway!

if you want to get more with same budget, don't go with branded workstation, you can customize what you need and assembly you will get 35 % more powerful PC. just Advice 
More cores, more threads and  faster Render. Better graphic card , GTX, or RTX , it will help you to work smoothly in view port and faster render when you render as RT.
More Rams will help you to work with high detailed scene.