PC Buying Advice (Goal: 3D Rendering)

Technology and Gaming
#1

Hello everyone!

It’s about that time where I am starting to look into upgrading or buying a new computer. However, as I’ve been out of the loop for so long and my goals for computing have changed, I am seeking advice because I’m currently at a loss of even where to start.

The main thing I want to use this new computer for is rendering 3D animations. I have heard that an i7 is what I want to look towards, but I’m not 100% sure on that. Or even 50% sure.

To be honest, I’m clueless here so if you’re going to respond here, don’t make assumptions about things that I should know. Let me know what I need to know.

In short, I want a computer that can render as quick as possible. I have an AMD Athlon II X4 630 Processor, 2.8 GHz with 16GB of RAM but it doesn’t seem to be speedy enough for me. I know 3D rendering takes a long time and that movie studios have render farms devoted solely to rendering, but I’m just this guy, y’know?

So, for the consumer side of things, what should I be looking to get? Thanks in advance, everyone! :slight_smile:

#2

There are graphics cards that you can buy that are more aimed towards 3D modeling than for playing games, but they’r expensive as hell (several thousand dollars I think). The Tesla and Quadro lines for instance. I’m not sure if an i7 will help during rendering, but it might, I’d wait for someone else to post to confirm. I think i7s (with hyper boost or whatever it’s called) more help with video rendering, I think modeling and stuff is more reliant on the GPU, which as I said, for render quality GPUs it’s pretty expensive. Otherwise I think the 16GB or RAM you have should be good too.

#3

I’m not looking into 3D modeling as much as rendering already-made models that have been animated. And allowing for easier use of animating said already-made models, but I think that’s the job of the GPU, not necessarily the CPU (which is where the rendering into movies or sequential frames is done, IIRC).

#4

I think rendering in most 3D modeling / animation programs is usually CPU-based, with a few exceptions (e.g. Nvidia Iray and the Cycles renderer in Blender).

Most modern CPU-based renderers should benefit from multithreading and HyperThreading.
I remember a while back there were scheduling issues with Mental Ray that actually made performance worse in some cases with HT enabled, I’m not sure if that has been fixed in more recent versions of the renderer.

These CPU benchmarks might be useful (for comparison Athlon X4 640 scores ~3.36 in Cinebench R11.5).

Viewport rendering (for modeling and animating in the program) I think used to be CPU-based but programs are gradually shifting to GPU-based renderers (e.g. Viewport 2.0 in 3ds Maya)

#5

I don’t know what your price range is, but you might be able to build a pretty powerful rendering computer cheaply by getting used parts from ebay or asset disposition companies. For instance, at my work we’ve been putting together some used HP Z600 workstations for about $1200. Each has dual 6-core 2.66 ghz Xeons (24 virtual cores with hyperthreading), 24GB DDR3 RAM, an Nvidia Quadro FX 3800, and a 256GB SSD. The video card is a little weaker because its for AutoCAD and Revit which don’t really utilize it much, so you might have to add in more for a GPU-based rendering program.

Or you could go with Intel’s new Haswell-E processors and also receive the benefits of DDR4 memory (although it’s supposedly faster, it’s mainly just more energy-efficient and denser to allow for memory in fewer DIMMs).

If those options are more than you wanna spend, I’d still recommend going Intel for a high-end CPU, though something like an AMD 8350 might do on a budget or if you’re gonna focus on a GPU-based rendering program anyway.

#6

I’m mainly getting ideas on what processors are the best for this kind of thing. I believe that most rendering is done on the CPU so that’s what I’m looking at first. I’m basically looking for a high-end (for rendering) consumer CPU. I’m not looking to spend a bundle, but my budget is pretty open at the moment. Let’s not worry about price too much for the moment. I just wanna know what my options are. :slight_smile:

#7

I’d go High end Nvidia, since they tend to do the job between games and rendering. At least for me. The thing that will kill you is the CPU. I feel like mine is definitely underpowered for the level of stuff I really want to do.

#8

Just go triple-sli Titan tbh.

#9

that’s my goal weight

#10

To be frank, I’m not looking for a gaming rig. This rig would be almost entirely used for 3D animation (posing and rendering). Now, I don’t know if there’s an overlap or not, but if there’s not (or the overlap is small), I’m going to lean towards the 3D animation part rather than gaming.

I can get a separate rig for gaming if I really want to do that (I’m not much of a gamer, to be honest).

#11

tbh, the overlap grows larger and larger every day as offline renderers take more advantage of real-time-able tech. Hell, Maya’s big recent features are all about its viewport 2.0 and how it’s essentially a game’s graphics engine for accurate previewing. I’d go as far as to say that a good gaming comp and a good home rendering comp are the same thing. I mean, if you want muscle comparable to that of the quadro series with only a fraction of the cost, the titan or even an upcoming 800 series/ 900 series cards, OR EVEN top-tier 700 series would probably do the trick. Assuming you’re using one of them renderers that use CUDA.

#12

get the a X99 board and a Haswell-E CPU, like the i7-5960X. That should do.
As for GPU rendering, maybe get a HD7970 or R9 290 or something like that, unlike their nvidia counter-parts the GPGPU performance is not artificially downgraded by the driver. Path-Tracing, depending on the scene, can almost be rendered in real-time on them.

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