New motherboard or new video card? I can't decide....
spearcarrier
Posts: 686
I can't decide which I should get. A new motherboard. or a new video card. Because I don't know which will help my case best.
I'm running two GTX950s on an AMD eight core processor with win7 64 bit. If you want anything more technical than that I'll have to wake the other half... LOL
I want to get the Nividia Titan.
But. I also use PWtoon for rendering animations, and 3Delight is a CPU render engine.
So. I dunno which way I should go.
Advice?
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You really should be asking the hardware experts at...
http://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/
https://www.computerpoweruser.com/home
https://www.techpowerup.com/
http://www.tomshardware.com/
While these do tend to be a bit gamer-centric, they have the resources to buy all the new hardware and test/compare the bejeezus out of it, allowing you to make an informed decision. Their forums are chock full of wildly enthusiastic experts who are always more than willing to give thoughtful advice. As an old hardware hacker, my advice would be to look at building a new system based around the most up to date components you have. Updating just one part leaves bottlenecks in another part. A new motherboard and CPU with possibly a pile of RAM (it's crazy cheap) *might* allow your video cards to perform better. A modestly sized SSD for just Windows and your programs will also make response blindingly quicker (store your content on a separate drive). Stay with Win7, it's still the OS of choice among serious gamers, programmers and other geeks. One of the magazines publishes a series of 'builds' each year where they take the best components in three price ranges and make a computer out of them. I've taken to building their mid-range computer every few years. I keep my case, hard drives and power supply but follow their reccomendations for the rest.
I asked here because this place has more people in my situation and those places are full of people who will hand me solutions I simply can't even dream of. (In other words, been there done that.) And why wouldn't the people here have an idea of what they would do?
So let's just assume for the sake of fantasy that I'm not the multi-million dollar third generation heir that I truly am, and all I can afford is to upgrade a part on an already existing machine. And that I do that from time to time with excellent results, but this time I'm at a crossroads where I'm just not sure which path I wanna take. ;-) If I get a new motherboard and CPU I can use my existing video cards and upgrade them later. But will I notice the difference? If I get the Titan, I wonder if it will make a difference. That's all.
Whether you go for an Intel i7 or the new AMD Ryzen (expected in March), you can definitely use your GTX 950s in the new motherboard.
Either of those options will be a huge improvement for 3Delight. (The old AMD 8 cores were severely underpowered even when they were new!)
Depending on the age of your current system, as Fossil says, a new system is a better idea then you can specify exactly what you need with that future Titan X in mind.
Oh, wow. Were they? It hasn't been quite a year yet, but I do end up upgrading at least once a year. Maybe it's been a year... but not more than that. When we first began they were doing an okay job for what I do. Part of things is that I've recently been experimenting with dynamics, and that takes more power. And somet hings just... seem to need more power than a year ago.
AMD Ryzen: gonna look that up in a bit. My budget isn't huge whatever I choose. If 8 isn't enough, then it seems like I definitely need to go for more. Although I'm not sure I can wait until March.
I have decided this stuff is too expensive and disposable to be in a rush to buy it. I will start buy buying a motherboard that can do 7th gen i7 or the new ASUS ryzen and then that board needs to do dual nVidia 1070s or the dual of new ATI video cards (which are faster than 1080s), I forget what they are called. I will probably be conservative and go for the i7 and dual nVidia since I know they work with DAZ Studio and the nVidia Hairworks & such. However, if their wind up being plans to port the ATI ProRenderer to DAZ Studio, Unity, and Blender - I might have second thoughts. However, the Prorenderer will run on nVidia cards for it's a better render engine you can expect to see iRay having competition regardless of use of nVidia hardware.
I also consider 64GB RAM vs 32GB RAM. I probably will buy a MB that supports 64GB DDR4 RAM even if I don't even add 64GB DDR4 RAM to the system since the cost difference isn't huge if you are buying the MB yourself. I do want to have 32GB system RAM though buy I often run into problems rendering in CPU mode in DAZ Studio with 16GB RAM as the system runs out of memory.
I won't start buying til June though.
Well I"m in a rush for a couple of reasons. 1. The money won't be there later. 2. The slow slow is literally killing my health. I'm staying up until dawn to do one tiny little thing, and the work load is getting choked. I just can't do it anymore, gotta speed things up now.
Spent some time looking at i7s today but it seems that anything that's faster is a bit out of my price range.
I found this article: it's old but maybe has some sound advice in it as well. https://turbofuture.com/computers/Build-Photo-Editing-PC
You have two good cards and a good processor. May I ask why you want to improve, is there something going on right now that is telling you "fix me!"? Are your renders taking forever? Or do you just have cash burning a hole in your pocket? lol.
Your motherboard (more or less, very generic terminology here so don't everybody rip me a new one) just houses your cards and processor, so unless you are going to a different slot/mounting for a newer processor I would leave the mobo as is and upgrade elsewhere (cards and ram?). jmo
LOL. I thought that too but the RAM is maxed out and has been. The computer tends to be well maintenanced. It just doesn't have the power, though. For example. I load Poser Pro 2014. I'm good sort of... and then I try the fitting room. Aaaaand... then it's so slow I hit "go" and hope things work because I can't tweak things.
DAZ runs okay, being more friendly to lower systems, but lately I've been playing with dynamic props and making my own.
Rendering 1 second of pwtoon video will take hours.
You know. Little things like that. At the time when I first went to this machien that was a vast improvement. It's not anymore. Time to step up another rung on the ladder.
I'm looking at the following:
i-7 6850 6-core, 40 lanes
I'll keep the video cards for now but will buy one when i get the savings up again
ASUS X99-E motherboard. Wow that got big. How do I make the text not big like that.... (yay! fixed)
I dont know if I need a biggetr power supply. Have to open up the computer to see. But just those things are barely within my budget so far.
Select your text, set the Format dropdown to "Normal".
Asus boards are the best, I wouldn't look else where (I have x99 aii). That's a good chip the only thing I would caution is the 2011-v3 base is vanishing, which means your mobo and chip are currently being replaced. I was weighing the very same options you are now about two months ago and I stayed with the 2011-v3. I would plan for water cooling (Corsair) if you can afford it and you'll need to look at your current power supply too.
How much ram do you have now? Also might be good to watch your system and watch what is being maxed out when you open and run stuff. Ctrl + Alt + Delete/TaskManager/Performance
Well one thing you can do to improve performance is upgrade to Windows 10, max out on system RAM, and use only SSDs. That's for non-rendering improvements although Windows 10 and maxing out system RAM will help on rendering speed as well. Of course you already know to max out speed with rendering you need dual or even tri nVidia cards of the highest spec they offer.
When it comes to 2011-v3 disappearing, I keep in mind that in a year or two I'll be wanting to upgrade again anyway. That might be why this particular motherboard is on the more affordable end of the scale... We actually have a cascade of computers in the house that are all Frankensteins. LOL. I'm thinking of perhaps beginning a render farm this way. Ha, it wouldn't work but I can dream.
I've thought about water cooling on more than one occasion, but I've always been given to understand that the conversion is beyond my ability to do. This particular processor actually comes with a set up that would go with water cooling if I choose, but for now I think I'm just going to go with a fan. It's a learning curve.
The puter has 32GB and that's as much as it can take with this motherboard. Ah. I should check that other motherboard to make sure it can take more... Right now the system works fine. The minute I try to do certain things with Poser and DAZ are when it maxes out. I don't use this puter for anything else. I have a second computer for daily motions.
As for Windows 10, we have always meant to upgrade but the version I want is one of those "takes money" options so it's slow going. And things are fine with windows 7 respectively.
The article said that the GTX 1080 is even better than the Titan. So my next goal will be to get one, and then a second.
Cuirrent power supply is 750W. The suggested power supply is 650, so I think I'm good there.
I should note though that when it comes to rendering 3Delight, 3Delight uses CPU not RAM so the processor will make a difference.
Water cooling is expensive i know that for a fact but don't let anybody tell you your not capable enough to do it.
There is massive help out there YouTube and all. Some video cards come with pre-made sealed cooling systems.
and sealed CPU coolers are around too. Corsair sealed CPU cooling systems for about 2 years. a long time in confuser years
AMD sells 5 GHz CPU's with water-cooling only. water cooling makes a difference at 4.2 GHz i am crusing along at 93.2 F
33.333 C cpu and less on the gpu..
a bit of research and fist full of Money you can if you want have fun and good luck
Okay so water cooling is definitely a plus! If I can aim towards converting to that in the future as an upgrade, then I'll be golden.
But thank you guys for the conversation. You helped me to figure things out.
Better cpu or video cards? If you like 3delight go for the cpu upgrade with as many threads as you can get. The new AMD Ryzen would be ideal for this. If you prefer Iray go for improved nvidia video cards
AMD 8 core with 32 gig of RAM and Windows 7 should be working fine for you. I think Poser Firefly is multithreaded, but I don't know about the program as it has many older parts that may be singlethreaded. I don't know how much they rewrote. That may explain the slow speed. I rarely use it anymore and haven't upgraded in over a year. It's always been slow for me. DAZ has more multithreading, but I don't know if dynamics is multithreaded. The render engines are, but that's all I know for sure.
Reducing texture size is the best thing you can do right now for increasing speed some. I like 3Delight, but I've been using it less and less and Iray more and more.
Is PWToon single threaded? If that's the case, you will have to look for a faster processor, not really more cores. If you are looking at 3Delight, more CPU cores will help. Iray can use a faster GPU with more memory.