Best CPU for 3D sturff and video
Dkgoose
Posts: 1,451
Hello, I am trying to build a computer, I was set on getting the Intel I7-3770k but had people I know suggest AMD FD8350FRHKBOX, the AMD is a lot cheaper but I've had bad experience with AMD with Daz Studio and Poser. I,m wondering which brand would work more efficiently and be more dependable, I know the i7 has hyperthreading and built in graphics but I am not sure if that makes a difference in Poser and Daz Studio. Thank You for any input. Dale.
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Intel 3770k beats amd fx 8350 in rendering benchmarks, but if you want best price/performance AMD is better.
Compare any CPU you want here: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/697?vs=551
I used AMD CPUs and cards for several years before switching to Intel i7/Nvidia Geforce GTX 560 for my latest build. I was committed to AMD because it was cheaper and because they seemed less "fancy" and more real to me than Intel. Unfortunately there was also a marked difference in performance - the new setup performs better than the old even though both were quad cores (and since I render in 3delight it's all CPU).
Pay attention to online reviewers when it comes to whether AMD will catch up again with its hardware - it could still happen - but at the moment Intel is way out ahead.
For performance, go with the i7. For budget, go with the AMD. The latter will work well enough for moderate expectations, but the former is recommended if money is not an issue. It will also be a longer term investment (as I hear the AMDs are less reliable and sturdy). Also make sure it has a Geforce Nvidia graphics card. I have an older card and it still works well enough for most needs.
Thank you all for the replies, I'll definetly stick with getting the Intel, I want something that will last for many years in theory at least, although 2 years from now it probably won't even be able to run Daz lol. Customers and friends have been suggesting AMD for weeks and tried to convince me you just pay extra for the name brand and get less quality, so I started debating on which to get. I'm pairing it with a nvidia gtx660 and 32gb ram so I'm hoping I won't have to upgrade for at least 5 yrs but that's probably unlikely.
Unless a dramatic change comes down the pike that requires an upgrade or barring an act of God (like lightning), that should hold up for a few years. :coolsmile:
You may want to reconsider you position in this...... I've been looking at a new CPU lately as well and found something very interesting. The problem is that people start telling you all kinds of things, but everyone forgets to keep the reality in mind. so, what I asked people to do is render a stadard scene with Vue post they're time. I've asked this question on various forums. My choices initially were the i7 2600k or the new i7 3770 or on the other end the FX-8150/20 at first. Later realised that AMD also has the FX-8350/20 also. To make a long story short..... people simply started rendering for me, everyone using the same settings and same scene. The scene was quite render intensive, with layers of clouds, trees, water, reflections and more. Here are some of the results.....
Initial (“Final” quality) render, size 640x427 -
AMD FX-8350: 1m31s
I guess you get the picture.... and know where my choice goes. Mind you, i'm only quoting a few cpu's in the rendering test. There are many more, but these do give enough info. Most important thing I've seen is that the FX-81/83 series do keep up with the i7's or surpass them when it comes to rendering. While CineBench may throw out a number on various major official website that test stuff, if you start looking further you will find interesting things. There are more websites that have gather user data and they all show very interesting things, numbers that do not match up with these so-called official websites...... the i3770 constantly getting beaten by older i7's and the same goes for the new i5, it constantly gets surpassed by older i5's. While the AMD FX-8350 may not be faster then the i7 in day to day use, it will easily keep up with it or even beat it when it comes to rendering.
Just an interesting detail..... my laptop i5 2450m renders the same scene in 15min 40sec..... I know it's slow, but again, it's faster then newest i5 mobile.
If you really want a fast rendering cpu and can afford something better, don't even buy the i7 3770, but either go for the previous extreme versions or the 6 core ones and overclock them..... your machine will really fly now. If you can't afford those, like I can't. I seriously would reconsider your current postion and consider the FX-8350 again and for the money you will save, buy lot's of extra RAM, that will benefit you much more then the little supposedly faster the i7 gives, which in real life suddenly seems to vaporise into thin air.
You can a FX-8350 with 16Gb RAM for the same price (or even less) then a i7 3770 with 8Gb RAM. Then you will have more rendering power with double the RAM...... what else can you aks for? Even if the i7 where a little faster, as it is according to all the official tests, ocntrary to lots of user tests, you would benefit so much more from the 8Gb of RAM.
Have fun picking a new computer and always remember instead of asking people's opinion about a cpu, ask them to post rendering times instead...... found that to be much more helpful every time I've done so.
As for DS/Poser, I know there are a good number of happy poser/ds users that use various AMD's ranging from the A8/A10 series to the FX series and don't have any problems at all. AMD made a couple of less good one in the past, but those days seem to be over.
Just slightly OT..... I was looking for a cutting machine 2 months back..... picked a few, but one of them was missing from all the tests. The one that came out of every test the best, was really battered by people who bought it, the majority did regret buying it. I wondered about that until I went to the official forums of the missing machine. Others asked about the missing test results and they simply replied..... we're refused to pay money to the official websites testing items, so we were excluded from all the test. But if you looked at consumers they all agreed.... it is one of the best cutting machines around and the one that always comes out on top of the official tests is really one of the worst you can buy. Since I'm aware of this, I'm really a bit more weary of official websites doing tests.
Not so off topic..... one of the major testing websites, tested the AMD FX-8150 early 2012 giving it roughly a score of 8000 and after the i7 & i5 3rd generation was released the FX-8150 suddenly dropped to just under 6000, while running the same tests, placing it just under the i5.
See, though, you're only taking into account one thing when asking people to render that Vue scene. Operating system, tweaks to it, whether multiple processes are running alongside, hard disk transfer rate, age of the components, cooling or lack of it...all these can affect render times as well. Benchmarks for things like that should really be done with systems as close to identical as possible so you know where the variation is coming from.
My i7 3770 renders very well. And I agree with Agent_Unawares. Those numbers you spouted are meaningless with all of the PCs working with different variables not taken into account in your experiment.
Seeing how new the i7 3770 and the FX-8350 are windows 7 we can safely say that wear and tear isn't to much of an inluence yet. OS..... Windows 7 for the quoted ones. Tweaks perhaps, I don't know, but ones these cpu's start rendering, they take over everything and tweaking a sytem doesn't account for minutes of time, perhaps a few seconds. Also, the users were asked to concentrate on rendering and not run all kinds of things alongside. The ones that did this, did get slower rendering times, but also mentioned doing it and I did not post those ones here. None of the quoted machines are overclocked and all of them with similar CPU's showed about the same time, no real excesses there at all. Only when people started showing overclocked times, things changed a lot. I only quoted a few the data was very consistent.... all of the i7's involved got about the same time, roughly 4 minutes.
When comparing AMD and Intel you will never get systems as close to identical as possible, since they use different bridges, sockets and so on.
One interesting thing though..... put the i7 in an iMac and you get completely different rendering times, but no macs quoted here.
I'm sure it does, I never said the i7 doesn't render well, I only said others may do it better.... Anyway.... get vue and start rendering the test scene and give us the time and you know how well it does against the others..... simple as that. The numbers are not meaningless at all, since we're purely focussing on rendering.... firing up all the cores and thread available and maxing them out. So, instead of discussing this with words, give me some rendering times, much more worth in this discussion.
At the end of the day your i7 only has four real cores.... so don't feel bad when a cheaper real 8 core is faster.
I'm sure it does, I never said the i7 doesn't render well, I only said others may do it better.... Anyway.... get vue and start rendering the test scene and give us the time and you know how well it does against the others..... simple as that. The numbers are not meaningless at all, since we're purely focussing on rendering.... firing up all the cores and thread available and maxing them out.
...
I'm a bit of a complete noob when it comes to hardware, and even I know CPU isn't the only thing that matters.
EDIT: In the interest of making the following conversation more clear, previous content was something along the lines of "What video cards did those systems have?"
Video cards have no influence on rendering in Vue, just as they don't in Poser and Vue. Rendering is purely done by cpu and not by gpu or assisted by gpu. You can put in the best gpu you find, but if you have a slow cpu, it will not speed up your rendering at all, neither will it allow a faster cpu to render even faster..... Can't believe you even ask for the video cards, thought everyone knew by know they don't influence poser, carrara, ds or vue and many others when it comes to rendering. We're not that far yet.
EDIT..... OK, you changed your post..... I know the system does have an influence, but it will not add minutes or deduct minutes to the rendering time. Vue has a nasty habit of demanding all the cpu in a system when it starts rendering. Doing others with the system becomes nearly impossible. I had enough people with the i7 3770 (and other types) participating and they all roughly showed the same timem inspite of using different systems.
Yes, realized that seconds after posting and edited to reply to something relevant.
The hard disk still matters. The type of memory in the system still matters. Wear and tear IS a thing even under a year of age. Rendering does NOT somehow "max out" the CPU to the exclusion of everything else and make the other variables irrelevant.
Because for the past few months I've been trying to render in Lux exclusively and work out the materials. Forgive me. :lol:
Other variables still matter.
It's ok, doesn't matter. I know other variables matter, but they only shaved off seconds fromt he rendering time. the fastest I7 3370 was 3m54s and slowest was 4m17, the rest was inbetween, so a difference of just over 20 seconds.
Didn't figure someone would read it within seconds or I'd have tagged it with an EDIT. Don't complain, you just edited at least twice between my responses. :lol:
It is telling that a bunch of i7s all showed similar times, I'll give you that...bit odd on the standard benchmarking results, though. Makes me wonder what causes that variation, if there's something about Vue itself that uses the CPU differently somehow, or if maybe the benchmarking tests weren't pushing things to their limits while Vue did.
I'd be curious to see the same systems run rendering tests with different software packages to see if the results are similar.
Relevant question, I see you had a lot of i7 results, how many from the AMD type you were comparing to?
I'd assume a 2011 socket cpu, like i3990k, six-core, 4-channel memory support (comparing to socket 1155 2-channel memory personally me feel real difference). It seems Intel won't drop 2011 on sandybridge stage and advance it to ivybridge or even probably further. Sources differ. Better get gtx 670 4 gb, someday you may want to try gpu render to speed up the render process and this video card will fit lux render, octane, arion, etc.
My mind amd cpu has any meaning if you may set up render farm of about 3-4 pc for the price of single intel 2011 workstation. Otherwise it is a bit unpractical as AMD is in a very unstable business situation.
7 AMD's, 8350 and 8150. The 8150 was a little slower then most i7's, the 8350 a lot faster then the 8150. I had about 8 different i7's, Inter made a lot more variations in the i7 then AMD does in it's cpu's. I had enough data to get a good view at of quite a number of CPU's and from the data I had, I wouldn't buy the i7 3770 or AMD FX-8350 at all if I had more then enough money. I would go with something much more expensive, but if that is really worth the money I don't know. If I had that kind of money I would probably buy 2 FX-8350's, that would even beat the more expensive i7's or go for a Xeon or something like it. A render farm with a few cheaper ones, works even better then getting one realy expensive one.
My mind amd cpu has any meaning if you may set up render farm of about 3-4 pc for the price of single intel 2011 workstation. Otherwise it is a bit unpractical as AMD is in a very unstable business situation.
I'm thinking about building a rendering farm with the FX-8350, but I'm also curious about the new line of AMD's that are coming, but I'm not sure when they will be ready. Another option is building something with a couple of opteron's in it, that may be interesting as well, but I haven't really looked into that yet. The Dell T7400 with 2 older Xeons is also an option, but I haven't found them cheaper then the FX-8350 yet.
GPU rendering is interesting, but I don't see Poser or Vue going there yet. I'm only using DS a little and I've found the plugins for Poser too expensive to just give it a try. I rather spent that money on something else. I do most of my renders in Vue and I'm not sure if lux or octance are that much better and getting something like the gtx 670 4 gb is more expensive then buying a complete system with a i7 or FX-8150/8350, so I'll stick to that for now. I do think GPU rendering is interesting, but for now it hasn't impressed me enough to abandon CPU rendering and invest lot's of money into it.
If it's a workstation card they do have a major influence on rendering. The Quadro line for example has custom drivers for specific rendering/CAD programs and all workstation cards are designed to handle the graphics workload for such programs. Gaming cards in most people's systems are designed to run games and work with real time rendering so they don't work with Vue and the like very well.
In all the tests I have seen the AMD processors do very well in programs with heavy threading or ones the support multiple processors but has subpar performance on ones that do not such as word processing or utility programs. AMD has complained for a long time that tests have a bias towords Intel processors and do not reflect real world performance.
If it's a workstation card they do have a major influence on rendering. The Quadro line for example has custom drivers for specific rendering/CAD programs and all workstation cards are designed to handle the graphics workload for such programs. Gaming cards in most people's systems are designed to run games and work with real time rendering so they don't work with Vue and the like very well.
In all the tests I have seen the AMD processors do very well in programs with heavy threading or ones the support multiple processors but has subpar performance on ones that do not such as word processing or utility programs. AMD has complained for a long time that tests have a bias towords Intel processors and do not reflect real world performance.
You're right about the workstations, but.... yes there's always a but :-) You need special drivers for your application to take advantage of these features in those graphics card and applications like Vue, Poser and DS do not provide those. Vue, Poser and DS are OpenGL based applications, so you need to have the best OpenGL card you can get. Unfortunatelly, OpenGL has no influence on rendering at all, only on what you see on your display. So, if you get a better graphics card you will only benefit in how fast it shows stuff on your screen, the quality of the preview and how much it will show in the preview, but you will not see faster rendering at all. The Vue staff even does advice against getting a quaddro and such for Vue, but to buy the best gaming card you can afford to get the most out of Vue.
I've also read about AMD's complain and let's be honest..... my wife has one of these atom netbooks and wordprocessing and day to day use goes just as well on that one as on my i5. To be very honest, when it comes single threaded/single core useage, which is valid for a lot of applications, my old laptop with a 2.4Ghz P8600 will beat my top range 2.5Ghz i5 2450m easily. Even when the i5 turbo kicks in at 3.1Ghz, it's still not as fast as the P8600, but then the P8600 was the probably the best CPU Intel ever made, just as it's desktop brother, the E8600 was.. Of course when more cores are needed, the P8600 is beaten very easlily, but in day to day useage, the P8600 wins big time, but Intel will not tell you that, they rather have spent lot's of money on power most people never need or use. But... when more cores are needed the whole story changes rapidly.
I'm simply after the best rendering cpu for the most affordably price and when it comes to that, the FX-8350 is the winner. All the machine will do is render.... My laptop will be used for working on and the scenes will get sent through the network to the rendering pc. I can keep on working and that machine will render the scene 65%-90% faster then my laptop can ever do. The rendering machine doesn't need a good graphic card or huge harddisk or any other fance stuff, just plain and simple with the best 8 core I can afford and a good amount of RAM and I'm ready to render. Working on my laptop goes fine, the i5 performs well in setting up scenes and renders fast enough for a quick preview. I've got a dedicated graphics card with it's own 1Gb of RAM and it does well with Vue and other OpenGL based applications. Rendering in Poser is reaonably fast, but if I want quality with Vue, it just doesn't cut it at all. Instead of buying an expensive new laptop to speed up rendering, I may just as well buy a seperate pc for rendering. That will always be cheaper and faster then a laptop.
Did your testers mention how much RAM they have?
And which version of Vue?
The different "flavors" (pioneer, studio, complete) are restricted to different numbers of cores.
Yes, actually they did.... most of them had 16gb, a few 32Gb and 1 even had 64Gb. So, minimum 16Gb, but for the scene rendered roughly 2Gb would be enough.
You might use lux render as it is free and manually tweak materials and set up lights. I do not know any method to compare cpu and gpu renders correctly but I had wathched tests performed with arion 1.6 on i7 2600k and single gtx 580. In hybrid mode of test scenes' rendering the computational power ratio of gpu to cpu was in average 8:1. I doubt 8 additional PCs would cost less than single gpu. Another thing if you plan never use gpu renders. Then you really have no need to spend your money on expensive video hardware. This way I would think of couple quad g34 socket motherboards filled with 8 cheapest 12-core opterons. But I have no ability to run render farm at home, so, I limited myself with one intel based workstation loaded with 3 gpu.
If I would only use Poser, I could go the GPU route, but 2 things are stopping me...... first is that I'm not only using Poser/DS, but my main render engine is Vue 10 at the moment and vue isn't going gpu just yet. The second thing is that so far what I've seen from Poser users doing gpu renderings has me left far from impressed. If that's what Poser user get from gpu rendering their scenes with a very expensive graphics card, then I rather stick to cpu rendering for now. I also don't want to go both cpu and gpu at the moment, that would make the new machine too expensive, so I'll stick with gpu rendering, at least I know what quality I'm getting.
I'm also wondering about another thing with gpu rendering..... I'm creating images for print, so they need to be rendered at a large size, at least 3000x2000 up to 6000x4000. How does gpu rendering handle this?
The big question there is...what GPU renderer?
They all have differing requirements. Most though are limited by the amount of RAM on the video card...so a 2 GB card would have a smaller potential upper size than a 4 GB card. Some GPU renderers are 'hybrid' in that they can also use system RAM for some things...but without the details it's hard to say whether or not those sizes are possible.
Oh, I see, I thought that would be an easy question to answer. No need to find out all kinds of things if it isn't an easy answer, since I'm not going to switch any time soon.... unless E-Onsoftware makes a drastic change and Vue will get GPU rendering support, but even that would be at the end of this year. I would say Poser is more likely to get it then Vue.
I've decided to go with the i7-3770k, I've never used an Intel in custom PC's only AMD so I am hoping it will provide a longer lasting and more efficient PC with no BSODs. Thank you all for your input.