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Won't the newer insanely high core count systems make those older workstations obsolete? From prices I saw, sure you'd pay double to get an i9-7900, but you're getting like over 4x or higher performance of a single chip and much higher single thread performance.
Honestly nowdays the term obsolete is deceptive when refering to desktop computers made in the last 10 years.
As long as you have at least a quad core i7 (including i7 based Xenons) or an 8 core AMD FX processor, all you need to do to modernize your old computer is bring it up to at least 16GB of RAM and upgrade the video card.
If you are on an i3, i5, or an FX (4 or 6 cores) then you just need to add a CPU upgrade into the mix. [8 core AMD FX, and older generation Core i7 and I7 based Xeon CPUs can be bought second hand very inexpensively and will still perform better than a modern i3 or i5)
@ scott762_948aec318a : My recent $135 CPU upgrade on my Dell workstation brought it up to 12 cores / 24 threads @ 3.33Ghz running 6 Channel REG ECC DDR3 and I can still upgrade it to 192GB of RAM
Not bad for an eight year old Workstation that I bought off of ebay for $150 including shipping a year ago.
Did you upgrade again already? Ryzen 1700 is a 8 core / 16 thread CPU.
I posted a screenshot in another thread when a scene was loading with my i7 6700K. Appeared to be using all cores, but mine is only 4 core. When you're loading a scene, what's your CPU use look like?
Not to shabby for the price.
Of couse, slow of fast can be a matter of opinion... I'm looking at upgrading my 6700K system, I am giving the Ryzen Threadrippers a hard look.
Not as fast per core as the Intel Core X CPUs, but the 64 PCI lanes is what has me really interested. I'm thinking all those dedicated lanes should help with IO a lot. Biggest thing I wait on in Daz is a scene starting to render. Loading a scene and parenting a Genesis 3 figure to another takes a long time too, but impacts my workflow much less. I'm thinking the biggest boost will be the quad-channel DDR4 memory, M2 memory stick storage and to a lesser extent dedicated x16 PCI lanes for the two current cards I have.
Reasonably high yes, but not what rendering does, at or close to 100% for long periods of time, they are not designed for that. A game constantly varies in its demands from the GPU, rendering as a rule remains constant. They are very different, in how much they tax the graphics card.
...not a big fan of Dell or HP for that fact. Prefer "white box" systems which is what mine currently is. Legacy hardware is going up in price as well. The 24 GB jit I was considering for my current system went from 114$ in December (when I didn't have the extra funds) to 194$ today, a jump of 80$ for "old tech". That's the cheapest I can find (Nerwegg) for a tri channel DDR3 1333 kit that is compatible with my MB (Amazon and others have the same kit listed for 225$ or more)
Haswell Xeons also support more advanced processes than Nehalem ones which could come into play for more efficient GPU card compatibility. The big point is I can find 128 GB 4 channel kits without having to go the "used" route.
...but get stuck having to run under W10 which forces updates (that can have bugs or other instabilities) on you along with riduculous usless features like Cortana and X-Box Live (the former which you need to hack the registry to completely disable so it doesn't come back after a new update), wlll require I purchase new periphreals such as my printer, trackball, & such, and reserves a noticable portion of GPU VRAM. No thanks.
..Carrara will use as many cores/threads for rendering as you can throw at it. If you can afford to build a networked render box with dual Epyc 32 core CPUs it will use all 128 threads.
Okay, but given the choice between rendering with a CPU with many cores and a GPU, isn't the GPU a clear choice on a cost per performance basis? I thought that CPU rendering, even with many cores, doesn't come close to the performance of a good GPU. But I may be wrong about that. I just recall testing my 8 CPU/16 thread Ryzen versus a GTX 1070, and the Ryzen was nowhere close in overall render time.
...and that is part of why the Quadro line is more expensive as they are designed to handle peak output for an extended amount off time. If I had the funds I would seriously consider a 16 GB P5000, however, one card alone would be almost the cost of the entire workstation I've been planning (about 2,500$)..
...Carrara does not support GPU rendering. Neither does Vue Infinite nateively.
Oh, okay, I didn't know that. So rendering animations for example in Carrara must be really painful, no? I mean renders that might take a few minutes with a GPU would take many minutes with a CPU, even with 4 or 6 cores.
...yes but still not as bad as 3DL with UE in Daz Studio. One scene I did that used an HDRI setting with UE and had only five frames of motion blur took sixteen and a half hours. to render, That is on my current system.
When I downloaded the trial version of Carrara 6.1 years ago on my old 1.6 GHz duo core 32 bit notebook, I did a 5 - 6 second flyaround of a Martian terrain I created which I believe took a little over 1 hr or so to render. Granted there were no transmaps, reflectivity, or atmospheric effects to slow the process down.
For the most part I prefer to do custom builds. My issue is getting computer building funds approved through the wife.
I'm always on the lookout for crazy computer deals on ebay and craigslist, cause those are always easier to get funding approval on. And older Xeons and REG ECC memory are always inexpensive in the used market. (I can get 6x4GB for $45 or 3x8GB for $55 right now on ebay) But yes, even the used market is a little inflated for RAM right now (When I first got this box a year ago, I bought 6x4GB for $33)
Can't you export scenes to an external rendererer like Octane?
I've never compared the cost, but seems with how powerful consumer GPUs are, that would be cheaper.
Topic for another thread, but Win 10 is nice. You can disable the privacy stuff, easy to find how online. I didn't like the idea of it at first, now I'll never go back to 7 from 10. It is better.
But with the cost difference, you can use GeForce cards and upgrade every year or two and come out cheaper. Yeah you're using it at 100% capacity, just don't keep it so long.
Yes, Carrara has an Octane plug-in. Not many users, but it has one.
In Carrara, it's easy to fake GI and it can really crank out the frames if you know what you're doing. It comes network render ready, too. There was/is a user who had networked multiple bare bones PCs in his garage who rendered out some animations. Howie Farkes first developed his marvelous outdoor sets for Carrara before doing some for studio. Unfortunately, there has been a slowdown in development of the software, but thanks to users you can get some of the recent figures in. The settings are fairly straight forward and no spaghetti to deal with. But right now, it's easier to do more realistic renders in DAZ Studio/Iray, so most of my free time goes there. But here are a couple videos from 7 years ago showing just a little of what you can do in Carrara - a scene that renders in under a minute on an old computer.
..apologies but features like Cortana are useless bloat that only serve to get in the way of my work. The force fed updating is also a major flaw, not all of us are 80 year old grandmas who watch silly cat vids on youtube, tweet, or post to Facebook.. Also not into paying for a high VRAM GPU card to have it's memory hamstrung by the OS either.
To put it bluntly, not into handing control of my system totally over to MS.
Oh and the discussion has relevance as the new CPU technology is forcing people to adopt W10.
@ Kevin. ...but again, Daz Studio still does not support large environments, environment and terrain generation, or modelling. I prefer to use mesh based environments and sets that I can alter instead of stock HDRIs which is the only way to get 'big" environments to render efficiently in Daz Studio.
But with the cost difference, you can use GeForce cards and upgrade every year or two and come out cheaper. Yeah you're using it at 100% capacity, just don't keep it so long.
Moot point since it isn't available, but for example with Iray and Daz it would be way more cost and power efficient to render with GPUs rather than CPUs. Gotta consider TCO, software is part of it.
$579 for Octane and the Carrara plugin.
...again, Daz Studio does not handle large detailed environments very well. Andrey's Forest and Polish's Cyberpunk Subway are two examples of heavy sets that cause the programme to run very sluggish. Carrara simply handles large environments much better and renders faster than Iray in CPU mode. As it has GI, AO, and even volumetrics, it can create pretty darn close to realistic results. I don't just work in Daz Studio.
..more than I am able to spend considering I am putting away for the new workstation. Also doesn't Octane crash if a scene exceeds VRAM or does it do like Iray and swap to the CPU?
Octane can use "Out of core" memory. When it's enabled, all textures and even the HDRI is loaded in system memory. Geometry must fit in the VRAM though.
Just reserve the amount of system ram you think you will need, and Octane automatically does the rest (and no, it is not a hybrid renderer, all of the rendering is done on the GPU, even when using out of core memory). Note in the attached image that the Octane interface also includes a lot of useful information without needing a third party utility (that may, or may not be accurate). You can also set the amount of GPU memory for Octane to use, and reserve GPU memory for use in other applications (see attached).