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Here you will have to make a decision. Gaming favors higher frequency(Intel) over number of cores (AMD). CPU rendering favors number of cores over fewer cores and higher frequency. It depends on your priority. Of course, you could get both high core count with high megahertz, but it would be very expensive. If you choose GPU rendering, then its an easier decision because you won't need the cores. So this is your call. It depends on what kind of machine you want to build: gaming first, cpu rendering first, or gpu rendering first.
Us people who play games know that modern games rely on both the cpu and gpu. Most of the time, a balance is required, and if she was a professional gamer, then I would suggest she do more research on the game she is playing. But as you can read, she is not a professional, thus she can rely on the general knowledge that games need frequency, not cores, and a matching gpu. There is no need to do a in depth study on this matter. It's already established fact and as gaming PC's are high frequency 4 or 6 bangers..
There are very few modern games where the CPU contribution is negligible. There may be none (unless you mean web browser games). Even if there were, you may not know this, but each year many new games are introduced to the market. So if the OP decides to play a game that requires CPU, will you recommend that she buys another computer for her new game?
Luckily, she won't need to because, like I said, the gaming formula is already established. It is almost never a good idea to buy a special computer to play one game and I would never recommend that.
I had to recover a hard HHD crash this week. I dunno what happen, it wasn't my main windows SSD system drive. But it was a server tie-in drive. which is just important So thank god husband had forth sight to get all my hard drives cloned the first of the year.
We been doing this for a couple of years. the first of every year we take all our hard drives in to "geeks at work" and for $90 and some change they clone all my drives , best $90 bucks I ever spent, . it works a helluva lot better than trying to use system image for a server recovery. I never though I would have to use it, because I always keep systems shadow copy & back ups. but someone at the college a couple of years ago recommended that where as I had a older computer with windows 7 & and MS was pushing win 10 at the time. That it might be best to have my drives clones on top of making back ups. boy am I ever glad I listen. because I could not get a shadow copy to take, this time. it kept looking for the windows authentication driver, which i couldn't find on the MS sight.. So I remembered we had the clones drives and I popped in my clone drive G and then ran my system image and bingo. it was like i never was down..
Best $90 bucks I ever spent. great insurance for those maintaining older computer & servers
With your budget there are decisions you have to make. You can't have everything
AMD is good for gaming but Intel usually gets a few more fps with most of today's game. Reason is that today's games are optimized up to four threads. So AMD's additionnal cores are usually useless for today's games. And as Intel's processors are usually higher clocked, they get better performance in games
AMD's fabrication process cannot compete with Intel in clock speed right now. That may change in the future when they go to 7nm
Now if we talk about long term build, games should shift from 4 core limit in the future, as 6 and 8 core processors are becoming mainstream thanks to AMD
AMD stated that the AM4 Platform will be supported for a long time, so you could change your processor in the future instead of changing the whole computer
Albeit for it's 2200G and 2400G, AMD's new processors don't have an integrated GPU. You could still add a PCIe 1x GPU to drive the display https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2F84CT6465
Then in term of GPU the question is : how many GPU do you want to be able to put in your Rig ?
For rendering the cards will need full PCIe 3.0 slots and with AMD and Intel mainstream processor/Motherboards you'll generally have a max of two usable slots and prebuilt PCs usually only have one. Otherwise you have to switch to Hedt Platform which will cost more than 1800$
If you want to secure the evolutivity of your computer you must choose the components wisely
As said by others it depends on your main goal.
Iray on one GPU / Gaming = 4 cores and high clock
CPU rendering / Audio-Video encoding / Multitasking = more than 4 cores
Umm.... Isn't that what I said?
"Us people who play games know that modern games rely on both the cpu and gpu. Most of the time, a balance is required,..."
That is of course a load of Crap; PCs need a CPU, without it you are left with some expensive paperweights.
Of course a computer needs a CPU. And it needs a power supply. And it needs some cooling fans. And it needs a motherboard. And it needs system RAM. I thought that was obvious, and not under debate.
What we're talking about is where someone should spend their money. Should they spend it on getting the best CPU, or should they spend it on the best GPU? Where's the best bang for the buck? And clearly it seems that more and more apps, including games, are being designed and developed for GPU's, and CPU performance is less and less important. CPU's are designed for high speed serial processing, and some do that with relatively few cores/threads (like 8/16). GPU's are designed for massive parallel operations (like thousands), like is required for graphics and physics simulations. Like what we see in rendering and games (graphics and physics). I *think* that most developers are transitioning to develop their games to take advantage of the massive performance gains in GPU's over CPU's. Which is why I'm looking forward to VWD's transition from CPU to GPU, which is expected early this year. That's physics, just like in video games. Because GPU's are really good at simple parallel calculations of massive numbers of vertices or pixels that we see in video games and rendering. Clearly that's not true of every type of calculation, but for the graphics and physics and rendering stuff most of us use I think it's certainly the case.
BTW, another recent quote from pcgamer:
"The CPU was once the most important component in your PC. It was responsible for nearly everything going on inside the big box sitting on your desk. These days, the CPU is still a critical component, but for gaming purposes nothing beats the graphics card. Meanwhile, the performance gap between the fastest and most expensive processors and those that are 'good enough' keeps shrinking, all while the pricing gap is increasing.
For PC gaming, this is actually great news. Most of us can get by just fine with a moderate processor. Core counts, cache sizes, and clock speeds continue to improve as the years roll by, but chances are if you have a desktop built any time in the past five years, it can play most games."
It has never been the most important component, despite what many claim. Why?
A PC is a synergy of components, all of which are required. Changing some components can have a greater affect on a PC's ability to perform certain actions, but it still needs all the components to both function and allow interaction with users.
Not the best analogy, but it is a bit like saying our brain is the most important, it may be what makes us what we are in many aspects, but remove other organs and we function less efficiently, remove some, and we die.
CPU functions have both been off-loaded to other components, and added to it; the Northbridge used to be a Motherboard function, but is now part of both AMD's and Intel's CPUs; whereas graphics were the purview of the CPU (now, they are provided elsewhere); Maths were once a seperate function, yet they form part of the CPU, and have for years; I expect functionality will both continue to evolve and move as the tech continues to develope.
How much difference does ram speed make? Is there a big difference between say 2400 and 2666 and 2800?
Keep in mind that, from a programming perspective, the way a CPU to GPU interaction occurs is basically the CPU prepares a task (say a render) and hands it off to the GPU to do that task. Why? Because the GPU is better at that task than the CPU. It's like an assistant, and it's programmed that way. The goal is to have minimum interaction between the GPU and CPU, because that interaction (over the PCI bus) takes a long time. So the goal is to hand off as much of the task as possible from the CPU to GPU, and the CPU basically says "here, go do this". Once it's handed off, the goal is to have the CPU out of the picture as much as possible. So if you really have a GPU-optimized task, and you program it perfectly, the CPU performance will be somewhat irrelevant.
So the best application is where the CPU performance is somewhat irrelevant, because the GPU is off doing everything lightning fast in parallel, and not even talking to the CPU. The challenge is that developers have to learn CUDA or whatever, and then re-write their code to use the GPU, and do it in a way that's optimzed for the GPU. Which takes time and resources.
Something around zero difference. Plus or minus...
Depends on what exactly; generally not a great deal in what you ask about specifically. However, the timings can affect that, and also some games respond better than others.
There are a huge number of considerations, and all can have various affects on your PC's performance. If you are primarily interested in improving rendering performance, then CPU, GPU and RAM will have the most affect. IRAY needs a Nvidia GPU (and specific ones), but due to the nature of graphics cards, some planning for when a scene drops is worth doing - how much depends on budget and your consideration of how often this is likely to occur. Loop-jumping, and planning of the render can reduce it, but until graphics cards have far more than they currently have, it can not be eliminated.
Get higher if you can, as long as your MB supports it; I'd sooner have more slightly slower RAM.
On a side note, how do you set it up so DS uses one graphics card and your monitor etc uses the CPU graphics? And does doing that make it so games use the built-in and not the 'good' card? Or is it only dedicated for DS when you are using DS?
If you go into Render Settings tab you can select which devices are used, as in the image below. I assume it will show your onboard graphics in the same way.
Thanks!
Umm... the computer I'm doing PA work on, including the renders for promo images for my brokered items... is ancient.
You really don't need a behemoth to just use DS, it just makes it faster. :D
To be exact: A 4 core i5 2320 with 3.0 ghz proccessor... 16gb DDR3 Ram... a GTX-960 vid card with 2GB Vram... a 1 tb Western Digital primary HD with about 50k powered-on hours... two 1tb Western Digital secondaries with more than 70k powered on hours... and everything except the video card was middle of the road 7 years ago when I got it (the secondary HD's were actually 2 yrs older than the computer). :P
And everything in my store here was made on that artifact. :D
...based on the price per GB when I built my system, 64 GB would have cost just over 2,000$ back then (and that's for DDR3).
..so does that sidestep the memory reserving of W10? I thought it had to be done with how the card was hooked up to the MB and displays
I'm not convinced that "memory reserving" is even a real issue. A post in the Geforce forums says the issue is "an artifact of ignorance and misreporting by 32 bit integer calculations". There are reports on the web from years ago, but I haven't found much recently. Though I haven't really researched it. And here's what Intel says:
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000020962/graphics-drivers.html
But knowing the hype and hysteria that seems to pervade the tech community, I wouldn't be surprised if it was just another myth that nobody really understands.
And by the way, if you've ever searched the web for references to windows 10 reserving GPU VRAM, they generally point back to the DAZ forums. Hmmm.....
...I noticed that (Daz froum references), however did find a couple Nvidia forums where it was discussed as well as the Octane forum, one of the pro CG forums and on the MS forums where it was stated by an MS rep that this cannot be changed.
For gaming, I'm looking at your post that mentions some games you play, and they are not very demanding. Skyrim can get demanding if you go crazy with modding, but in general none of those are asking for the best. I suppose Fallout 4 would be the most demanding game there. So if you are looking at gaming as a secondary thing, you do not need to be too concerned about getting the best of anything.
But Iray is a different beast. Iray will take anything you throw at it. It will run every CPU core and CUDA core it can if it allow it to. So for Iray, there is literally no limit. But there is one thing that matters most...the GPU. You cannot render any faster than your GPU allows you to. It doesn't matter what CPU you have, your RAM or harddrives, nope...it is all about the GPU, period. So the biggest part of your investment should be in the GPU. Your CPU, RAM, harddrives, these are all less important. While each can give a boost in some areas, none pack the punch of raw render speed that a good GPU will offer.
I highly recommend looking at the Iray benchmark thread.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/53771/iray-starter-scene-post-your-benchmarks
Here you will get a general idea of render speeds. It is very important to note that the benchmark scene used is super duper small. Real world render times are likely to be several factors higher, and in general these scale accordingly. A 1060 is not terrible, and obviously a massive leap from what you have. But if you can get something better, go for it.
Do not be concerned about RAM speed, it is largely marketing. In real world it makes very little difference, and very high speeds can be unstable.
The power supply is the beating heart of your machine. You would not abuse your heart, would you? There are several things to look at, and it depends on what you are doing. If you are planning on using multiple GPUs, you want more than 500 Watts. While power supply degrading is mostly myth, you still don't want to be just barely clearing your requirements. You need to be sure the PSU has a high enough 12 Volt rail for each GPU. Some 500 Watt PSU's might lack secondary outputs for multiple GPUs.
More importantly, you want a good QUALITY PSU. This is more important than its wattage. A good PSU will have over volt protections and other features. What a good PSU does is regulate the voltage that goes into a PC. A bad PSU may not. What does that mean? It goes back to how computers actually function. All data is a series of 1's and 0's. But what exactly is a 1 and a 0??? A computer reads these as high and low. That's it. So you need a very stable supply of electricity in order to ensure this. But the power coming from your wall outlet is not that stable! It fluctuates wildly, because it is AC, Alternating Current. Power supplies take this and convert it to DC, Direct Current. If a PSU is not built well, it can allow spikes and sags in the electricity to get through. So when the computer is running calculations, a sudden spike might be read as a high, which is a 1...even if the true calculation was supposed to be a 0. That is bad! While modern equipment has various features built in to watch for variables that are not right, it is not full proof. Bad electricity can lead directly to bad data. Bad data leads to errors and all sorts of problems. Bad power supplies can also kill your other very expensive PC parts. So yeah, it is bad. Don't skimp on the PSU.
So you want a quality PSU that has been reviewed to be sure it is good. Some PSU's straight up lie about their features, and a review can take apart the PSU and varify it is what it is claimed to be.
Hard drives...you do not need to buy one huge hard drive. You can use multiple drives to game from. I have games spread out over several drives. I have a 500 GB SSD as my main drive. A SSD is great for your main drive because the OS will boot and run faster, and the programs you use most can be installed on it. Daz is installed on my main drive, but Daz content does not need to be on it. I have 2 larger externals for my Daz library and more games. I also have a second smaller SSD that is 250 GB. The games I play most are on my SSDs, and everything else is spread among the other drives I have. Some are internal and some are external. I think I have 5 or 6 drives in total. 2 are external. I back up my important stuff on one of my externals.
You can even use your current hard drive in your new PC if you wish, unless you are keeping the old PC around.
The motherboard will determine your upgrade path. So how much do you want now, and how much will be upgrading in the future? The mobo determines how many GPUs you can run at once if you desire more than one, as well as all the other components. Still, you do not need to go crazy here.
AMD is going to give you more bang for your buck. Older AMDs are truly inferior, but Ryzen is pretty legit, and will game just fine. While Ryzen is not quite as good at gaming as some Intel chips, it will be good enough for what you play. For rendering Iray, Ryzen should be better in most cases due to its core counts. While you want to avoid CPU only rendering if you can, in situations where there is no choice you will be happy you have Ryzen.
With the GPU market heavily inflated, if cash is tight, you could build a high core count Ryzen and still render much faster than you do now without even buying a GPU, or perhaps a cheap one to get by. Mining hasn't effected all GPUs, so you can still find some deals. Then when the GPU market finally stabilizes you can buy a flashy GPU to go crazy with.
One additional note, if your old PC is a laptop, which I think you said it was, you will also have the option of streaming your big PC to the laptop (or any smart device.) Some people forget about this option. You can run a remote desktop app and stream your big PC to your laptop, so you can be playing with Daz from any place in your home. Your big PC will be doing all the work, so the spec of the laptop is irrelevant. With this method, you do not need to worry about buying a beefy laptop for Daz, you can simply stream Daz to it instead!
Ultimately, you have a lot of choices and the decision is yours.
...very good points (several of which I was trying to make, but didn't come off as concise).
Yeah if you can swing the 8 core Ryzen 1700 (3.0 GHz base clock) or Threadripper 1900x (3.8 GHz base clock), that puts you miles ahead of the 7700K for CPU rendering until prices fall back to earth for GPU cards. The Ryzen 1700 is currently available at Newegg for 289$ and the Threadripper 1900x at TeslaTronic for 449$.
I don't see why you quote a gamer and why you think that what a gamer has to say is anyhow relevant. For gaming, the GPU has always been the most important component ever since the Voodoo 3DFX, but only if you reduce the field to graphic rendering, which is it's job after all
What about AI ? For games where the AI is not important / non existant, OK, but otherwise the CPU will be able to do the job. Not the GPU
Ex for chess http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforum/topic_show.pl?tid=32317
GPU are not always the way to go. For video encoding, Nvidia abandonned it's Cuda encoder few years ago. And today, the best encoder is still the CPU
There are many fields where the GPU is not as efficient as a CPU
Because gamers don't care. Their gaming experience is not limited by the VRam