Is this powerful enough to render without GPU
Galaxy
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in The Commons
Or
Because this CPU eat my GPU budget.
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It's still not going to get anywhere near a nVidia RTX 2070 or even the prior generation of nVidia GPUs but if you have nominal patience it will do CPU renders in a reasonable number of hours. Also, it will be much better at dForce simulations.
Any current CPU is powerful enough to render Iray (though you wouldn't get the denoiser).
My savaings around $2-3 day for upgrade and content, looks like I need to wait around 1 year if I want both CPU and GPU or if my current pc stop working suddenly whichever is earlier.
I need GPU for speed.
Then average GPUs are better than high end CPU.
Denoiser is one of my favourite feature, it cuts time.
Conclusion: GPU is winner.
Is normal $100 CPUs are enough with an entry level RTX GPU?
Can you only use the de-noiser when you are using a GPU to render?
So it depends on your priorities and where you need the performance. If you need CPU power for apps that require it, then go for CPU. If Iray performance is most important to you, it will be ok in most instances to pair a mediocre CPU with a decent GPU.
I use a first gen Threadripper: 1950x.
Renders on my 980ti are about 3 times quicker than the Threadripper. I don't, however, have issues when it uses the CPU of it failing due to RAM :D - and it renders in a reasonable timeframe.
I also exclude a couple of threads from the render when the CPU is being used so I can continue to use the Comp.
I went threadripper instead of nvidia when I was considering what to do. I feel it gives me better value as the CPU can always render - the same can't be said about a graphics card. I don't have to jump through loops to get it to fit on the CPU either.
I've been known to have 3 renders going too, 980ti, 970 and the CPU. Just for the giggles really, but it was useable. Having a render running and using the CPU / 980ti as a test renderer on something else is something I do reasonably often.
The Iray in built denoiser, yes, but there are external software denoisers available if you have no GPU.
See this thread:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/316206/denoise-renders-and-save-a-lot-of-time-nvidia-not-reqd
Well I dropped the idea of Threadripper, it also require high cost motherboard I just found.
Very helpful information. Though I need multitasking too (not while rendering).
This is really annoying. I do have a GPU but it only has 4GB, and when I run out of GPU RAM that is when I most need the de-noiser
I am buying at AMD Ryzen 7 2700 which has 8 cores and 16 threads for about $175 soon and in my searches and evaluations (of which I've done a lot in the last 2 weeks) that's as good as you'll get "cheap" is less than $200 if that is your "cheap" threshold.
8/16 core CPU should do the same work not quite twice as fast as a 4/8 core CPU. The speed of each CPU core hasn't increased that greatly since the intel i Core line came out.
You could probably run Daz on even a 4 core CPU. it might not be snappy in some instances, and it would be terrible at 3DL, but it would work.
If you're looking for the cheapest reasonable system to add a GPU to I'd lean toward a R5 1600, available for $100 right now. Paired with a cheap B350 MoBo that should be a very decent system for running DS. Add in the best GPU you can afford and it should be a very good render rig.
"a 4 core CPU ... would be terrible at 3DL"
I'm not certain that came across as you intended, Ken. If you meant that with only four cores, reserving cores for other tasks would slow things down compared to a processor with more, then probably. Like most users here I suspect, all my PCs are quad cores and I routinely use 3Delight, and it is not terrible. Of course, a lot depends upon the scene. With 3DL a scene with lots of transmaps will render slowly, for example, no matter how many CPU cores there are. Personally, I tend to be philosophical about that: if the render is worth doing, it is worth waiting for, if necessary.
P.S.: As everyone doubtlessly knows, not all CPUs are created equal, and performance depends on more than just the number of cores, even for rendering.
Well, I have a 4 core 8 thread i7-3630QM from 2012 and in the 2 years I've had it it's getting noticeably slower. Since we know it's not the CPU and it's integrated GPU that's actually getting slower it must be then Windows 10, Unity 2019, DAZ Studio, and so on are using ever more resources. Note that I've clean installed my laptop at least 3 times in those 2 years so it's not registry bloat and those "Windows internal" things that is the cause.
Now I know the individual cores in these new CPUs are not significantly faster than the individual cores in my laptop but they are a little bit faster and when there are 8 of them which are all a little bit faster it is a big help with multi-threaded programs like Windows 10, DAZ Studio, Unity 2019, and so on.
There is actually a 1st generation 8 core 16 thread threadripper CPU that is going for only $149 now and a 12 core 24 thread threadripper CPU going for $199 but they use a different motherboard than the Ryzen CPU's AM4 motherboard. I'm not being a fanboy but Intel just isn't competing like they could pricewise because they have government and big business inertia keeping their sales and profit margins high. It's pretty clear Intel could do threadripper style 16 core and 32 core or so on CPUs for a long time via their Xeon CPUs and so on but didn't until AMD forced their hand.
On 25 Nov 2019 AMD will release the AM4 socket Ryzen 9 3950X for $749 that has 16 cores and 32 threads. And we know the 4th generation Zen Ryzen CPUs will use the AMD4 socket motherboards too. I think that makes it a safe bet that if you have an AMD4 motherboard now in the next two years you likely will be able to replace the Ryzen CPU in it for a new Ryzen CPU with 16 cores and 32 threads for about $200 or less.
That's very significant for anybody running any modern OS, DAZ Studio, Blender, and a whole lot of other multithreaded applications. Wow! I'd like to say I won't need or want to upgrade my CPU or GPU again but we know (or guess I supposed based on Unity, UE4, DAZ Studio and other 3D software capability trends) software will be designed to use all that extra capability and the only thing I have to say about that is that SW could only be like having a professional multimedia production studio on a simple desktop or laptop computer, but much, much better than what the big studios have now to work with, to motivate me (and probably most other consumers) to upgrade from their 16 core / 32 thread AMD COUs combined with Navi20 or nVidia Ampere GPUs. It's a huge hobby market that is likely to grow even more with the right capabilities and flexibilities added to it.