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3D rendering benchmarks?

Steve.m

Steve.m

Steve.m

Associate
Joined
15 Jul 2010
Posts
72
Hello everyone

Some time ago I was going to upgrade/purchase an i5 build, but due to health problems did not get around to it.
I am now trying to decide which direction to take.

First, to be clear. I do not do much gaming, the games I do play occasionally, well, I can play them OK on my trusty old q6600.

What I want is a good setup for my main hobby, which is 3d modeling/rendering/animation.
From the benchmarks I have found, it looks like I would be better to go with an i7 rather than an i5, however, I wanted to check/confirm that an i7 would be better than going down the AMD route with a Bulldozer FX-8150.
Are there any benchmarks for 3D rendering comparison of an i7 v FX-8150?
I have seen post concerning (possible) heat problems with an FX-8150, is that of major concern?

Thanks for your time if you can give me any info, and no, I am not trolling or looking to make any argument of AMD v Intel, I am just looking for solid info to help me decide.

Regards,

Stem
 
Hello,

Many thanks for the reply.

I do use various renderer's (depends on project), but usually still drop back to the open source renderer's, mainly Pov-ray / Luxrender, so the links you gave do give me good info, thanks.

"Ivy-Bridge"
I do lurk around the forum quite a bit, so have seen some info, but had not seen the part about the "performance per clock" boost.
Would you recommend my waiting for that processor? I am in no big rush to upgrade, as I would certainly prefer to get a new build a little later, rather than get one now, and then be kicking myself in a few weeks.

Thanks again for your time,

Regards,

- Stem
 
Hi cmndr_andi,

Many thanks again for the info. Although I would like to upgrade now, I can wait for a couple of weeks.

"GTX 570"
Nice price.
I will be considering a new Graphics card. I just need to see what the new build will cost and what cash I will have spare for a new GPU. (as, due to my not making a full upgrade for quite a long time, I will need just about everything apart from a monitor/keyboard/mouse)

Best Regards.

- Stem
 
Hi Quixote,

Many thanks for your reply.

For single core, yes, I had already decided on the i5/i7 route, but needed to consider multi-threading, and to see comparison. Mainly just to see as to what time is lost compared to any possible gain. I am now convinced to go with at least an i7.

"Luxrender GPU"
I currently use Blender for front-end to Luxrender 0.9, which unfortunately is having some issues with GPU on nVidia (does not work).
Using Blender 2.49 and luxrender 0.8, I only see my current GPU (GTX 460) using approx 30%, although, that may very well be a problem with bottleneck of my aging q6600.

My only other current front-end to Luxrender would be through C4D which I recently got through a side-grade, but I only currently see an exporter for 32 bit, which I am not totally convinced on using.

Regards,

- Stem
 
Hi Quixote,

"Octane render"
It is a nice renderer, (will it ever get out of beta?). The main problem for me with that, is that it uses the GPU memory for geometry/textures, so large scenes/textures can quickly consume resources.

"Lux render GPU benefits"
With it using openCL, and only using the GPU for ray calculations, it does add a good performance boosts. There is also the added benefit of it being able to work across a LAN using the CPU/GPU of other nodes.

There is also Yafaray, which is currently being further developed using openCL, where the GPU will be used for Photon Mapping. But have not looked at those experimental builds much yet.

"3930k with an LGA 2011 motherboard"
Now that would be nice. I think it may be out of my current price range, well, if I want to also get a new HD(probably an SSD) and the other bits'n'pieces for this build.

"Gigabyte Z68AP-D3"
Yes, I have seen a number of post recommending that board. I was a little dubious of it due to its price, thinking poor components etc, but I have been re-thinking.

Thanks for your help,

Regards,

- Stem
 
Hi embalse,

embalse said:
Gigabyte X79-UD5 Intel X79 (Socket 2011) DDR3 Motherboard and Intel Core i7-3930K 3.20GHz (Sandybridge-E) Socket LGA2011 Processor
Where PC's are concerned Rendering is all I care about so whilst expensive, with 6 cores it fits my requirements.
Click to expand...

It is something I have thought about, and although it is not something I have completely dismissed, I really have to think if it would be the best direction for me.
If I look at the cost of that CPU+motherboard = £680, that, with the other parts I will need, would take to around the £1100 mark, which is over what I was initially thinking (I was wanting to keep it under 1K). That would give me approx 40% more rendering power. (than current i7)
Now if I was going to spend over the budget, then I could also start thinking, rather than spend £680 on that CPU+motherboard, I could get 2 x i7 + 2 x gigabyte boards which would actually cost a little less, then I could purchase the other parts for the new build and strip down my old system for its parts. I would only have to purchase an extra DVD player / memory. That would give me a slave i7 rendering node, which would increase the rendering speed beyond that of the 3930K (or so I would think) for similar outlay.

I am still thinking about what to do. Nothing is set in stone in my mind, well, apart from the minimal CPU I want, which is the i7.

Regards,

- Stem
 
Hello Chaos,

I had seen some results for Blender cycles, but had not seen that page you linked to, showing all the result together. Many thanks for the link.

Even if I was to follow the path of going for a GPU rendering setup, I will still need a full system upgrade to get a motherboard capable of taking full advantage of a top end GPU.
I will have to re-check to see if I can add (or more to the point, want to add) more funds for the new build.

I also found the results interesting due to the difference in render times between Windoze and Linux. I have been looking at linux, but it tends to make my ears bleed when trying to add graphics drivers not currently in the repository (or more precise, it makes me bang my head against a wall, which then makes my ears bleed)

Regards,

- Stem
 
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