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Been offered some CPUs... not sure what to do.

drakioned

drakioned

drakioned

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Hi all,

I'm currently running a Xeon E3-1230v3 (basically a i7-4770), 8gb DDR3-2400, and a GTX 780 as a gaming machine.

I've been offered a pair of Xeon X5690s (Westmere @ 3.46ghz with 6 cores) and I can find a workstation that can take them for about £500.

i.e. I'd spend £500 and end up with 2x Xeon X5690, 24gb DDR3-1066, and the GTX 780.

Is this worth doing? I get that the X5690s probably wouldn't speed up games any, but is it likely that everything else would generally get faster that it'd make sense to have it as a main rig?
 
If by "been offered" you mean for free, then 24 threads of Westmere-EP power for £500 sounds good to me! :p

In seriousness though, what do you use your PC for?
 
Gaming... I'm not sure that the 24 slower threads would get me any speed up over my 8 faster threads that I have at the moment.
 
almighty15 said:
Do you have the none 'K' 4770?

If you do I would consider moving, if you have an unlocked 4770k then keep that.
Click to expand...

Seriously? I sometimes wonder if people even read the first sentence of the OP.

This is one of those times. :p
 
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I don't think a pair of xeons will help much in gaming, and dual socket motherboards cost a fortune. I would love such a system though for 3d rendering.
 
drakioned said:
Yes, I am getting the CPUs for free, but I still need to buy something to plug it into.
Click to expand...

If you go to a certain site that auctions things and type in Dell Precision T5500 barebones then you can find what you are looking for, sans any ram (and you need to use ECC) for £180 delivered. You will need to purchase the second CPU module, which costs around £70 too.

I've just ordered one for my Westmere-EP hex core.
 
drakioned said:
I thought 3D rendering was mostly GPU based these days?

I'm still at a loss as to what to do.
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No, that's very far from true.
90 % of professional rendering is still done on CPU.

Every GPU render engine still has major limitations : the main being fitting the scene in GPU memory. Many lack full multi-pass, many lack displacement, some lack SSS. As GPUs are harder to program they always lag behind the CPU renderers in features. They fall down in interior scenes with many lights.

A list of some of the biggest render engines for production might include (but not limited to): Arnold Render, V Ray, Pixar Renderman, Mental Ray, Maxwell render, Cinema 4D render, Mantra, Modo.

About half of these feature a GPU renderer as well or some GPU acceleration but generally used for fast preview/ supporting role, less often for final production render.

Probably the GPU render with most use is Octane due to low price & good integration in a very wide variety of software - but it is used regularly for just a narrow range of applications : Product visualisation, (some) arch-vis, hobbyists. Movie use is about 0%, TV use nearly 0% because of the limitations.

So CPU is still king & will be for the foreseeable future but GPU will play a supporting role.

Probably no one cares, I'm just into this stuff.
 
Quixote said:
About half of these feature a GPU renderer as well or some GPU acceleration but generally used for fast preview/ supporting role, less often for final production render.
Click to expand...

Can't remember off hand which movie it was but I remember (PR stuff from nVidia) they were using an nVidia GPU farm for previewing as it could do fast approximate rendering of the final scene far faster and closer to the final scene than the CPU setup could for previewing - but the CPU setup for the production renders due to the above mentioned limitations. It saved them a lot of time and effort however as they could get a better idea of the final scene faster than previewing via the CPU.
 
Rroff said:
Can't remember off hand which movie it was but I remember (PR stuff from nVidia) they were using an nVidia GPU farm for previewing as it could do fast approximate rendering of the final scene far faster and closer to the final scene than the CPU setup could for previewing - but the CPU setup for the production renders due to the above mentioned limitations. It saved them a lot of time and effort however as they could get a better idea of the final scene faster than previewing via the CPU.
Click to expand...

Yeah I think that's mostly how I-Ray (In Mental Ray) & V-Ray RT (in VRay) are used in practice, or certainly for bigger projects. It helps that they can share many materials with their bigger brothers.
Maxwell, on the other hand doesn't render with GPU but has integrated GPU acceleration for multi-light, which is like interactive changing of certain render settings with extra data embedded in the render.
 
Quixote said:
No, that's very far from true.
90 % of professional rendering is still done on CPU.

Every GPU render engine still has major limitations : the main being fitting the scene in GPU memory. Many lack full multi-pass, many lack displacement, some lack SSS. As GPUs are harder to program they always lag behind the CPU renderers in features. They fall down in interior scenes with many lights.

A list of some of the biggest render engines for production might include (but not limited to): Arnold Render, V Ray, Pixar Renderman, Mental Ray, Maxwell render, Cinema 4D render, Mantra, Modo.

About half of these feature a GPU renderer as well or some GPU acceleration but generally used for fast preview/ supporting role, less often for final production render.

Probably the GPU render with most use is Octane due to low price & good integration in a very wide variety of software - but it is used regularly for just a narrow range of applications : Product visualisation, (some) arch-vis, hobbyists. Movie use is about 0%, TV use nearly 0% because of the limitations.

So CPU is still king & will be for the foreseeable future but GPU will play a supporting role.

Probably no one cares, I'm just into this stuff.
Click to expand...

Not to derail the thread but I wonder why there isn't a bittorrent way of mass rendering for everyone who needs to render.
 
Mint_Sauce said:
Not to derail the thread but I wonder why there isn't a bittorrent way of mass rendering for everyone who needs to render.
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There are plenty of farms you can rent to render things out, however they obviously charge a fair amount as unlike bittorrent you need decent hardware to render complex 3D scenes at a decent rate.

If you mean why don't they have a system literally like bittorrent where anyone who connects would render via peer to peer that would be because it would be massively inefficient for all involved - you may have to download GB's and GB's of data just to render a single frame, and the random mix of hardware you'd get would mean render time would be all over the place.
 
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Rhodri said:
There are plenty of farms you can rent to render things out, however they obviously charge a fair amount as unlike bittorrent you need decent hardware to render complex 3D scenes at a decent rate.

If you mean why don't they have a system literally like bittorrent where anyone who connects would render via peer to peer that would be because it would be massively inefficient for all involved - you may have to download GB's and GB's of data just to render a single frame, and the random mix of hardware you'd get would mean render time would be all over the place.
Click to expand...

Apart from internet transfer of assets being a massive bottleneck, you have the even more important issue of data security. Almost no client for a professional job would allow the scene files & assets for the job distributed to be a bunch of random internet users months before the release of the final program/ advert/ film.

Online render farms on the other hand, are very commonly used - they are very good value for what they offer, many are long -established, run by experts in the field & your data will be safe with them. They also offer interfaces & user help to make the process pretty hassle free. A good combo for lone artists & small companies, is a handlful of dedicated render machines + the workstations overnight + online farms for big jobs.
 
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