Computer Specs for 3D rendering.

Dragonraw22

Dragonraw22

Dragonraw22

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Joined
19 Aug 2012
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7
I'm looking to upgrade my PC for my university course, I do Computer games animation and am in my final year, so the quality of my work needs to be excellent, the problem is my computer right now is lacking processing, I can't even play games recently without them lagging.

I will be doing cloth dynamics, hair and fur and particle dynamics within my animation. I know that i would need more money but my budget right now is about £500. Here are some of the components that I have looked at. The other question is, can I power all of this with a 650w power supply?

Your help is greatly appreciated! =D

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-3770K 3.50GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £269.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £84.98
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Quad Channel Kit (BLS4CP4G3D1609DS1S00BEU) £79.99
1 x Corsair A50 High-Performance CPU Cooler (Socket AM2/AM3/LGA775/LGA1155/LGA1156/LGA1366) £25.99
Total : £472.36 (includes shipping : £9.50).

 
Yes 500W will do that with any single GPU.

What GPU are you using? may be worth upgrading that also depending on what you have for a more balanced final rig.

Also this ram will give you the same spec for less and 2 more dimms free for a future upgrade to 32Gb if you decide you need it in the future


YOUR BASKET
1 x TeamGroup Elite 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED316G1600HC11DC) £59.99
Total : £68.69 (includes shipping : £7.25).

 
Ah, thank you for your reply, Currently I cannot afford a new GPU but i will be able to get one in a month or two. Having said that what graphic card would you recommend? Mine right now is a Radeon HD 4870.
 
Needs more ram, and preferably more processing power.
I'd get a cooler and overclock if thats what you are sticking with.

Anything to do with serious 3d rendering, it's more processing power, more ram.
You could look into render farm sharing for putting together those big projects, although I don't know how intense a uni course is.
 
Sorry for the late reply, I needed the part asap, so I brought some of the stuff that was recommended and the cooler so i can overclock the system. I also have some more money to spend on my PC, so can anyone recommend a graphics card? And would a SSHD be of any use?
 
Dragonraw22 said:
Sorry for the late reply, I needed the part asap, so I brought some of the stuff that was recommended and the cooler so i can overclock the system. I also have some more money to spend on my PC, so can anyone recommend a graphics card? And would a SSHD be of any use?
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What's your budget?
 
Dragonraw22 said:
I would like to spend £150 or less ideally, but it all depends.
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Is that for both a graphics card and SSD? If you want a decent pair I would get the below but it is a touch into £250. :o SSDs are one of the best upgrades these days for PCs, it makes Windows fly in terms of general usage, improves loading times for games etc and I presume it would help your rendering programs feel a bit more snappier when using it in general. The graphics card is a decent card that could play all of the latest games, not necessarily at max/ultra settings but at high settings at least. Guru3D have a review on the card here.

YOUR BASKET
1 x HIS HD 7850 IceQ X 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (H785QN2G2M) w/ Nexuiz & Dirt Showdown PC Games £164.99
1 x Samsung 128GB SSD 830 Desktop Series SATA 6Gb/s KIT with Norton Ghost - (MZ-7PC128D/EU) £89.99
Total : £254.98 (includes shipping : FREE).

 
Yeah the price is a little painful to look at, I also hear that nvidia is better at 3D rendering. I am defiently looking at the SSHD, but the GPU is a little pricey with the SSHD.
 
Thanks for all of your help guys, my brother has decided he wants a new GPU so he is selling me his and he wants some upgrade advise.

He will be going from a GTX 460 2048mb overclocked edition (I think), What would be the best card to get for a massive improvement in games. He wants to go NVidia as he has 3d vision.

He doesn't want to spend loads but is willing to if it is worth the money and also is going to last for quite a while. 200 -300 is the most he wants to go.

He only games on 1680x1050 but again 3d will be used. Thanks
 
Dragonraw22 said:
I also hear that nvidia is better at 3D rendering.
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That is correct sir, CUDA cores in Nvidia gaming cards help a lot with 3D modelling.

Been doing a lot of 3D stuff on my GTX 570 OC. It is very good, also I had the luxury to compare its perfomance with Quadro 4000.
From personal observations: I've noticed the difference only in how quick model picture re-draws on the screen in wireframe mode with big models/scenes. And it was a matter of seconds on models I worked with, as Quadro card calculates and outputs results to the screen a bit quicker. Also it wins you a few minutes in the actual rendering stage. Downside is quadro sucks for gaming.

If you choose gaming Nvidia card, just make sure you have 2GB VRAM on it for textures, that will be plenty for learning and playing around with high quality textures. You can follow SheepBeasts advice and look for GTX 670 it will deliver gaming and comfortable 3D development.

SSD disks are nice, but after reading a lot I decided not worth the money yet. 256-512GB is not enough for the stuff I do, I need 1TB+, so my 7200rpm SATA III still going to do the job. I will go for SSD when the price for 1TB SSD drops to what now 512GB costs (£500-£600).
 
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If you're going to be rendering animations or even large complex stills then you definitely need a CPU cooler because your processor will be running flat out for hours on end, longer for a sizeable animation. I use a Gelid Tranquillo which is very quiet and keeps the temps low and the Cooler Master 612 linked above is probably even better.
For presentation quality renders the only thing that matters is the CPU as that is what will do the rendering not the graphics card. CUDA cores only make a difference if your software uses them, most software doesn't.
 
Most rendering software uses those 2-8 cores, but doesn't bother parallel processing on those 1000-2000 stream processors? Madness.

Quadro cards are basically consumer cards with different firmware on, graphics cards make a huge difference. More so than overclocking the CPU by 5% extra and spending £50 more on a cooler. 3770k will easily do 4.2ghz on stock Intel cooler.
 
RedToasty said:
Most rendering software uses those 2-8 cores, but doesn't bother parallel processing on those 1000-2000 stream processors? Madness.
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i dont think its so much choice as limitations of the hardware, most render engines wont leverage cuda etc as your average scene with all its geometry and textures etc wont fit within the vram of your average 3d card. I like the idea of amd's apu's and where they are going with both the cpu and gpu being able to access the same memory, its changing thats for sure but it will take a while. Meantime cpu is still king for 3d rendering.
 
Quadro cards can improve the display in the viewports and may improve on screen real time display but they have no effect on rendering whatsoever. They also only make these improvements to a very narrow selection of programs, Auto-Cad, 3DS MAX and Maya mostly, though there may be others with lesser coverage. They are basically the same as the consumer cards they are based on but may have some features enabled in the firmware and drivers that are disabled in the consumer cards. Its usually a trade off though as the extra features usually come at the expense of performance in everything else except the program the driver is written for. A lot of professionals these days just use good gaming cards because the overall benefits are greater.

As for the 3770k doing 4.2GHz on a stock cooler, then yes it will but is it really a good idea to run the processor at 100% for many hours at a time with no extra cooling for the sake of £25? When rendering @4.2GHz the Gelid reduced my maximum temperatures from 70C+ to 50C, which I call £25 well spent.
 
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