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cpu for rendering

If you're going to overclock then the choice is easy:

Core i5-4670K - £190

and then get the best LGA1150/Z87 chipset motherboard you can afford with whatever is remaining.

The only Xeon's which are good value for money are the 8 threaded ones, that's because the equivalent desktop i7's are usually over £250.

A Haswell i5-4670K overclocked is probably the best value for money chip you can buy.
 
mmj_uk said:
If you're going to overclock then the choice is easy:

Core i5-4670K - £190

and then get the best LGA1150/Z87 chipset motherboard you can afford with whatever is remaining.

The only Xeon's which are good value for money are the 8 threaded ones, that's because the equivalent desktop i7's are usually over £250.

A Haswell i5-4670K overclocked is probably the best value for money chip you can buy.
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i see... makes sense. was looking at xeon e3-1225 V2 as well, and the only difference will be the cache (6mb in i5 vs 8mb in xeon). how much difference will that actually make (in terms of render times)?
 
E3-1225 V2 is only 4 threads, it doesn't have Hyperthreading (8 threads).

There's no point in getting a 4 thread Xeon because like I said you might as well just buy an i5 4670K, the difference the 2MB L3 cache makes is negligible and will be easily offset by the difference in clockspeed.

Hyperthreading has the bigger impact on performance but only in certain tasks, it generally gives about 10-15% more performance in things like render times but an i5 4670K overclocked to 4ghz or more will be faster than an un-overclocked Hyperthreaded chip.

It goes like this:
i7 overclocked (8 thread) > i5 overclocked (4 thread) > stock i7/Xeon (8 thread) > stock i5/Xeon (4 thread)

There's also generation just to confuse things further:
Haswell (3rd gen/Xeon V3) > Ivy Bridge (2nd gen/Xeon V2) > Sandy Bridge (1st gen/Xeon V1)
 
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mmj_uk said:
E3-1225 V2 is only 4 threads, it doesn't have Hyperthreading (8 threads).

There's no point in getting a 4 thread Xeon because like I said you might as well just buy an i5 4670K, the difference the 2MB L3 cache makes is negligible and will be easily offset by the difference in clockspeed.

Hyperthreading has the bigger impact on performance but only in certain tasks, it generally gives about 10-15% more performance in things like render times but an i5 4670K overclocked to 4ghz or more will be faster than an un-overclocked Hyperthreaded chip.

It goes like this:
i7 overclocked (8 thread) > i5 overclocked (4 thread) > stock i7/Xeon (8 thread) > stock i5/Xeon (4 thread)

There's also generation just to confuse things further:
Haswell (3rd gen/Xeon V3) > Ivy Bridge (2nd gen/Xeon V2) > Sandy Bridge (1st gen/Xeon V1)
Click to expand...

thanks for that! i'll probably go with the i5 4670K then, and overclock it.

out of interest, how's this for a motherboard?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gigabyte-Mo...44942&sr=1-7&keywords=socket+1150+motherboard
 
It looks awesome if your budget allows but I've no experience with it, you could probably get away with less if money is tight.

You'd be best off having a look around in the Haswell overclocking thread and seeing what other Haswell owners think of their motherboards.
 
mmj_uk said:
It looks awesome if your budget allows but I've no experience with it, you could probably get away with less if money is tight.

You'd be best off having a look around in the Haswell overclocking thread and seeing what other Haswell owners think of their motherboards.
Click to expand...

ok, thanks for the advice. much appreciated
 
gary996 said:
If you need many cores then wouldn't one of the AMD CPU's be better?
The 8350 is a good price.
Click to expand...

Their price is good, but their performance even when 8 cores are going isn't as good as the 4770K in the vast majority of situations.

@ OP, that's a lovely board, it really does feel quite the piece, I had one, but my experience doesn't count as my board had faulty RAM slots, but it was quite a board.
 
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well finding out that the motherboard i chose before is a little too expensive, i've selected two alternatives:

1. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gryphon-Z87...r1&keywords=Asus+TUF+Series+GRYPHON+Z87+Intel

2. http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-571-AS

what's the verdict on these, and which one do you think would be better?

also, as for the asus Gryphon, on amazon it says uATX, but on scan uk it says MicroATX. which one is it, becuase if uATX is correct, my case won't support it.
 
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