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i7 980x for rendering or something else?

sparkyb

sparkyb

sparkyb

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Joined
20 Nov 2005
Posts
209
Hi,

Please can you help me?

I am looking to buy a fast CPU for 3D modelling which will reduce render times;

This will be my first PC build and is for my hobby of 3D modelling. Initially I was looking at a dual Xeon set up, but this become very expensive for fairly low speed Xeon’s.

So I am now thinking about either the i7 980x or a lower spec i7. I am not planning on over locking straight away but will do so eventually. Please can you tell me if I will see much of a speed difference with the i7 980x over a lower spec i7 or even a Xeon. Or if you think something else would be more suitable?

Thank you
 
About £1800 max, cheaper if possible!

As for my budget i am not going to use a quadro card as this has no benefit for rendering in Cinema 4D as far as i am aware. Thus this will free up quite a bit for other components
 
The 3D program is Cinema 4D. I have seen some benchmarks for a few PC set ups, but they seem to vary so much depending on graphics cards and overclocked / not overclocked CPU types. So i wasnt sure and wanted to keep it simple on my first build unitil i get a bit more confident to overclock later on.
 
The i930 does seem more sensible for value for money - although Praxxtorcruel did mention earlier that there would be an improvement from a i930 to a i980x. Would this be though overclocking or not?
 
Hi sparkyb! Welcome to the forums :)

Few questions;

• Are you needing an OS in this budget?
• Are you needing a monitor in this budget?
• Are you needing any peripherals in this budget?

I've conjured up a 980x build for you, assuming you don't need any of the above.



The power supply selected should provide ample headroom for the future if you decided to chuck in another 5750 for Crossfire, and will also leave enough headroom for your days ahead of dabbling in overclocking.

I chose the SSD as a boot priority disk, this coupled with the 980x you should have a soaring PC in every task you could imagine.

As for the case, you could swap this out if you don't like it. Lian Li cases are nice to work with, and provide good airflow.

You may also need to look at aftermarket cooling for the CPU as I've heard that the stock Intel heatsink & fan are a little loud.
 
Hi Gary and infernox,

thank you for the help.

I am ok for a monitor as i have a HP LP2475w 24". But as for the rest i need the lot! I am currently using a Packard Bell P4 2.53ghz, 512mb RAM, Nvidia MX440 64mb video card and XP home (SP2). I have had it for ages and it just about copes with my 3D and the video card - but only if i dont render!

Thats a good list, thank you:


Graphics card: Not so sure about the ATI card as people have had problems using them in Cinema 4D. I will go with an Nvidia but not aQuadro.

RAM: i think 12gb might be best for textures.

OS: 64bit version (vista has had some problems with C4D).

Case: I was looking at the case you have suggested, but have seen the Lian Li PC-A77F. The price is ok for me but is this case overkill as its quite big? i am also trying to find a review for the PC-A77f - do you know anything about it?

Thank you
 
Id still go with 2 boxes, 1 main box and a renderbox...send the scene to the 2nd box for rendering while you keep on using the main one (or render on both and go for a cup of tea).
 
Thats a really good idea and have not thought about building it this way. But for me, i think a single PC would be more suitable as i have limited desk space.
 
Hi Mate,

As other have mentioned a small render farm might give you more bang for your buck, with the downside of additional space taken and power etc.

You will notice a fairly considerable improvement with the 6 core i7 980x, not quite the 50% extra you might expect over a quad core i7 of similar clock speed but definately worth while on the performance front (but for a massive price premium!).

If your current machine is a P4 2.64ghz just jumping from that to a stock low end i7 like the 920 or 930 will give you a massive performance boost. If you get it overclocked to 4Ghz or better the difference will be astounding!

I'll tell you what, if you run the cinebench benchmark on your current system, I'm sure many of us on here will be happy to do the same and give you comparative values?

My main rig for instance is a core i7 920 OC'd to 4.2ghz with 6Gb RAM running ATI radeon 4870x2 gfx. I can't remember off my head what mark it gets in cinebench, but I'll happily run it for you when I'm back home tommorrow.

If it were my choice, I'd probably plump for a heavily overclocked low end i7 as I just wouldn't be able to justify the extra cost of the 6 core. Then spen the extra money on other things!

E-I
 
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Hi E-I

Thanks for the help I really appreciate it.

Below are my results from Cinebench. The motorbike was rendered out at 800x600 RGB 8bit, but my screen is set to 1920x1200 RGB 32bit – I didn’t fill out theses parts in the results as I wasn’t sure which one to use

CINEBENCH R10
****************************************************

Tester :

Processor : Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.53GHz
MHz :
Number of CPUs : 1
Operating System : WINDOWS 32 BIT 5.1.2600

Graphics Card : GeForce4 MX 440/AGP/SSE2
Resolution : <fill this out>
Color Depth : <fill this out>

****************************************************

Rendering (Single CPU): 1280 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): --- CB-CPU


Shading (OpenGL Standard) : 1007 CB-GFX


****************************************************

It does seem more sensible to go for a cheaper i7 and then spend more on the RAM as i noticed that this was quite expensive.

Originally I was looking at a low spec HP Xeon workstation, but for the price it was a waste of money. I then read the April 2010 edition of Custom PC mag (am I allowed to say that here!?) about building a graphics rig. Which hinted about the 6 core i7 and so I decided on this. But the magazine chose to use a single Xeon.

I don’t think I will overclock straight away and so I need a fast CPU out of the box. To be perfectly honest I am unsure and a bit confused in what to buy. Briefly going back, do you think a single Xeon would be any good? The magazine used a W3520 as it was a direct comparison to the i7 920, but better for workstation use. Are there any benefits from using a Xeon instead.
 
Hi There,

My version of cinebench is 11.5 so I'm not sure our scores will be comparable?

Anyway scores from 11.5 (64bit version) are:

Open GL 42.13 fps
CPU 7.15 points

I'll have a look online for version 10 of cinebench and run that also.

On the Xeon front by the way, I'd suggest that a single xeon would probably be worse than a single normal i7 cpu in most cases. The Xeons are optimised for server tasks and even though they are used in big 3D workstations etc, the only real advantage is the ability to have multiple physical CPUs. So you could have the equivelent of a pair of i7 980x CPUs on a dual socket motherboard giving you 12 actual cores with 24 threads. The downsides are that typically the xeon based motherboards don't really have any overclocking ability (with the exception of the Intel Skulltrail mboard). If you went dual xeon motherboard and CPU's I'd suggest you'd be paying twice the price of an equivelent single socket solution, that when overclocked wont be far behind in performance terms. Again, I think you'd pay a premium and not see a performance advantage comparable to the extra cost.

I'd suggest checking out the OCUK pre overcloked bundles. I'll post a link to some examples in my next post.

Best,

E-I
 
Got a copy of cinebench 10 results below.

CINEBENCH R10
****************************************************

Tester :

Processor : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz
MHz : 4200
Number of CPUs : 8
Operating System : WINDOWS 64 BIT 6.1.7600

Graphics Card : ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2
Resolution : <fill this out>
Color Depth : <fill this out>

****************************************************

Rendering (Single CPU): 6125 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 23255 CB-CPU

Multiprocessor Speedup: 3.80

Shading (OpenGL Standard) : 10522 CB-GFX


****************************************************
 
Check out this pre-overclocked bundle.

Theres several options for i7 based pre-overclocked bundles or full systems. SO you get the performance boost of overclocking thats already been done and tested by those lovely people at OCUK. Lots of bang per buck!

By the way I'm not sure the cinebench 10 benchmark is quite as representative of the available performance of the i7 overclocked. The multi cpu test gets rendered so quickly I don't think it really gets going properly before its finished.

E-I
 
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Thank you for posting Cinebench results and links PC bundles.

After what you mentioned i think the Xeon route for me wont be suitable, the i7980x is definately better.

To be honest i am quite looking forward to building it myself, my first PC was an Packard Bell that was brilliant for upgrades - constantly enjoyed fiddling about with that. But my second Packard Bell was so limited and i havent upgraded at all. The only thing i am worried about is fitting the CPU, so i will have to do my research first and take my time!

I noticed on another post that the i7 990x will be out soon and a "sandybridge?". One comment mentioned it would be mad to purchase an i7 980x at the minute - i appreciate that technology moves quickly; but will i be stupid to purchase soon, which will probably be just before my holiday in August so that i can start building?
 
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