Have to agree with trigger. It would also help OP, if you can tell us exactly which software your friend will be using. That way we can spec you a system to suit.
Spec Me: FAST 3D Rendering Rigs (x2) £4.7K
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Have to agree with trigger. It would also help OP, if you can tell us exactly which software your friend will be using. That way we can spec you a system to suit.
If you are going to do this professionally, you do not want to overclock and live in a world of noise.
The xeon option is the most sensible, upgradeable if you start with one. The firepro 7900 may be too much, but depends on size of models and productivity (time).
2.5k is a reasonable price for a rendering workstation and yes you can spec from a CAD supplier catalogue.
The xeon option is the most sensible, upgradeable if you start with one. The firepro 7900 may be too much, but depends on size of models and productivity (time).
2.5k is a reasonable price for a rendering workstation and yes you can spec from a CAD supplier catalogue.
i think some are missing the point here, this isn't a home user who wishes to build himself or support it either, this is a business, they have all ready mentioned that speed / power is more important etc, so i spec water cooling and over clocking at source, water for less noise and pre built and over clocked for so much less agro and a warranty plus 2 years onsite support, no joe blogs coming round and scratching his head.
this must be worth more than the savings over value statement of build it yourself?
this must be worth more than the savings over value statement of build it yourself?
i would say an overclocked x79 with 3930k, and water cooling would be the way.
Something to consider is that these kind of programs arent completely multithreaded, and often the majority of the program outside the rendering function are single or lightl threaded. See the link below regarding autocad.
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=15224826&linkID=9240617
An overclocked 3930k will give the best overall experience, its fast for both single threaded, and multithreaded.
Something to consider is that these kind of programs arent completely multithreaded, and often the majority of the program outside the rendering function are single or lightl threaded. See the link below regarding autocad.
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=15224826&linkID=9240617
An overclocked 3930k will give the best overall experience, its fast for both single threaded, and multithreaded.
Thanks everyone for filling this thread with such great info. Very helpful. 
I was expecting this comment
I'm not exactly sure what software they are using, she is not the CAD person so she has been a bit vague despite my probing. Very interested to know if the software required will support CUDA, so I've asked her to come back to me with more info.
Also agree with the bigger HDD, 1TB fills up fast these days.
I will keep checking the thread and I'll bump in then I have more info.
I was expecting this comment
I'm not exactly sure what software they are using, she is not the CAD person so she has been a bit vague despite my probing. Very interested to know if the software required will support CUDA, so I've asked her to come back to me with more info.Also agree with the bigger HDD, 1TB fills up fast these days.
I will keep checking the thread and I'll bump in then I have more info.
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Overclocked 3930k is better than 2 xeons methinks.
build has been amended with Socket 2011 and i7-3820 as 3930k took it over budget
No offense, but I don't think anyone's taking your opinions in this thread particularly seriously.
Thanks everyone for filling this thread with such great info. Very helpful.
I was expecting this comment
Also agree with the bigger HDD, 1TB fills up fast these days.
I will keep checking the thread and I'll bump in then I have more info.
If they're using CUDA, avoid the GTX6 series, they'd be better off with older cards such as the GTX580.
If they're not using CUDA, it's probably still sensible to avoid the GTX6 series anyway, get something cheaper and put the money towards the RAM/CPU/Cooling areas.
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Give Zak (my son) a break.. He's just giving his slice..
Anyway, I think if your rendering the Firepro's or Quadro's have to take priority especially with the high budget. They are designed for rendering and CAD use, Yes they have a hefty price tag but they will be a lot faster at rendering these big complex models than most consumer gaming GPU's.
If i was to spend 2k+ on a PC i'd feel cheated if i was still on 1155.. Though im not sure the 3930k is the right way to go either, the 3820, while being simular to the 3700k just makes more sense to me, for this build.
YOUR BASKET
1 x EVGA SR-X Dual Socket (Socket 2011) Motherboard £559.99
2 x EVGA GeForce GTX 670 FTW 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £319.99 (£639.98)
1 x OCZ RevoDrive3 240GB PCI-E SSD - (RVD3-FHPX4-240G) £299.99
2 x Intel Core i7-3820 3.60GHz (Sandybridge-E) Socket LGA2011 Processor - OEM £224.99 (£449.98)
1 x Cubitek HTPX ICE Series Case - Black £199.99
1 x Seasonic X-Series 1050w '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £189.98
3 x Kingston HyperX Genesis 32GB (8x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Quad Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3K8/32GX) £179.99 (£539.97)
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £72.98
1 x Pioneer 24x Internal DVR-S20LBK DVD Rewriter including Labelflash - Retail £20.99
Total : £2,990.35 (includes shipping : £13.75).
A bit over budget and possibly overkill but would be a cracking system.
If I was you, I would take all the options and opinions with you and get some professional input. Of course there is better components out there for rendering and speccing from OC has its drawbacks I suppose...
Personally I would go for a Boxx system if it was in budget but they are the holy grail of render machines!
1 x EVGA SR-X Dual Socket (Socket 2011) Motherboard £559.99
2 x EVGA GeForce GTX 670 FTW 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £319.99 (£639.98)
1 x OCZ RevoDrive3 240GB PCI-E SSD - (RVD3-FHPX4-240G) £299.99
2 x Intel Core i7-3820 3.60GHz (Sandybridge-E) Socket LGA2011 Processor - OEM £224.99 (£449.98)
1 x Cubitek HTPX ICE Series Case - Black £199.99
1 x Seasonic X-Series 1050w '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £189.98
3 x Kingston HyperX Genesis 32GB (8x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Quad Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3K8/32GX) £179.99 (£539.97)
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £72.98
1 x Pioneer 24x Internal DVR-S20LBK DVD Rewriter including Labelflash - Retail £20.99
Total : £2,990.35 (includes shipping : £13.75).
A bit over budget and possibly overkill but would be a cracking system.
If I was you, I would take all the options and opinions with you and get some professional input. Of course there is better components out there for rendering and speccing from OC has its drawbacks I suppose...
Personally I would go for a Boxx system if it was in budget but they are the holy grail of render machines!
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+1
Wrong, oh so wrong. The vast majority of rendering is done on the CPU.
A 3939K is a far more suitable CPU than a 3820, and it's a waste to go X79 and then just get a quad core.
FireGLs and Quadros (no apostrophes!) don't take priority here. They will not be a lot faster at rendering these big complex models, because, well there won't really be any if it's interior scenes and furniture renders, and secondly, the GPU won't be used for final production renders, they are used primarily for the view port render.
Since they aren't working on complex models, a pro card is an utter waste of money.
Depending on what they're using for rendering, the card won't make any difference again, they could be using VRayRT but that's accelerated by OpenCL, so can be used on any GPU and would excel on a recent AMD GPU more so.
But, if they're not using anything CUDA related (which they're probably not) then the CPU and the CPU alone will be doing ALL of the rendering, not the GPU.
Maybe you should think I should give him a break, but he's trying to give advice about a subject he doesn't understand, just like you are now (again, no offense intended), and when it's such a subject you have to be sure you know what you're talking about if you want to give advice as some one could buy based on your incorrect/poor advice.
So a 3930 with a gaming GPU is far more appropriate than a 3820 with a Quadro or FireGL, any else is just plain bad advice.
Ok, I've been unable to ascertain exactly what CAD software is going to be used, all I know is its custom software used 'in-house' by a large company they have a connection to.
Thanks to all the opinions posted I've really got things whittled down to a couple of systems now, the graphics card is still up in the air for now but I think I will avoid the 6 series. I've advised my friend to speak to the company re software specs before we pull the trigger on a purchase, I approached them myself but they wouldn't divulge any info (as I expected).
Thanks to all the opinions posted I've really got things whittled down to a couple of systems now, the graphics card is still up in the air for now but I think I will avoid the 6 series. I've advised my friend to speak to the company re software specs before we pull the trigger on a purchase, I approached them myself but they wouldn't divulge any info (as I expected).
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YOUR BASKET
1 x EVGA SR-X Dual Socket (Socket 2011) Motherboard £559.99
2 x EVGA GeForce GTX 670 FTW 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £319.99 (£639.98)
1 x OCZ RevoDrive3 240GB PCI-E SSD - (RVD3-FHPX4-240G) £299.99
2 x Intel Core i7-3820 3.60GHz (Sandybridge-E) Socket LGA2011 Processor - OEM £224.99 (£449.98)
1 x Cubitek HTPX ICE Series Case - Black £199.99
1 x Seasonic X-Series 1050w '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £189.98
3 x Kingston HyperX Genesis 32GB (8x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Quad Channel Kit (KHX1600C9D3K8/32GX) £179.99 (£539.97)
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £72.98
1 x Pioneer 24x Internal DVR-S20LBK DVD Rewriter including Labelflash - Retail £20.99
Total : £2,990.35 (includes shipping : £13.75).
A bit over budget and possibly overkill but would be a cracking system.
If I was you, I would take all the options and opinions with you and get some professional input. Of course there is better components out there for rendering and speccing from OC has its drawbacks I suppose...
Personally I would go for a Boxx system if it was in budget but they are the holy grail of render machines!
fail... only xeons support dual cpu.
yeah i generally agree with spoffle, i'm not a cad user but i have been using 3d software for a long time now, most rendering is still done on the cpu. The only reason i was suggesting considering a proffessional card vs a gaming card was for accuracy and support as i understand you will get a higher level of support with them. Its not something i've ever bothered with personally as its just a hobby to me, i've always used gaming cards.
Just my opinion, but professional cards are a complete waste of money, I do use AutoCAD, and mostly 3D studio for rendering and I haven't bought a pro level card in years, and have no plans to ever again. I'm not sure about the current generation of hardware, but back as far as the GTX8800, you could flash the card to a Quadro, so the hardware was identical (except the ECC ram) so all that cash was going on driver support, and I've never needed it, especially with the latest Autodesk products, their Nitrous viewport technology is designed for gaming cards. As to them being more precise/accurate, I'm not sure how that works out, the lines are displayed on a digital panel, they can only be pixel perfect, maybe back in the day of silly high res CRT screens it made a difference, but I think it's snake oil.
Rendering is all about processor power, modern rendering software is fully multi-threaded and actually makes the best use of hyperthreading so go for as many cores as you can afford. I use an SR2 with a couple of Xeons and I've yet to find something worth upgrading for (Until the new xeons are unlocked for overclocking on an SRX anyway) So I'd say go for a dual socket board and xeons.
For pushing about big scenes on screen with millions of polygons, don't skimp on VRAM, I have GTX690 & a GTX580 and at times the 3gb 580 will outperform the 690 (which has only 2gb per card). Waiting for a viewport to update when you move a camera is more frustrating than waiting for a render, and as much as render times are important for getting jobs out, a decent graphics card will make the process a little smoother when you are actually working on a scene.
As for GPU rendering; I use Mental Ray in both Max and AutoCAD, and while it will render on the GPU it wont render on both CPU & GPU together and CPU is still much faster, so until things improve, I'd put the money into the CPU.
SSD's and revo drives are all very nice, but they won't really help with rendering, money is better spent elsewhere.
My suggestion would be to specify 2 identical workstations that way working on a lower spec machine wont be a problem, or not possible when the scene gets too big. It's also good to have a spare if one dies and of course easy backup configurations. Don't bother with an SSD, that can be added later if needs be, get fast processors, a decent amount of RAM (I only have 12gb and I've never run out) and a graphics card with plenty of VRAM, I use Nvidia cards, because I like the option of using CUDA (Not that I do!), but that's just my preference.
TL;DR -
I'm a 3D visualiser, I'd recommend more cores. Graphic cards don't help with render speed.
Rendering is all about processor power, modern rendering software is fully multi-threaded and actually makes the best use of hyperthreading so go for as many cores as you can afford. I use an SR2 with a couple of Xeons and I've yet to find something worth upgrading for (Until the new xeons are unlocked for overclocking on an SRX anyway) So I'd say go for a dual socket board and xeons.
For pushing about big scenes on screen with millions of polygons, don't skimp on VRAM, I have GTX690 & a GTX580 and at times the 3gb 580 will outperform the 690 (which has only 2gb per card). Waiting for a viewport to update when you move a camera is more frustrating than waiting for a render, and as much as render times are important for getting jobs out, a decent graphics card will make the process a little smoother when you are actually working on a scene.
As for GPU rendering; I use Mental Ray in both Max and AutoCAD, and while it will render on the GPU it wont render on both CPU & GPU together and CPU is still much faster, so until things improve, I'd put the money into the CPU.
SSD's and revo drives are all very nice, but they won't really help with rendering, money is better spent elsewhere.
My suggestion would be to specify 2 identical workstations that way working on a lower spec machine wont be a problem, or not possible when the scene gets too big. It's also good to have a spare if one dies and of course easy backup configurations. Don't bother with an SSD, that can be added later if needs be, get fast processors, a decent amount of RAM (I only have 12gb and I've never run out) and a graphics card with plenty of VRAM, I use Nvidia cards, because I like the option of using CUDA (Not that I do!), but that's just my preference.
TL;DR -
I'm a 3D visualiser, I'd recommend more cores. Graphic cards don't help with render speed.
Good post flippant. The issue here is that most people trying to give advice don't really know what does what, which is why people are pushing professional cards, and going for the most expensive parts they can, like the 3970X.
I can't imagine any design studio would waste their time with a 3970X when you can get a 3930K for half the price that will give you near enough the exact same performance.
And even then, the chances are they'd be more inclined to use a render farm more anyway for the final production renders.
The greater accuracy of the pro cards is definitely BS. The main advantage of these pro cards is generally the drivers, and that most of them have double the RAM of their gaming counterparts.
Outside of that, they will be very much the same. The only pro cards that make sense now are the complete TOP TOP end ones that use GPUs not available in the games orientated graphics cards.
As I said earlier too, IF they are using CUDA, then they would be better off going for a GTX580 over a 680 anyway as they have more compute power available.
I can't imagine any design studio would waste their time with a 3970X when you can get a 3930K for half the price that will give you near enough the exact same performance.
And even then, the chances are they'd be more inclined to use a render farm more anyway for the final production renders.
The greater accuracy of the pro cards is definitely BS. The main advantage of these pro cards is generally the drivers, and that most of them have double the RAM of their gaming counterparts.
Outside of that, they will be very much the same. The only pro cards that make sense now are the complete TOP TOP end ones that use GPUs not available in the games orientated graphics cards.
As I said earlier too, IF they are using CUDA, then they would be better off going for a GTX580 over a 680 anyway as they have more compute power available.
one thing I found with my gtx 670 was it loves to sit at idle when 3d modelling, with the memory controller at idle it was slower than my old ati 6950, ended applying a near stock overclock in msi afterburner and what a difference. It was most noticeable when loading/unloading objects from vram, spotted it after leaving gpuz open, haven't checked it again since i changed to win 8 though. The model i'm working on currently is around 20gb and made up of a hundred or so parts so the performance hit was very noticeable. I dare say i'm glad I've never bothered with the professional cards though after reading this!, although i did once have a 3dlabs card, but that was when 3d gaming cards were things like the original 3dfx lol.
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I've put this spec together;
It's quite a bit under budget, but really there doesn't seem much else worth suggesting, maybe doubling up on RAM, but it's probably not needed.
I've added a watercooling kit in to it there too simply because it'll help you get the most out of the 3930K.
You could add waterblocks in for the graphics too, but it's really probably not worth it.
Oh and I forgot the card readers;
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FL-012-AK&groupid=701&catid=1913&subcat=221
It's quite a bit under budget, but really there doesn't seem much else worth suggesting, maybe doubling up on RAM, but it's probably not needed.
I've added a watercooling kit in to it there too simply because it'll help you get the most out of the 3930K.
You could add waterblocks in for the graphics too, but it's really probably not worth it.
Oh and I forgot the card readers;
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FL-012-AK&groupid=701&catid=1913&subcat=221
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