CPU for 3D rendering... should I upgrade my E6750?

[Gannon]

I've been getting into and doing more stuff in 3D rendering programas like 3dsmax and maya, and I'm wondering whether it is worth it or not to upgrade to quadcore or whether they are quad enabled (which I'm assuming they are).

Right now I have an E6750 @ 3.6, I'm wondering if I should just wait for neha or upgrade to shave rendering times.

 

[Modelworks]

Maya, Max, Mental Ray, XSI, Vray all are multi-threaded and will use as much cpu as you can throw at them.
I have seen render boxes that max out 32 cores and the programs still want more.


On a separate note, Autodesk just bought Softimage, so now they own the big 3.

 

[PlasmaBomb]

Are your render times annoying you or holding you back?

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: PlasmaBomb
Are your render times annoying you or holding you back?

Rendering times annoy everyone.
I don't know of anyone who says its too fast or fast enough.

When you consider you need a minimum of 24 frames for each second of finished animation it starts to add up. If each frame takes several minutes, which is fairly common, you are looking at over an hour to just see one second of animation.

 

[faxon]

btw check if your apps support GPU rendering. if you are using one which has a newer release that will offload some of the rendering load to the GPU, buy it, and get yourself a GTX280. also, upgrade to a 45nm quad (besides the Q8200). there is a chance your apps also support SSE4.1 instructions, which will increase the efficiency of your CPU clocks if the programs are designed to use SSE4.1 instructions.

 

[tim924]

Originally posted by: faxon
btw check if your apps support GPU rendering. if you are using one which has a newer release that will offload some of the rendering load to the GPU, buy it, and get yourself a GTX280. also, upgrade to a 45nm quad (besides the Q8200). there is a chance your apps also support SSE4.1 instructions, which will increase the efficiency of your CPU clocks if the programs are designed to use SSE4.1 instructions.

Grab a cheap Phenom 9950,Q6600 or Q9550 if you are not in a tight budget,you should be good to go within the new 2 or 3 years.

 

[faxon]

if he is upgrading on an intel board he isnt going to want a phenom, espescially since he is obviously an overclocker. that dual core he has now is probably already outperforming the 9950BE phenom

 

[Modelworks]

Unfortunately the current render engines do not support GPU processing for final renders.
They can use the GPU for some small things like a pre-render check for placement of objects, but all final renders are done via cpu.

 

[Rhoxed]

Originally posted by: faxon
if he is upgrading on an intel board he isnt going to want a phenom, especially since he is obviously an overclocker. that dual core he has now is probably already outperforming the 9950BE phenom

i really hate misinformation

first off the intel processor was WON meaning he doesn't have mobo or anything else. thus selling it and getting a phenom would not lose him money.

second off, i have a 9850BE and i guarantee there is no E6700 on this earth that can out bench my 9850BE @ 3.5 (multi threaded of course)

now im not saying AMD is the best choice - probably far from it, but please do not babble this nonsense about how BAD amd's quads are comparing to an Intel dual... its not a fair comparison for intel, unless its a 8600 @ 4.5+

Also, paired with a SB750 mobo, every 9950BE i have seen can reach 3.2+ and many breaking 3.5, so for overclocking AMD is not so bad anymore, but most people that have intel would not follow this news, and most have no idea/dont care that AMD is back in the game concidering the prices of their quads compared to the Q6600 that is definately showing its age, while being more expensive.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: Rhoxed

Originally posted by: faxon
if he is upgrading on an intel board he isnt going to want a phenom, especially since he is obviously an overclocker. that dual core he has now is probably already outperforming the 9950BE phenom

i really hate misinformation

first off the intel processor was WON meaning he doesn't have mobo or anything else. thus selling it and getting a phenom would not lose him money.

Its been awhile since I used AMD processors but are they comparing with Intel on FPU performance now ? I remember in the past that they got almost there but not quite.
All the render farms I have used are Xeon processors.

I'm not biased either way, its just I haven't really kept up with the AMD side of things.

The reason I said FPU is because that is really 95% of what the final renders use.

 

[tim924]

Yea,that's my point there,with the new SB750,Phenom 9950BE is actually an equivalent or better choice than Q6600 at the same price range.Not to mention that you(probably) will be able to upgrade to the Deneb(45nm) without changing platform in the near future.But of course if you are willing to pay $300+ Q9550 is a better choice at the moment.

 

[Denithor]

xbitlabs: final rendering comparison

Good stuff here. Q8200 is essentially a match for the Q6600, apparently the architecture improvements are enough to overcome 3% lower clocks & 50% less cache.

If you consider the percentages, 3ds Max 2009 doesn't show any difference from cache (Q9400 has a 14.2% clock advantage and shows 14.5% higher performance) while Cinebench 10 is slightly affected by cache (Q9400 shows 17.3% better performance than Q8200).

The Phenom 9950 is actually a viable chip for rendering in 3ds Max but it cannot compete in Cinebench. When you take into account that you have to buy a cooler for the 9950 and that it will consume more energy (125W vs 95W) the Q8200 is probably a better deal. And if you OC the Q8200 to >3GHz there won't be much comparison at all.