Planning on buying a new processor, is AMD's A10-7850K good for rendering?

[PG]

I can help on this because I have a Kaveri and have also used some intel cpus, plus I have SolidWorks and have done some benchmarks. I live near Chicago where there is a Microcenter and I like to tinker so that's how I have used and tested lots of hardware. Well, that and craigslist deals rock.

Anyway, the quick answer is that the OP should get an i5 or better and be done with it.
Also that GTS 250 is a rebranded 9800GT which is an old DX10 card so I would sell it and get something else. Someone suggested a GTX 750 TI, and that would be a good choice I think. Autodesk has moved from OpenGL to DirectX, so mainstream gaming cards work pretty well now for their programs. A quadro or firepro isn't really necessary.

Here is a good Solidworks benchmark: http://www.accuratediedesign.com/knowledgebase/?p=724
This Punch Holder benchmark is a good single thread benchmark because the program has to rebuild the part one feature at a time.
Here are my results:
A10-7850K with 2133 memory = 93 seconds
i5 2400 with 1600 memory = 63 seconds
i5 4670 with 1600 memory = 53 seconds
i3 2100 with 1333 memory = 78 seconds
AMD 760K overclocked to 4.4, 2000 NB, 2133 memory = 81 seconds

No contest there, intel single threaded performance rocks, but we already knew that.


Now to something more multithreaded, a Solidworks FEA benchmark. This is more like the rendering the OP was asking about.

https://forum.solidworks.com/thread/63854

I have Solidworks 2015 and it seems around twice as fast as earlier versions, so my numbers here won't compare to what is in the link.

A10-7850k with 2133 RAM = 530 seconds
760K overclocked as above = 500 seconds
i5 2400 = 430 seconds
i7 4770 with 2133 ram = 277 seconds

Again Intek kicks butt. Even a Sandy Bridge i5, with a locked multiplier, beats Kaveri.
A Haswell i5 would be a good overall choice, but as you can see an i7 is nice too.


I wish there was some way that CAD could use the HSA etc features in Kaveri, but Kaveri has been out since January and I don't see any CAD programs even talking about taking advantage of these features yet. If it ever does happen, new apus will be available by then.

 

[DrMrLordX]

If he's on a budget, an i5 won't be his best buy for single-threaded performance. The G3258 will be.

Personally, I think he'd be better off with a G3258 on a low-end Z97 board for upgradability and a video card picked with OpenCL 3d rendering in mind. That will limit his choices in software, but that will be the best bang per buck.

edit: if CAD performance isn't all that important to him and he uses something like Luxrender, the 7850k would actually be the best bang/buck CPU he could get regardless of what video card he adds to the system. Luxrender will use that iGPU. But, again, that limits him to one rendering engine, and that does nothing to address CAD performance.

 

[Headfoot]

Luxrender will use that iGPU. But, again, that limits him to one rendering engine, and that does nothing to address CAD performance.

My concern would be rendering, is A10-7850K a good processor for rendering such as 3DS Max and AutoCAD/Revit?

3DS Max and AutoCAD/Revit are the applications, not Luxrender.

3DS Max 2014 w/ Nitrous runs on DirectX, so a decent video card is going to be important along with a CPU. OP if this is your profession, I suggest you increase your budget a little and get an i5 and a modern midrange discrete GPU at the minimum.