If you are looking for some best laptop for 3D animation and rendering, then take a look at some of the best-selling laptops for animation. Also, you can check out this post for detailed review and list of complete 10 laptops > best laptop for animation 2018.
Alright HERE is my situation. I'm a senior going to college at the end of this school year. I'm going into game design and so far i've been doing all my modeling with 3ds max 2009 on my hp laptop (see specs in sig) but I found found a year later that HP is a piece of @#$% because it keeps breaking and (they installed the wrong version of vista after they 'fixed it' and never gave me the product key.ANNNYWAY since i was going to spend my money building a good modeling desktop computer but need a new laptop i guess i'll shoot for both so my question is what is a good laptop for portable rendering? Dells are good but sort of expensive -if i shoot for a dell should i get the gaming laptops because they would be more powerfull?
Also i found good Sony and Gateway computers but idk if they are good COMPUTER companies. QUOTE='GuitarFreak2'QUOTE='RFOMownage' Anything with a Quadro and a fast processor.
Im pretty sure video cards are not used in the rendering process, just the processor, and workstation cards if the program supports it. RFOMownage Um.what?
Workstation cards are video cards, and they're used very heavily in rendering. Some programs support them, the majority do not. Do you know what a render farm is? Nvidia/ATI would not have entire lines of very expensive workstation cards if most programs didn't support them. QUOTE='GuitarFreak2'QUOTE='RFOMownage' Some programs support them, the majority do not. RFOMownage Do you know what a render farm is?
Nvidia/ATI would not have entire lines of very expensive workstation cards if most programs didn't support them. Refer to the post above yours;) My roommate is majoring in digital studio and renders quite a bit of stuff with video cards. Video cards are so much more powerful than CPUs. Take a Core 2 Quad, it has about 200-250GFLOPs of processing power. Move up to a GTX 280 and you're hitting nearly 1TFLOPs of processing power.
The i7 is better for rendering than the C2D/C2Q, but it can't touch video cards. Any time you play a game, you are rendering something. Take 3dmark06 for example. During the CPU test, the CPU is rendering that. Look at all the other tests, and the GPU is rendering it. Video cards can definitely render better than CPUs can.
QUOTE='RFOMownage'QUOTE='GuitarFreak2' Do you know what a render farm is? Nvidia/ATI would not have entire lines of very expensive workstation cards if most programs didn't support them. GuitarFreak2 Refer to the post above yours;) My roommate is majoring in digital studio and renders quite a bit of stuff with video cards.
Video cards are so much more powerful than CPUs. Take a Core 2 Quad, it has about 200-250GFLOPs of processing power. Move up to a GTX 280 and you're hitting nearly 1TFLOPs of processing power.
The i7 is better for rendering than the C2D/C2Q, but it can't touch video cards. Any time you play a game, you are rendering something. Take 3dmark06 for example.
During the CPU test, the CPU is rendering that. Look at all the other tests, and the GPU is rendering it. Video cards can definitely render better than CPUs can. Im saying typical video cards (8xxx, 9xxx, 2xx series) are not supported in rendering programs, the only one that I know of is Houdini, and im kinda iffy on that, i've only heard. Quadro video cards are supported by almost every program except some freeware programs.
Typical video cards are for playing games, they do not affect render speed AT ALL in 3d programs. Well i found it but what about alienware laptops?
I mean i made one on their site with these specs 2.6ghz core 2 duo cpu nvidia geforce 9600 512 mb 120gig 7200rpm HDD 1 gig ddr2 RAM (i have 3 gigs already that i can switch) for $2300 then this dell 2.8 ghz core 2 do cpu NVIDIA Quadro FX 2700M, 512MB 1 gig of ddr3 and an 80 gig 5200rpm HDD for $2700. Gamefreak1296 Hi, this is his roommate. If this were the case, NONE of the rendering programs used in our.s and labs would work on any of the computers we have access too. Yes, rendering software CAN be set to do software rendering (IE on the CPU), but they're DEFAULTED and actually PERFORM on hardware, INCLUDING your standard run-of-the-mill videocards. D: So, sorry to say this, but your logic is fundamentally flawed. GuitarFreak2 Your ' Roomate' is not an all-knowing supreme being. He certainly does not have the final say on the matter.
And any post that ends in 'Kthx' is automatically discredited. QUOTE='kjghs'rendering is done by the CPU, so get a laptop that has a quad core, nvidia fx series are graphics cards that handle large scenes so that would be a plus if you have that GuitarFreak2 See my posts. Also, a GeForce Ti4200 can handle large screens too. The Quadro FX line is for 3d rendering. Sorry but you wrong since im into 3d rendering myself and i know this for a fact that rendering is done by the cpu where as the video card handles scene navigation. What is your backgrown in 3d rendering anyway?
Serry for my english. QUOTE='GuitarFreak2' QUOTE='kjghs'rendering is done by the CPU, so get a laptop that has a quad core, nvidia fx series are graphics cards that handle large scenes so that would be a plus if you have that kjghs See my posts. Also, a GeForce Ti4200 can handle large screens too. The Quadro FX line is for 3d rendering.
Sorry but you wrong since im into 3d rendering myself and i know this for a fact that rendering is done by the cpu where as the video card handles scene navigation. What is your backgrown in 3d rendering anyway? Serry for my english I don't have any background in 3d rendering, but I do know quite a bit about computers, processing power, and how it all works. My roommate has been doing 3d rendering for 8 years or so. Also, check this link: 'NVIDIA Gelato rendering software allows anyone with an NVIDIA graphics processing unit (GPU) to create stunning images fast.'
Video cards CAN be used in rendering. It does rely on the CPU, but having a GPU greatly reduces the time it takes to render it. I got my processing power wrong when I was talking about the C2D/C2Q, they're more around 25-40GFLOPS, not 200.
Rendering has been switching over to GPU over CPU since the 8 series came out because of the raw processing power an 8 series card can do. QUOTE='mike4realz'how about the Dell Precision M Series Mobile Workstation?
They got the Nvidia Quadro FX video cards. Other than that, you can try to look for other laptops that has the Quadro FX video cards. If they are too expensive for you, then you can aim for gaming laptops with a Geforce 8600 or better video cards. Gamefreak1296 where are you findingthis one? All the dell laptops i found were nspironXPSStudio XPS LaptopStudio Laptop http://www.dell.com/content/products/category.aspx/precnnb?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd. Hands down the best bang for your buck laptop right now would have to be the Gateway P7805u-FX lineup. $1,150 from Bestbuy right now, check out the specs: Intel® Core™2 Duo Mobile 2.26GH WXGA high-definition widescreen TFT-LCD with Ultrabright technology 17' 4GB (RAM) DDR3 Serial ATA (7200 rpm)Hard Drive 320GB Double-layer DVD±RW/CD-RW NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTS 1GB GDDR3 The funny thing is that this laptop is actually UNDERRATED from Gateway.
It comes with a faster processor and the screen is a WUXGA. Meaning it can display at a higher resolution (1920x1200). The graphics card is pretty much second from the top of Nvidia's mobile video card lineup of discreete graphic chipsets. And if you price out another comparable such as Dell's, the same spec'd laptop will run you close to 3G's.
Trust me, do your research on google for this little gem you won't be disappointed. I'm actually typing this message on mine that I picked up a fewe weeks ago and I love the damn thing. Plays Fallout 3 on high settings all day long. And the little badboy comes with an empty slot for a second hard drive! Hands down the best bang for your buck laptop right now would have to be the Gateway P7805u-FX lineup. $1,150 from Bestbuy right now, check out the specs: Intel® Core™2 Duo Mobile 2.26GH WXGA high-definition widescreen TFT-LCD with Ultrabright technology 17' 4GB (RAM) DDR3 Serial ATA (7200 rpm)Hard Drive 320GB Double-layer DVD±RW/CD-RW NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTS 1GB GDDR3 The funny thing is that this laptop is actually UNDERRATED from Gateway.
It comes with a faster processor and the screen is a WUXGA. Meaning it can display at a higher resolution (1920x1200). The graphics card is pretty much second from the top of Nvidia's mobile video card lineup of discreete graphic chipsets. And if you price out another comparable such as Dell's, the same spec'd laptop will run you close to 3G's. Trust me, do your research on google for this little gem you won't be disappointed.
I'm actually typing this message on mine that I picked up a fewe weeks ago and I love the damn thing. Plays Fallout 3 on high settings all day long. And the little badboy comes with an empty slot for a second hard drive!
RuffRhyno how reliable is the costumer service? As someone who has had his laptop repaired 4 times under warranty its a strong issue with me and everyone has said that dell has great service. If you're gonna use it mostly for rendering, you'd want to choose lots of RAM (4Gb is a must) and a fast dual-core (or quad-core if you can afford it) processor over a powerful graphics card. The QuadroFX cards are mostly used for visualization (like AutoCAD) and running simulations (like real-time fluid dynamics), so I doubt you'll really need one of those (although I believe they speed up 3dsMax's viewport, could be wrong about that) tomvw Yeah he'll need one of those QuadroFX cards as he is doing 3D rendering. The QuadroFX card are designed for those type of applications. Hands down the best bang for your buck laptop right now would have to be the Gateway P7805u-FX lineup. $1,150 from Bestbuy right now, check out the specs: Intel® Core™2 Duo Mobile 2.26GH WXGA high-definition widescreen TFT-LCD with Ultrabright technology 17' 4GB (RAM) DDR3 Serial ATA (7200 rpm)Hard Drive 320GB Double-layer DVD±RW/CD-RW NVIDIA GeForce 9800M GTS 1GB GDDR3 The funny thing is that this laptop is actually UNDERRATED from Gateway.
It comes with a faster processor and the screen is a WUXGA. Meaning it can display at a higher resolution (1920x1200). The graphics card is pretty much second from the top of Nvidia's mobile video card lineup of discreete graphic chipsets. And if you price out another comparable such as Dell's, the same spec'd laptop will run you close to 3G's. Trust me, do your research on google for this little gem you won't be disappointed. I'm actually typing this message on mine that I picked up a fewe weeks ago and I love the damn thing.
Plays Fallout 3 on high settings all day long. And the little badboy comes with an empty slot for a second hard drive!
RuffRhyno But that's a gaming laptop tho. He won't be able to get the performance for 3D rendering, only for gaming. But I do like the laptop. Only if they have 15' w/ 9800M GTS. 'But that's a gaming laptop tho. He won't be able to get the performance for 3D rendering, only for gaming. But I do like the laptop.
Only if they have 15' w/ 9800M GTS mike4realz I understand it's not exactly what he may be looking for, but I did take into account the fact that he mentioned he is a college student. All college students that I know are on a very tight budget, so I made cost a very big factor into what laptop he ends up going with. For what the Gateway offers towards 3D rendering compared to similar notebooks from other companies which may have hardware suited towards his profession, I can't justify spending an extra $2,000 on a minimal performance increase. If money really is no option, than please just disregard my post all together. Also, does it have to be a laptop? You could build a great desktop computer that would handle rendering 10 times more efficiently for the same price, Just a thought.
BTW, if he is looking more towards a 15' screen the Asus G50 line has some impressive specs for a 15' laptop for under a grand. Anyway, my 2 cents.
Have you ever wondered what Processor (CPU) is best for rendering? Finding the best CPU For Rendering, that is also as cheap as possible, is something you will want to do before building a new, a dedicated Rendernode, a Renderfarm or even a.
3ds max, Maya, Cinema 4D, Blender and many other 3D Software packages have in-built and 3rd-party CPU Render Engines that all rely on maximum CPU multi Core Performance. Since there are so many different CPU types with different clock-speeds, core-counts, hyperthreading and brand, it can be difficult to select the right platform to go with. AMD Ryzen, Threadripper, Intel i5, i7, i9, XEON, Pentium, some with lots of Cores and others with high Core-Clocks. In the end it all comes down to raw CPU Rendering performance, that I will be measuring with Cinebench R15, the currently leading. Of course there are lots of lists online to, but what is most important is how well the Performance / Dollar ($) ratio is.
This is why I have created a Performance/Dollar ($) Table for you to sort to your liking. This will show you the best Rendering CPU for the Money: Best CPU for 3D Rendering Performance / Dollar ($): Higher is better. Prices are from August 2018. Hey Jim, The thing is you will want a max core-clock cpu for Photoshop and ZBrush and a max #cores cpu for the CPU Rendering part of your 20000px images. As Vue seems to have a hybrid GPU/CPU Path tracer and you use this Rendering method, I’d think a fairly strong GPU helps in speeding up the render tasks, and a GPU with more VRAM might help too. That said, you should think about if you spend more time actively on the pc and need every last performance bit you can get in photoshop and zbrush, or if you would like to lean towards having faster render times.
The latter would mean stay with the CPU you already mentioned (1920x) the former would be the Intel i9 9900K. Let me know what you think, and what render engine are you using? Cheers, Alex.
Thanks for the quick reply! I use Vue’s native render engine, which is notoriously laggy. Large scale renders – especially those with lots of atmospherics – can be upwards of 60 hours with my current config (I7 5930k 6 core, GTX980Ti), which just kills me in terms of productivity, so I’m really looking to speed up the render times so as to free up the PC for other work. It’s that tricky “right mix” between GPU/CPU/Cost. I’d love to keep the new rig below $3k.
Is there a different GPU you’d recommend over the 1080Ti? Hey Nicola, The 7980XE is a great CPU. It will surely surpass your current Bucket Rendering Speeds by a good amount! If I were you though, I’d go analyze your typical type of Renders and see where exactly the most time is spent. Is it during preparation, mesh extracting, gi cache building? Or is it during the bucket rendering phase? Check your Taskmanager ot see if how many of your cores are being used in the stages that you are spending lots of time in.
If its Bucket rendering stage, then yes, go max cinebench score. Threadripper or 7980xe are great here! Cheers, Alex. I would dissagree with your words about 2990wx and rendering As you might know 2990wx have some troubles with memory controller allocation inside chips, it means that from 4 dies only 2 are directly connected with memory while other 2 goes throughout that first dies, it causes huge problems in heavy rendering, by heavy i mean memory hungry tasks, I have my eyes on 2990wx and im using renderman, some users are badly complaining about 2990wx performance with renderman, sometimes it is even worse than 8core intel, memory issue bottlenecks whole stuff during computation. In 29th October AMD released memory patch called “dynamic local mode” that should improve situation, And I dont know how it behaves now, do you aware of problem that is described above and are you 2990wx owner?
Thank you for your time! That’s right Alex, those scenes are very small and injecting instantly into memory, but when scene is big it’s waiting buckets to be free and scene manafement to send next buckets job. I want anyone to know that all that famous render measure tools are not quite correct and you cant say for sure that your pc will be 5 times faster in render coz you gained 5000 oposite to 1000. Dont forget to test render hevy scene with and without dyn memory function enabled, any posted tests will be greatly appreciated. And if you can test renderman and arnold with 2990wx it will be just outstanding, there are almost no tests out there, only few and useless ones without videos or screenshots.
I quote upfront for 3d artworks. Single still frames at around 6000px square. I use ZBrush and C4D cpu render, currently on a dual Xeon pushing 1300 cinbench points.
(8 year old comp). I am looking to move to the 2990wx as my main area of work that feels like it’s waisting my time is tweaks n test render results. I work with v high res models n textures and I can loose hours to waiting incrementally between changes/edits.
I’m happy that the 2990wx will save me tons of time in that area, but I want to ensure it at least matches my duel Xeon (westmere 2.66- 2x6core) in software such as Photoshop. Do you have any idea about this, or any good benchmark resources please? Hey Arran, The Threadripper 2990WX base Clock is 3 GHz and Boosts up to 4,2GHz on a single Core (3,7GHz all core boost). It will definitely be faster for active work such as Viewport and Photoshop, than your Xeons that only boost to a max 3,066 GHz. There is an interesting article by Pugetsystems here: Photoshop is clearly dependent on max core-clock.
That is also why the Intel CPUs with high Turbo Boost are in the lead in front of AMD that have slightly lower Boost-Clocks. But the 2990WX has a 1500 Point lead in Rendering (Cinebench) vs the 7980XE and is even cheaper. So if you do lots of iterating in renders, the 2990WX will be absolutely great!
Another thing to check on your computer is, if your renders have a lot of preparation time. Preparation time is the time it takes from clicking render to when the render buckets start appearing. As soon as the render buckets are visible this is 100% multi-Core Workload, but before that it can be that it is more dependent on a high single-core clock. Might want to check that. Cheers, Alex. Thank you for taking the time to reply Alex, its much appreciated.
Thank you for the link too as that’s very useful. I am looking to add a Sapphire RX580 8gb (with possibilities of adding a second later) to the new system (building in Nov), to help with view-port issues I am currently having, as simply moving around in the view-port sometimes requires me to switch a load of models off. Also I note that C4D is making more use of gpu rendering for more of a real-time view-port render feel, which may be useful. I cant believe its possible to build such a powerful machine for £3K, compared to Mac-pros. I am sure Apple may bring out a modular system eventually, but they definitely wont provide this level of selective power for price. I will miss mac OS for my admin software, but am very excited to work more efficiently in the creative programs.
Hi Alex, Thanks for the response, here are the specs of computer we’re planning to build, It is ok? AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X 12core 3.50-4.0 Ghz 38mb 180W GSkill Ripjaws V 32GB Quad DDR4 3200Mhz CL16 (F4-3200C16Q-32GVKB) Gigabyte Aorus X399 Gaming 7 Seasonic P-760 Platinum 760Watts Full Modular Power Supply CORSAIR Hydro Series H115i PRO RGB 280mm Liquid CPU Cooler Samsung 970 Evo 1TB NvMe MZ-V7E1T0BW nVIDIA Quadro P2000 5GB Gddr5 Fractal Design Define Meshify C Tempered Glass Light Tint. the 2990WX is not yet available in our country.and also we will use this PC for Video editing. Hey Mujeeb, Well if its Mental Ray CPU Render Time you are concerned about, then it is quite easy: Your CPU 4960X has 1076 Cinebench Points and a modern AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX for example has over 5000 Points, so it will be 5 Times as fast as your current CPU. (Cinebench Benchmark scales almost the same as Mental Ray Renderer, so its good for comparing CPUs) I have such a Build configuration over in the Article Best Computer for 3D Modeling and Rendering here, if you want to check it out: Go down to Best Computer for CPU Rendering, AMD 2300$.
I have narrowed my selection for GPUs down to 3-4 and I would appreciate some feedback! I’m only using Blender, Maya, Houdini. Going for the best value for rendering. I don’t care about power consumption too much.
Radeon Pro Duo Polaris – 620USD – questions: Will temps be a problem? Is this card better in value than the others in terms of rendering? CG geek’s video shows it killed 1080 ti but blender benchmarks website shows it a little worse??? 1080 Ti – 700USD – questions – Is it much worth it to spend close to another 100USD on this card? Vega 64 – 500USD – seems to be the sweet-spot. Very close to performance of 1080 Ti in Blender benchmarks, However is the pro duo worth the upgrade for “future proofing” with its 16GB Vram?
Will the 8GB Vram be enough for huge scenes? 2x RX 580 – 440USD – Thought I’d throw this in.
On paper 2 will be just as good as vega 64 for less. Hey George, Rendering on the CPU will usually block your CPU 100% and it is difficult to do anything else at the same time. Rendering with the GPU you can usually still work without a problem in other Software UNLESS the GPUs VRAM is full completely and Windows does not have enough VRAM and GPU Processing speed left over to display and update windows and on-screen stuff. That said, if you want to Render fast on the GPU a 1080 is great yes as you can see in this post: If you want to render fast then a high core-count CPU is best such as a Threadripper.
If you want to render fast AND work fast AND GPU render FAST, you will have to tradeoff at least one of those options, as there is no such CPU that can do all at the fastest. A good blend of all of these usually is a Threadripper 8 Core or an 8-10 Core i9 like the 7900X. Maybe you could clarify your question a bit and I might be able to answer better? Do you want to work fast, cpu render fast or gpu render fast? Cheers, Alex.
Hello Alex, I want to make a CAD workstation. Budget isn’t a concern but nothing tooooo over the top. I want to run 3ds max, maya, houdini, c4d, octane and redshift render engine. I wont game on it at all pretty much, just when a new game comes out and its hype, i can join in with friends, but nothing extensive, I was looking into parts and it looks like: Intel i7 7820x/threadripper 1920x/i7 8700k h60 watercooler Quadro P2000/vega 64/1070ti/1080 16gb 3200 mhz Im not sure if im close at all to what i need but any advice is helpful.
Also i dont know much about mobos. Hi Alex, My question is a tad bit different from everyone else below, so I figured i’d ask. We’d like to build a cpu at work that can serve as a 3d rendering monster. Basically, our first priority is generating extremely high res large scale 3d models from photo sets in PhotoScan Pro.
The computer will basically run the OS and Photoscan. And that’s it. All of our other video editing/photoediting will be done on our current workstations. When the computer is not devoted towards generating 3d models in Photoscan, a coworker of mine would like to utilize whatever computer we build as a rendering slave for Cinema4d, Fusion, DaVinci Resolve, among other things. We’re a not-for profit, so we’d like to get as much bang for the buck as possible.
Last night I priced out a dell with dual xeon 28 cores, 1.5 terabytes of ram, and insane video cards for over 100K that’s totally not in our budget but the specs of that machine made me smile. What processor/ram/video card combination should we be looking into?
Hey William, If best CPU Power for least cost as possible is your goal, you will have to look at getting a threadripper system. These CPUs are currently unbeatable in cpu rendering and cpu multi-core power performance/$.
AMD just released an update that gives you 32 Cores / 64 Threads (The 2990W) for around 1700$. OF course there are smaller ones, 16 cores, 12, 8, if your budget isnt that high. Of course if your budget is much higher than that, you can look into server-grade hardware such as AMD Epyc or Intel Xeon systems with 2 Socket Setups. This will then be much worse in performance/price though. I am not sure about Photoscan. Go see if you can find a benchmark for that software, but if it is heavily multi-core dependant, Threadripper is the way to go, as it also is for cpu rendering in any kind of 3d software. These CPUs (apart from the 8-core) are usually not recommendet to actively work on since they aren’t quite as snappy as a very high clocked CPU with less cores such as the 8086k or the 2700X.
But as a rendernode only, these are excellent. (Of course I am talking extreme high-end here.
They are as fast as any other cpu for everyday tasks) Cheers, Alex. My i7 4790 recently gave up on me and I was thinking of buying a new cpu.
Now I’m using 4th Gen so obviously I need to buy a new mobo and mem as well. I’ve been going through bundles cause I don’t have much at the moment but which would you recommend more for someone who does zbrush/hard surface modeling in maya along more and a bit rendering in vray. I7 8700 or ryzen r7 2700?
The bundle I saw with the 8700 comes with an aorus game 3 Mobo and the r7 comes with an asus b350 plus. My video card at the moment is a 780 gtx zotac amp edition and memory that comes with either bundles would be ddr4 16gb. I’m also using a corsair cx600 which would be ok I guess to support my new rig? I’ve got 4 fans and 1 radiator. Thank you for your time! Please forgive my google translator, I’m Ukrainian I’m trying to build my first computer to work in 3d (architecture and interior design) I will use the CPU rendering.
Dispersal is not expected In search of an optimal package of prices. Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X GPU: MSI PCI-Ex GeForce GTX 1060 OC 6GB GDDR (192 bit) (1544/8008) RAM: Kingston DDR4-2400 PC4-19200 HyperX Fury 16 GB in the future upgrade to 64 GB (4-16 GB) SSD: Samsung 960 EVO series 250gb M.2.???? CPU cooler: be careful! Shadow rock thin Motherboard: Gigabyte – GA-AX370-Gaming K5??? Power supply: Aerocool KCAS-700 700W.????
Question 1 Motherboard Which motherboard is best for Ryzen 7 2700x? I’ve heard about problems with updating BIOS for Pinnacle Ridge processors.
(Does the problem solve x470?) Question 2 SSD Should I take the Samsung 960 EVO? Or can I manage the white ssd budget? Question 3 BP Which power supply should I choose?
Hey Igor, M.2 SSDs are great if you have disk intensive tasks, such as compositing, video editing and the like. For rendering it usually doesn’t make a great difference if you use a normal ssd or a m.2 ssd apart from faster file loading and texture loading and maybe saving frames a bit faster. For that confiuration you don’t need more than 550W. Go Corasir, BeQuiet, Seasonic or similar as these are good PSU manufacturers.
Getting a 3xx Series Mainboard doesnt guarantee a Bios that supports the 2700x unless you make sure you get one from one of the newest charges. The 4xx mainboards all support the pinnacle ridge cpus out of the box as far as I know. Hi Alex, first of all, nice article.
I’m an amateur 3D modeler and recently I’m planning on changing my CPU since my old Quad Core Q9400 is not strong enough for my future projects. My thoughs are between Intel Core i7 – 8700 (with or without K) and AMD Ryzen 7 2700 (with or without X) And the software I’m using is: Blender (mainly) Substance Painter Photoshop After Effects Premiere And in a future I would like to use Maya and Zbrush Based on other sites I think the Intel choice could be better as some of the software I mentioned seems to be more optimized for Intel and uses one single core while editing, also I hope the prize to drop due to the refresh coming out soon. Ryzen seems to get pretty close with this new generation but I have some issues looking up for tests for some of the softwares, mainly found for the previous generation and on pugetsystems (i.e) seems to recommend Intel almost everytime. I know both would be good choices but I would.like to hear some advice from more experienced users. Regards and thanks ?. We are planing on building a new pc. We are on a really tight budget, the system will be basically used for 3ds max vray rendering (interior designing), Photoshop, illustrator.
Which one will be better i3 7100 or Ryzen 3 2200G. If we go with ryzen we can upgrade our processor in future without buying a newer motherboard. With intel 7th gen we have to buy a new motherboard for upgrading to new gen.
Please suggest. Sorry for bad English. (and suggest a budget motherboard for ryzen for future upgrades). Hi James, To sum up the c4d and ae articles on this site, for your day-to-day active working inside the software you will want a CPU that has as high a single core clock as possible. This would currently be the i7 8700K (4.7ghz turbo).
Though with the i7 8700K you only get 6 cores. If you need more cores I would recommend going the i9 route, since these usually have higher turbo-boost clocks than the XEONs.
Same goes for Nuke, although Nuke makes much better use of multi-core usage than After effects. If you need more than 18 cores and have a good budget of course, two socket systems with xeons will be the only way to go. Or wait for the Threadripper 32 Core CPUs to show up later this year. Cheers, Alex. Hey Animator, I am a Freelancer too!
How is it working out for you? ? The new Ryzen 5 Series 2600 and 2600X are almost on par with Intels i5 CPUs such as the 8600K.
Intel still has some slight Single Core advantage but falls far behind in Multi-Core performance at same price-point. The decision you have to make is have slightly faster Software-responsiveness but have slow Multi-Core rendering speeds (i5), or have slightly slower Software-responsiveness but have Fast Multi-Core Rendering Speeds for previews/final rendering (R5). Tough choice! Cheers, Alex. Is this setup good for my purpose: my requirements is: Thunderbolt 3 + 8 dims memory + more than 3 pcie i will use it like: unraid os that host vms. Vm for transcode videos to mp4 in 1080p, vm for plex server due the big library, vm for a gaming machine that i will pass through the 1080ti to it which will play full max settings in 1080.
8 vms for lab(active directory, xenapp, firewall vm, 5 client os’s). The backbone network is 10G but for my direct access to the storage i will be using the Thunderbolt 3 cable for speed. Hi Alexlove your Postneed some help here, i wanna build my workstation. Softwares to use are Unreal engine, 3Dmax, lumion, Adobe Suite,4K video editing,after effect, PBR rendering, Iray, redshift. I owned already GTX 1080ti, PSU 1500 Watt,SSD nvme Evo 960 1 TB, 10 TB spnning HDd, So which processor is the best to choose, I7 7820x (equals ) or Threadripper? And for gpu render engine (redshift/vray etc) is that possible to use mining rig? Maybe 8x GTX 1080Ti?
The target is to render complex scene 1 to 5 second perframe ( FHD quality) Thanks. Hi Alex, Very nice review I m actually looking around for the best itx workstation possible with water cooling. I m mainly using AutoCAD, Blender, SketchUp and 3D Rendering with V-Ray or Artlantis + a lot of photoshop too. I have been seeing a lot of different articles but I really don t know if I should go R7 2700X or i7 8700k. Not sure it exists or will exist a threadripper or Xeon or i9 for mini Itx.
What would you recommend and being future proof? (No budget minimum required). Thanks a lot for this awesome article. Hey Anthony, The AM4 socket (Ryzen) is definitely more future proof than the 1151. AM4 will probably be good for a couple of more generations of Ryzen CPUs. Intel usually does not allow for a new CPU generation to work on and old socket/Chipset.
Both of those CPUs are great for 3D Production. The Ryzen is better in Multi-Core loads such as CPU-rendering, the I7 will give you slightly fasterspeeds when actively working in the viewport. If this will be your work- and your render-machine, I’d probably lean towards the ryzen. Tough choice!
? cheers, Alex. Hey Alex, thanks for this amazing post. Iv been doing a research about a build im planning on doing soon. I work as a 3D artist more focused in the Lighting and Rendering stage of the production. But sometimes I need to do a bit of simulation (fur) and occasionally composite animated scenes. Anyway, here is what im planning on building: Processor – Rayzen Threadripper 1950x (16 core) Motherboard – ASUS Prime X399 (im not going for the Zenith Extreme coz of the high cost and im not sure if I would need such board) Ram – G.Skill TridentZ 4×8 (32gb) 3000mHz HD – 2x SSD MP500 120gb (240gb) Cooling system – Master cooler 240 (water cooling) Power supply – Cooler Master V750 Graphic Card – 1x 1080ti Black Edition (cheaper than the Zotac) Casing – Corsair 780t Im not sure about the casing. Since im still trying to find a good measure of price and quality.
Please give me your thoughts regarding this build. BTW im not going for double Xeon or i7 coz form my research the Threadripper is a good price over power option. Hey Fred, Threadripper is a great CPU for many use-cases. Keep in mind though, that simulation usually is a process with computations that depend on each other, meaning cores have to wait for each other to finish certain tasks. This means having lots of cores with a low Clock sometimes is worse than having few with a very high clock.
If I were you, I would test this. Go run some simulations and see how your current CPU is utilized, do all cores run at 100%? Are there benchmarks for your simulations? Simulations in my experience take up lots of disc space very fast.
If you are only doing fur this might not be the case, but fluid sim or particle sim you will get those 120GB drives filled up extremely fast. With Win10, swap and hyberfile one of the discs will already be full. I’d recommend to get a 500 GB second SSd such as the Samsung 970 evo / pro if you are targeting M.2 pcie slots.
Looks good otherwise. Hey bogdan, I haven’t written a “Best Computer/Workstation for Premiere Pro” Article yet but I might get to it soon. The quintessence will be similar to the Cinema 4D computer Article, so High-single core CPU speed, some GPU acceleration for Mercury engine, 64GB RAM for 4K Projects with high bit-depth. The main difference will be the discs, that play a major role in video editing.
You will want to go the NVME route, and get something like the Samsung 970 pro for great speed as a footage disc and another one of those as a cache disc. Also don’t forget to get some HDDs for backing stuff up, these don’t have to be blazingly fast, since they are only meant to store your old footage. Hello Alex, I was asked by my friend to help her with upgrading her PC. She is now using: P5Q SE PLUS motherboard NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT graphic card Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9550 @ 2.83GHz CPU 2x2GB RAM PC2-6400 Her day to day software are: Artlantis AutoCAD Photoshop SketchUp The goal is to decrease rendering with Artlantis as low as we can for a sensible price. Right now it takes up to 20 hours as a maximum. The budget we have for our “shopping” is 1500-2000 dollars.
Cheaper is better but we are looking long term. We can save some by decreasing RAM for a year lets say and buy some more next year but for rendering, I assume RAM is not the most important. Any help would be highly appreciated.
Having both, a mobile device that u can use for presentations AND for working on would of course be ideal. Personally I would try and get two different specialised system for optimum performance and not try to have both use cases merged into one “not-so-great for any of them” device. I would go for a good workstation 1500$ and go get a slow but ultra slim / leigthweight ultrabook for presentations for 500$.
Laptops with workstation-class hardware are so heavy, loud and bulky, you won’t want to take them to a client and in my experience you can’t really work on them as efficiently as you can on a desktop. Hey Leonard, It depends what lacks the most in your performance. The i3 you have actually has quite reasonable single-core speed, so any viewport modifers and the likes, that are calculated on the CPU wont be noticeably faster on a R5 1600. Multi-Core Rendering speed of course is entirely different.
The R5 1600 will give you a Speed increase of about 3-4x here. Instead of going for a quadro, for the same price I would recommend getting a better GTX like the 1070 and additionally upgrading the CPU. Depending on your budget, If you are looking for the best possible multi-core speed, also in the viewport, go with a i7 8700K. Hi, I’m new on building own pc, I used to buy it. But now I need a strong pc.
I work with 3d modelling and rendering, I saw a computer with these specs. AMD RYZEN Threadriper 1950X (3.8GHz, 40MB Cache, 32x Cores, Turbo 4.0GHz) CPU MSI X399 SLI PLUS TR4 DDR4 USB3.1 RYZEN Threapripper Gaming Motherboard MSI GEFORCE GT 1030 2GB OC EDITION DirectX12 Graphics Card 500W 80+ High Performance Power Supply 16GB QUAD Channel DDR4 2400MHz High Performance Gaming RAM with Heat Spreader 250GB SSD Upto 500MB/s + Speed Ultra-Fast Solid State Drive (OS DRIVE) EVETECH RUSH RGB Tempered Glass GAMING CASE 6x 120mm RGB Fans + Dual Tempered Glass Corsair Hydro H100i V2 240mm High Please, tell me if it is good for me I work in Achviz and interior design.
Sorry my bad English. Best regards. Thanks for this. I’m in process of starting a PC Build. I do motion graphics in After Effects and C4D – and building my Nuke compositing skills.
I will do the occasional editing in Premiere, and coloring in Resolve — finishing in 1080 mostly. The main purpose of my new system is to work on C4D + Redshift. I was thinking of the Intel i9 7940X at first but have switched my decision to build a Threadripper 1950X on x399 instead w/ 2 x 1080 TI’s (with room to expand later) and PCIe M2 SSD’s.
Any thoughts on that? I know that viewport performance for animation is helped by faster single clock speeds, so sometimes lower core counts are best but I feel having a strong CPU can’t be bad.