As indicated in the title, I'm going to build a new computer to use with both Daz Studio and Poser 11. **On Daz, I will be using mostly Iray, **and for Poser 11 I mostly use the Comic Book preview mode and Firefly (I'm starting to play with Superfly, but when I'm interested in realistic renders, I just go back to Iray because I'm already familiar with it).

I was holding out for the nVidia 1070 and 1080 cards, but, frankly, I've already waited 6 months and the new cards don't even work with Iray. So, enough is enough. I'm going to build a box based on the older, tried-and-true technology (video card will be 1-3 nvidia 960s or a pair of 970s). Which, of course, brings up the processor. I had pretty-much decided to go with a 6th gen i7, but while searching for pre-built systems, I came across the **AMD FX-8320. **

This made me pause. The AMD has 8 cores, whereas the Intel has 4 (yeah, I know there's an 8-Core i7 out there, but out of my price range -- unless someone has a good source for them?). Would extra cores provide a boost for rendering Open GL with Daz, or with Poser's Comic Book Mode (which is basically a render of the display/draw mode)? I've read a few times here in the forums that for the display mode in Poser, cores are more imporant. So would the 8-core AMD processor be better than the 4-core i7 processor? Or are my first instincts right to go with the new i7 platform?

Any thoughts or suggestions on this will be greatly appreciated!

Hi there

I would go with i7,but all depends on budget there

AMD FX range is not bad there,they're like or love multi threaded application,in rendering AMD CPU should be bit faster and in single threaded applications like is OpenGL there i7 can be faster,but all depends on how well application is optimized

Regarding the GPU,I would wait with purchase GTRX1070/1080 as right now CUDA is not optimized for lots of renderers(Octane 3 is still not compatible with GTX1070/1080) and I think most of the companies waiting on new CUDA Toolkit 8 due this most of SW is still not compatible

Regarding the GPU,I would go with 980Ti without the question or older 780 6GB,this GTX780 6GB is fast as my Titan X in rendering with IRAY or Superfly,I've done few tests

i7 platform is better for many reason,you can upgrade later on to Xeons,like I'm running E5 2683 V3 which is 14 cores/28 threads and this CPU is slow in single threaded apps but in rendering,this CPU will destroy my i7-5820k which is OC to 4.4GHz

There is lots of pros and cons,but you need to know what budget is for this custom build

Hope this helps

Thanks,Jura

Thanks for the input. I'll think about what you've said.

I'm just done waiting for nvidia to get it's act together regarding the CUDA comparability. I've waited more than 6 months for the new cards to come out and don't feel like waiting another 6.

Thanks again for the input. By the way, do you have any direct experience with whether the number of cores in the AMD chip would benefit me for the specific rendering requirements of Comic Book Preview mode or for Firefly?

mmitchell_houston posted at 12:00AM Tue, 28 June 2016 - #4273954

Thanks for the input. I'll think about what you've said.

I'm just done waiting for nvidia to get it's act together regarding the CUDA comparability. I've waited more than 6 months for the new cards to come out and don't feel like waiting another 6.

Thanks again for the input. By the way, do you have any direct experience with whether the number of cores in the AMD chip would benefit me for the specific rendering requirements of Comic Book Preview mode or for Firefly?

Hi there

What I know and what I've tested in IRAY and in FireFly and many other render engines,most of render engines love cores/threads and GHz,have look my old i7-4790k(4 cores/8 threads) which I've OC to 4.6GHz has been slower than my old X5670 which has been 4.2GHz and have 6 cores/12 threads

Comic Book Preview,I will need take have look and do few tests and then I will and can let you know there,I never used Comic Book preview,I do mostly use SuperFly or Firefly renders

Hope this helps

Thanks,Jura

FWIW, the GTX 980 Ti's just dropped 200 bucks in price. Week before last when I was looking, they were 650. Last week, they were 470. I had to buy one at that price. I also just bought a refurbed HP Z620 workstation with 2-2.6gz 8 Core Xeons and 64 gigs of ram. Even rendering on just CPU isn't too shabby. Nothing to get super excited about, but not too shabby ;).

Laurie

Check PCpartpicker for prices on the components.

The issue is not just the Processor but the Motherboards.

AMD Motherboards are lagging far behind Intel Motherboards. You are generally looking at PCIe2 vs. PCie3, Slow SATA, no M.2 location, etc.

For Iray (and Superfly, for that matter) the 980Ti is still the best bang for the buck. If you can find a 1080, and can get Iray Drivers for it, then it is a slight improvement over the 980Ti but I am not sure it is worth it yet.

Personally I would spend no more than half your Video Card Budget and get one or two 980Ti then hold out for the 1080Ti.

bhoins posted at 3:42PM Tue, 28 June 2016 - #4273993

The issue is not just the Processor but the Motherboards.

AMD Motherboards are lagging far behind Intel Motherboards. You are generally looking at PCIe2 vs. PCie3, Slow SATA, no M.2 location, etc.

For Iray (and Superfly, for that matter) the 980Ti is still the best bang for the buck. If you can find a 1080, and can get Iray Drivers for it, then it is a slight improvement over the 980Ti but I am not sure it is worth it yet.

Personally I would spend no more than half your Video Card Budget and get one or two 980Ti then hold out for the 1080Ti.

Hi there

On this I would agree,but newer AM3+ Motherboards supports M.2,SATA is still not the best,but still OK,unless you are do lots of transfers between the drives PCI-E 2.0 is bit slower than PCI-E 3.0,mainly in gaming,in rendering I'm not sure if it will make any difference

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Impact-of-PCI-E-Speed-on-Gaming-Performance-518/

And motherboards which supports M.2 are here few

http://techfrag.com/2016/02/01/usb-3-1-and-m-2-finally-make-their-way-to-the-socket-am3-motherboards/

http://www.asrock.com/mb/amd/fatal1ty%20990fx%20killer/

GTX1080 is still not supported by IRAY as CUDA Toolkit is not released and most of SW is still not support new CUDA and looks like new CUDA will be released sometimes in July/August and Otoy(Octane Render) have seems issues with new CUDA as is not working as should,due this I would get as you are said GTX980Ti without the questions,but GTX 780 6GB is still better card for money if you can find that card,I've compared this card to my Titan X and this 780 6GB has been very similar in rendering like my GTX Titan X

Hope this helps

Thanks,Jura

jura11 posted at 1:15PM Tue, 28 June 2016 - #4274001

bhoins posted at 3:42PM Tue, 28 June 2016 - #4273993

The issue is not just the Processor but the Motherboards.

AMD Motherboards are lagging far behind Intel Motherboards. You are generally looking at PCIe2 vs. PCie3, Slow SATA, no M.2 location, etc.

For Iray (and Superfly, for that matter) the 980Ti is still the best bang for the buck. If you can find a 1080, and can get Iray Drivers for it, then it is a slight improvement over the 980Ti but I am not sure it is worth it yet.

Personally I would spend no more than half your Video Card Budget and get one or two 980Ti then hold out for the 1080Ti.

Hi there

On this I would agree,but newer AM3+ Motherboards supports M.2,SATA is still not the best,but still OK,unless you are do lots of transfers between the drives PCI-E 2.0 is bit slower than PCI-E 3.0,mainly in gaming,in rendering I'm not sure if it will make any difference

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Impact-of-PCI-E-Speed-on-Gaming-Performance-518/

And motherboards which supports M.2 are here few

http://techfrag.com/2016/02/01/usb-3-1-and-m-2-finally-make-their-way-to-the-socket-am3-motherboards/

http://www.asrock.com/mb/amd/fatal1ty%20990fx%20killer/

GTX1080 is still not supported by IRAY as CUDA Toolkit is not released and most of SW is still not support new CUDA and looks like new CUDA will be released sometimes in July/August and Otoy(Octane Render) have seems issues with new CUDA as is not working as should,due this I would get as you are said GTX980Ti without the questions,but GTX 780 6GB is still better card for money if you can find that card,I've compared this card to my Titan X and this 780 6GB has been very similar in rendering like my GTX Titan X

Hope this helps

Thanks,Jura

You are looking at about an 8% to 10% hit between PCIe2 and PCIe3 for Iray, according to NVIDIA. And that presumes you have the same number of lanes. (Not even close with a high end board and new i7 Processor if you are using multiple cards.)

Note I am not saying you can't use an AMD board and AMD processor, just that for optimum performance they have fallen behind the Intel Boards.

Also note that Broadwell was not supposed to have a Quad Core (Skylark is not Broadwell) so you are comparing a minimum of 6 cores vs. the AMD 8. The AMD 8 core only has one FPU per two cores and while that doesn't matter, in general, for gaming, rendering is, usually, Floating Point math.

With the Iray 2015 that is in DS 4.9.2+ the 980Ti does outperform the 780Ti. It was one of the bug fixes in that build of Iray.

bhoins posted at 1:01AM Wed, 29 June 2016 - #4274025

jura11 posted at 1:15PM Tue, 28 June 2016 - #4274001

bhoins posted at 3:42PM Tue, 28 June 2016 - #4273993

The issue is not just the Processor but the Motherboards.

AMD Motherboards are lagging far behind Intel Motherboards. You are generally looking at PCIe2 vs. PCie3, Slow SATA, no M.2 location, etc.

For Iray (and Superfly, for that matter) the 980Ti is still the best bang for the buck. If you can find a 1080, and can get Iray Drivers for it, then it is a slight improvement over the 980Ti but I am not sure it is worth it yet.

Personally I would spend no more than half your Video Card Budget and get one or two 980Ti then hold out for the 1080Ti.

Hi there

On this I would agree,but newer AM3+ Motherboards supports M.2,SATA is still not the best,but still OK,unless you are do lots of transfers between the drives PCI-E 2.0 is bit slower than PCI-E 3.0,mainly in gaming,in rendering I'm not sure if it will make any difference

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Impact-of-PCI-E-Speed-on-Gaming-Performance-518/

And motherboards which supports M.2 are here few

http://techfrag.com/2016/02/01/usb-3-1-and-m-2-finally-make-their-way-to-the-socket-am3-motherboards/

http://www.asrock.com/mb/amd/fatal1ty%20990fx%20killer/

GTX1080 is still not supported by IRAY as CUDA Toolkit is not released and most of SW is still not support new CUDA and looks like new CUDA will be released sometimes in July/August and Otoy(Octane Render) have seems issues with new CUDA as is not working as should,due this I would get as you are said GTX980Ti without the questions,but GTX 780 6GB is still better card for money if you can find that card,I've compared this card to my Titan X and this 780 6GB has been very similar in rendering like my GTX Titan X

Hope this helps

Thanks,Jura

You are looking at about an 8% to 10% hit between PCIe2 and PCIe3 for Iray, according to NVIDIA. And that presumes you have the same number of lanes. (Not even close with a high end board and new i7 Processor if you are using multiple cards.)

Note I am not saying you can't use an AMD board and AMD processor, just that for optimum performance they have fallen behind the Intel Boards.

Also note that Broadwell was not supposed to have a Quad Core (Skylark is not Broadwell) so you are comparing a minimum of 6 cores vs. the AMD 8. The AMD 8 core only has one FPU per two cores and while that doesn't matter, in general, for gaming, rendering is, usually, Floating Point math.

With the Iray 2015 that is in DS 4.9.2+ the 980Ti does outperform the 780Ti. It was one of the bug fixes in that build of Iray.

Hi there

According to NVIDIA too,you can't run two different GPU on one system,I've run AMD and GTX Titan X with GTX780 and AMD R9 280X(AMD GPU has powered displays)

Regarding the speeds in rendering,8 to 10% impact on rendering is not bad,but still is there agree,yes I would recommend go with Intel,but if his budget doesn't allow,you need to have look for cheaper option at least,that's my view

I've went via few CPU through this year,from i7-920 OC to 4.4GHz,then X5670 OC to 4.2GHz,then i7-4790k OC to 4.6GHz,then i7-5820k 4.4GHz,then i7-5930k OC to 4.6Ghz.then finally I'm on Xeon E5-2683 V3,previous year I've went through the 12-15 CPU,I'm very fortunate have friends which are able to borrow me their CPU and Motherboards for testing as I do like test,when comes to AMD CPU,they're not bad,in rendering they're unbeatable in price point and performance which they offer,Intel i5 offer good performance in single core or in games,when comes to rendering they're poor

Regarding the Intel,they're went bonkers with last generation and PCI lanes on CPU,if you got i7-5820k then you have 28 PCI lanes and if you have 5960X or Xeon you have 40 PCI lanes

I would probably wait on AMD Zen which should offer better performance for good money,if its true some leaks,then I will be going with AMD as next because Intel is greedy as Nvidia is right now

I don't think he or I compared Skylake or Broadwell,those CPU are I think out the range for him,I would go with probably with i7-4790k or i7-6700k(Skylake) which would offer good performance or even I would go with X58 and upgrade there CPU to Xeon X5670 which can be OC to 4.2GHz easily,really depends what he wants

I do renders more in CPU renderers due this I've E5 2683 V3 which is 14 core/28 threads ad mainly I went with X99 as I can finally use 128GB RAM,currently I'm on 96GB as 32GB has been limiting factor for me,I don't do lots of renders in IRAY,rather in Poser Superfly or even in Blender

I've posted few months back my render results in Blender or Superfly,where GTX 780 hasn't been £1000 slower than Titan X,has been slower around 8% maybe less,but when you started to use SSS,then GTX 780 has been faster,I would check Blender forums too and you will see what I mean,there is bug in CUDA,not sure if this has been corrected in latest CUDA,we will see

Hope this helps

Thanks,Jura