Which computer advice?

[Digital Magic]

EDIT
I am now looking at a desktop instead:
Here are two possibilites:


3.3 GHz Intel Core i9-9820X Ten-Core
32GB of 2666 MHz DDR4 RAM (128GB Max)
512GB NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD
NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB GDDR6)


3.6 GHz Intel Core i9-9900K Eight-Core
32GB DDR4 266MHz (64GB Max)
512GB NVMe SSD + 2TB HDD
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (11GB GDDR6)


Plan now is to use new computer as 3ds max workstation and sometimes as a render node
I will be using V-ray 3.X, Phoenix FD4, Mental Ray, and scan line render. 3ds Max 2017 and 2020.

Thoughts?



--------------------------------------------------------------
OLD POST

I am trying to set up a small render farm. I bought a notebook on sale to use only as a render node but havent opened it yet. Specs are:

• 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7-9750H Six-Core
• 16GB DDR4 | 512GB NVMe PCIe SSD
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 (4GB GDDR5)

I am wondering if I need to spend $400 more and get this one instead:

• 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7-9750H Six-Core
• 16GB DDR4 RAM | 1TB PCIe M.2 SSD
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 GPU (6GB)

Or if I need to bite the bullet and spend a lot more and get an RTX 2080.
Is an i9 preferable to an i7?

The plan is to use whatever new computer I get as a render node. The main computer running 3ds Max has 64GB RAM. I will be using V-ray 3.X, Phoenix FD4, Mental Ray, and scan line render. 3ds Max 2017 and 2020.

I am mainly trying to speed up my v-ray renders and Phoenix because they take a really really long time.
A few years from now I will likely upgrade to V-ray Next but it will be a few years so an RTX card may not be worth it.

Thank you in advance for any help.

[glorybound]

I am looking at the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X 64 Core. It is $4000, but if it is faster than 2 Titan RTX's then it is actually not bad.

[Digital Magic]

Thank you. I realize that to get a good rendering machine I will need to spend $4000 or more but at the present time I am just trying to improve my current situation economically.

My main machine running 3ds Max is either i7 with 64GB RAM GeForce 780 (3GB) or i7 with 64GB RAM Quadro M5000M (8GB)

render nodes will be
(1) whichever new computer I decide +
(2) i7 16GB RAM Quadro M200 (2GB)
and (3) MacPro 2x Xeon 20GB RAM Quadro 4000 (2GB)

Certainly not a powerhouse farm but should be better than just one computer rendering for weeks at a time.
I am assuming that with a machine listed with your specs renders are actually manageable with one machine?
If so, such as machine may be on my wishlist in the future if I end up doing much 3d.

[glorybound]

I purchased a Render BOXX Pro, thinking I would gain something, but I didn’t. It helped with grayscale proofs, but once I started adding 4K textures, it slowed me down. I think putting all my eggs in one basket was a good decision. I was up to 5 workstations, but when Chaos started charging for nodes, one mega machine made sense. Now, I do stills, so that makes a difference.

[Digital Magic]

Thanks again. I may have gone into this the wrong way. I already had several computers which I use for media production so it seemed like buying some extra render node licenses and trying to network them would be a good idea. So I also bought the extra notebook on sale to add a little extra grunt to the mix. But for $1000 node licenses and the $799 on the extra notebook maybe I should have put that towards one much better computer?
So maybe networking them all together won't help much?
I do mainly animation at 30fps which I often mix with live footage action.

[Karol.Osinski]

I would strongly suggest against buying notebook for rendering unless you REALLY need something mobile. I am on AERO 15 I7 7700HQ + GTX 1060 since two years and did many many renders on it. Most laptops simply can't deal with the heat produced by cpu and gpu together which quickly makes things to throttle and not perform as they should. My gpu fan recently started to make some dirty noises, on the top of being very loud in general.

Not to even mention that for the price of laptop you can get PC with almost double performance if you go smart about it.

[Digital Magic]

Thank you. Yeah seems a desktop would be a better choice to let sit for days rendering than a little laptop fighting heat with the fans going on high

[Digital Magic]

I am now looking at a desktop instead:
Here are two possibilites:


3.3 GHz Intel Core i9-9820X Ten-Core
32GB of 2666 MHz DDR4 RAM (128GB Max)
512GB NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD
NVIDIA Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB GDDR6)


3.6 GHz Intel Core i9-9900K Eight-Core
32GB DDR4 266MHz (64GB Max)
512GB NVMe SSD + 2TB HDD
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (11GB GDDR6)


Plan now is to use new computer as 3ds max workstation and sometimes as a render node
I will be using V-ray 3.7, Phoenix FD4, Mental Ray, and scan line render. 3ds Max 2017 and 2020.

Thoughts?

[joconnell]

Quadro is a waste of your money for 3dsmax, get an amd ryzen system with something like a 3900, get 64 gigs of ram, rtx2080ti is great but expensive, new cards are due to be announced in march so I'd nearly hold off on gpu for now. If you're going cpu rendering then this doesn't stop you either way. For a cheap gfx card to hold you over, the evga 2060 ko card can sometimes come with a 2080 chip which failed the standards to be sold as a 2080 but is still way faster than a 2060 - it's a lottery but it's a 300 dollar card that could perform higher than what you're paying for!

Ryzen machines are best for vray rendering, intel cpus may offer some advantage for phoenix sims (can we get a phoenix benchmark going?) and you'll need lots of ram for high quality phoenix sims. I'd go ryzen and high ram first, do gpu later.

What type of scenes are you going to be doing so we can gauge memory overheads?

[Digital Magic]

Thank you very much. I didn't realize new GPUs were being announced in march. Maybe current cards will drop some in price?
I am looking at AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8GHz with 64GB of 3200Mhz RAM.

I plan on doing long V-ray renders. My current i7 notebook with 64GB RAM and 8GB GPU was taking several weeks on renders.
I am doing TGA sequences at 30fps for video projects (1080p). Car driving scenes. V-ray 3.7

I do plan on doing Phoenix FD 4 stuff too, but not priority. So it sounds like Ryzen is best for me.
So maybe get an RTX 2060 and then direct swap it out for something better?

Most of the systems I am looking at max out at 64GB possible. Do I need 128GB?

[joconnell]

For sims or for really gigantic scenes (think marvel stuff) you're up around 128 gb but in companies that have hundreds of render nodes. If you're rendering scenes that need 128gb of ram then that's pretty heavy stuff. If you're rendering animations of those type of scenes then it depends on who your clients are - if the budget is there then great, if not then I'd look at ways of cutting down your scenes so you can render shots on smaller resources. Phoenix is very ram hungry during the sim stage but less so for rendering. See can you get a machine with at least 4 ram slots, 2 of which you can put 32gb dimms into for 64 gb with the option to expand.

Normally I'd only invest in things when there's a deadline with a budget behind it!

[Digital Magic]

Thank you again. I'm small time with low budget clients. I'll not be doing any Marvel type stuff but your info helps me understand scale. My render farm once done will be a measly 4 PCs with the most powerful being the new PC I am trying to decide on now.
Looks like getting a 2060 for now will save $ then upgrade later.
I see the MB can accept 128GB RAM so I am going to get 32GB pieces like you said so I can end up with 128.

I'm grateful for all the help. The end result will be a better solution than originally considered

[Vipera]

I have two custom made computers Intel i7-6950X 10-core and AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X 24-Core. I made a few benchmarks. V-Ray benchmark shows 12796 vs 36562. PassMark benchmark shows 19918 vs 46934. As you can see Ryzen is more than 2 times faster than i7 in two benchmarks. But when I render in 3ds Max using V-Ray 3.60 or V-Ray Next my i7 renders faster than Ryzen. The scene is pretty simple. It is a waterscape with the ship. There is a displacement for the water. Render time in 3dsMax2018 Vray 3.60 (bucket render) on i7 is 4:17 min, on Ryzen 7:20 min for resolution 1280x720. 3840x2160 resolution is even worse - 23 min vs 1h10mins. I am disappointed.

UPDATE. I made some research and have found that one parameter (Min shading rate) in render settings significantly increases render time on AMD CPU what doesn't make such impact on Intel CPU. If I switch to Progressive render on AMD CPU and keep 'Min shading rate' as default 6 then render time is better.

UPDATE #2. I made render test on my old i7-3930K 6-core machine, which is almost twiсe slower than i7-6950X. This is pity but it is faster than Ryzen 24-core CPU in this particular render task. Now I have next chart for 3840x2160 frame render time:
i7-6950X 10-core - 23 min
i7-3930K 6-core - 44 min
Ryzen TR 3960X 24-core - 1h 10 min

V-Ray developers definitely have to look at this problem with the 'Min shading rate' parameter in render settings for AMD processors.

IMORTANT UPDATE

I figured out the problem. Slow render happens because of FusionWorks Renderer from Aftereworks (Afterburn and Fumefx plugins).
FusionWorks Renderer
ON
i7-6950X render time: 2m 51s
Ryzen 3960X render time: 5m 51s

OFF
i7-6950X render time: 1m 53s
Ryzen 3960X render time: 1m 11s

[dlparisi]

I have two custom made computers Intel i7-6950X 10-core and AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X 24-Core. I made a few benchmarks. V-Ray benchmark shows 12796 vs 36562. PassMark benchmark shows 19918 vs 46934. As you can see Ryzen is more than 2 times faster than i7 in two benchmarks. But when I render in 3ds Max using V-Ray 3.60 or V-Ray Next my i7 renders faster than Ryzen. The scene is pretty simple. It is a waterscape with the ship. There is a displacement for the water. Render time in 3dsMax2018 Vray 3.60 on i7 is 4:17, on Ryzen 7:20. I am disappointed.

That sucks. Is the TR hitting 100% during rendering? Anyone else out there got real world comparisons?

[Vipera]

That sucks. Is the TR hitting 100% during rendering? Anyone else out there got real world comparisons?

Yes, Threadripper uses all cores at 100%. Please check my updated original post about 'Min shade rate' parameter in render settings which affects render time significantly on AMD CPU.