Which system is better for V-ray Next and 3ds Max?

[Digital Magic]

AMD Threadripper 3990X is a 64-core, 128-thread processor with a base clock of 2.9 GHz, a max boost of 4.3 GHz
GPU RTX 4090 24GB
256GB 3200Mhz RAM

AMD Threadripper 3970X is a 32 core, 64 thread processor with base clock of 3.7 GHz and 4.5 GHz Maximum Turbo Frequency
GPU RTX 4080 16GB
128GB 3200Mhz RAM

Which one is recommended for V-ray Next, Phoenix FD, Rayfire, Corona 7, Forest Pack 9 with 3ds Max?
The newest version I can run is 2022 because my license only went to 2022.
My Phoenix and Corona versions are perpetual before Chaos bought them out.

The 3990 appears to be twice the machine, but slower clock speed.
Both have NVME system drives with NVME and SSD media drives
Any help is appreciated.

[Muhammed_Hamed]

Hi Digital Magic

The first system with the the 3990X and 4090 is going to be faster in rendering for sure. But it should be twice the price if not more compared to the second system.
Are these workstations new or used?
If you don't use GPU rendering you can downgrade the GPU to a 4080 or even 4060ti 16 GB, you will not notice a difference in viewport performance.
The frequency of the CPUs is close you will not notice the difference, the first system has 2x more cores which is what you need.

Best,
Muhammed

[Digital Magic]

Hi and thank you very much. I bought the 3970 new and it wasn't as fast as I'd hoped so I worked hard and saved up a few more years and gathered the new parts to build the 3990 and finally just finished it.

But now I am realizing transfering my various licenses will be challenging so I was trying to decide whether to use the 3990 as just a render node or actual GUI workstation. I want to use it as a a full workstation but I have to figure out how to transfer my max license and various render plugins (I'm hoping my perpetual V-ray and Corona aren't going to be a issue)

[Vizioen]

Why choose an older CPU when you could have bought the 7970X for instance? Same benchmark as the 3990x but higher clockspeeds so better for single threaded performance, don't know how much you paid also but judging from the pricing I see that the 3990x is still more expensive than the 7970x. I'm asking because I was looking to build a new system with a 7970x.

Anyway I have the 3970x and the 3990x and use both. For regular tasks (so single threaded stuff, not rendering) the 3970x is a tiny tiny bit faster / snappier, but for rendering the 3990x is ofcourse better.

[Digital Magic]

Thank you and a good question and good points. Back when I realized I needed some more rendering power I looked at the current Threadripper systems and also the 3990x processor which was discontinued. I already had some extra new parts for another Threadripper build and decided I could build a 3990X Threadripper system for significantly less than a newer gen Threadripper.
So I bought a discontinued but new 3990X processor and started planning for my last system. It took a few years to finally get it together but now I am installing the software and sorting through all my licenses to hopefully get it fully operational.
Autodesk 3ds Max, V-ray Next, Anima 5, Corona 7 are my main hurdles since they all went to subscription so I have to get my perpetual licenses moved, then I will get the other plugins going. Autodesk has forced me to move to 2022 so that has been an issue as well.

Might not have been the best choice but at the time my weary brain decided the new Threadrippers were a lot more than going with the older 3990.
I wish I'd just bougt at 3990 originally instead of 3970 but I had no idea what to expect. So now I end up with both.
So I end up with some 3rd gen threadrippers plus some exra new parts (cooler, Motherboard) should one of them fail. I intend this to be my last upgrade and never have to deal with all these licenses and hardware again for the remaining time I'm doing this stuff.