Fast but economic workstation needed

[oluv]

Beside my official work i sometimes get external render jobs from architects. Meanwhile i was still able to use my 7 year old dell xps notebook for this, it has a dualcore pentium with 2,33ghz overclockable to 3ghz and it did the job really well, but my computer at work which is a dual xeon E5-2630 with 12 cores is about 20 times faster on particular renderings, which makes me quite sad. i cannot wait 12 hours for a single rendering anymore if i could have it in 30 minutes.
I am not interested in cloud-rendering services, but would like an own machine that is still affordable but also quite quick.

What made me think was when I tested some other computers at our office for speed and noticed that their quadcore single CPU was rendering nearly as fast as my dual hexa core. A i7-3770K @3.5 Ghz was maybe 10-15% slower than my machine.

Is there a way to speed up the whole thing even more without spending a fortune? Ca a i7-3770-type cpu be used in dual mode, or are the Xeons rather meant for this?

I am no hardware expert, but some tips for particular CPUs that really do well with Vray are welcome!

btw. i would be willing to spend about 2000€ for a new workstation (german prices, not sure how much those translate to US-prices where everything seems much cheaper)
max. for the whole computer 3000€ including GFX card and harddisks etc, but I am mainly interested which motherboard and which CPUs are best regarding my needs.

Thanks a lot to anyone who can help!

Best regards, Olaf

[DanielBrew]

Have a look at http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
It should give you a rough idea of the comparative speed of processors.

And yes, only Xeons can be used in multiprocessor configurations.

[jujubee]

I dug this site the last time I looked:
http://pcpartpicker.com/

Granted, most of it is oriented towards the gaming community.
Please post your findings!

[oluv]

Have a look at http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
It should give you a rough idea of the comparative speed of processors.

And yes, only Xeons can be used in multiprocessor configurations.

thanks for this list, which is interesting.
according to this list, indeed my E5-2630 xeon has only 8,907 points, while the i7-3770K reaches 9,650 points. but i don't understand why even 2 xeons seem to be hardly faster than a single core i7.

[AlexP]

thanks for this list, which is interesting.
according to this list, indeed my E5-2630 xeon has only 8,907 points, while the i7-3770K reaches 9,650 points. but i don't understand why even 2 xeons seem to be hardly faster than a single core i7.

I think these benchmarks are only on a single chip? not using dual Xeons.

Someone correct me if Im wrong. Im also using these graphs to help pick a new home workstation

[DanielBrew]

I think these benchmarks are only on a single chip? not using dual Xeons.

Someone correct me if Im wrong. Im also using these graphs to help pick a new home workstation

Yes, that is correct. There is another chart for multiprocessor systems here - http://www.cpubenchmark.net/multi_cpu.html

[stef.thomas]

For your budget you could get a overclockable 6-core (12 with hyperthreading) i7 cpu such as 4930k on the x79 platform. For a cheaper option go for Haswell 4770k on z87 motherboard. Check out www.pcfoo.com for some workstation configurations.

[baastyan]

I have just bought my new workstation few dasys ago, spending ca 2200 euro. I have been searching for the best solution for really long time and this is what I came out with:

CPU: Intel Core i7-3930K 3,2 GHz s. 2011 Box or i7-4930K they perform pretty much the same (I know - it is dissapointing)
cooling: Noctua NH-D14 SE2011
MB: MSI X79A-GD65 (8D)
GPU:GeForce GTX 780 EVGA 3GB 2xDVI&HDMI&DP (PCI-E) Superclocked ACX Cooler z NVIDIA GeForce Experience&trade
RAM: Corsair DDR3 2x 8GB 1600MHz CL10 Vengeance LP x4 (64GB in total)
SSD: Intel 2.5'' SSD/530 MLC 240 GB (Serial ATA 3) 7mm Single Pack


Did you already buy your machine?