threadripper 2990wx viewport performance

[donaldbrodie]

Hi, I am thinking about getting one of these CPU’s but just wondering what the viewport performance was like in max with heavy scenes. Currently I am on a dual Xeon e52630v3 and the performance is so bad that it is pretty unusable which I think is down the slow CPU speed.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers.

[jacksc02]

viewport speed is down to GPU and not CPU.
What GPU have you got in your xeon machine?

[donaldbrodie]

Hey thanks for the reply. I don’t think the viewport performance is down to gpu. In my experience the gpu has little impact on the viewport. I might be wrong thou.

I am currently using a Quadro P4000 which I have used before in a overclocked 7900k and the performance was good.

Just don’t want to buy a 2990wx only to find out that I get like 1 FPS in certain scenes.

thanks

[Morne]

as Chris said, viewport performance is mostly dependant on your GPU

[Alex_M]

What exactly is a "heavy scene"? An example would be nice. Anyways, I've not noticed any slowdowns with my Threadripper 1950x on scenes with ~10 mil polys. I rarely work on scenes with more polys since I use vray proxies for the high poly stuff. I'm also using a GTX 1080ti but to be fair a cheaper card like 1070 should be more than enough for the viewport.

[donaldbrodie]

Hi, heavy to me would be about 20 million polys. Interesting that everyone says that the viewport is GPU dependent. I have a old i5 2500k @4.6ghz with a GTX680 that totally outperforms a dual Xeon with a Quadro card.

At the end of the day would you recommend the threadripper 2990wx or instead maybe opt for a intel that tend to run at a higher clock speed?

[piotrus3333]

CPU plays a big role here (viewport). we are building some new boxes soon and threadrippers are farm material only. 3ds max does a lot of single core work so overclocked i7s are still resonable idea.
on the other hand somebody here compared TR with something faster from intel in various tasks in max and results were quite surprising for me.

[donaldbrodie]

Hi piotrus,

When you say surprising do you mean in a good way for TR or lagging behind Intel. Was it the 2990wx being compared?

[piotrus3333]

2990wx wasnt that slow. serch on the forum, somebody put some effort in testing.
I will still recommend fast clock intel for workstations but everybody have different needs after all.

[themaxxer]

I also say that viewport performance is a GPU thing, BUT I am also not so sure anymore, because I have some old computer here with a i7 and a onboard graphic card and the performance is not that bad when working... I am surprised because I use a GTX 1080 and I have so many slowdowns in viewports... so I can confirm, that the viewport performance in max is not only GPU related, there hae to other processes that are involved.

best regards
themaxxer

[Muhammed_Hamed]

Big part of viewport calculations relies on single threaded performance of your CPU and many modifiers, tools and commands in Max uses only one thread of your CPU.
Xeons have bad single threaded performance, except for some of the recent high end skylake gold models, which are not cheap at all
Your current processor Turbos up to 3.2 GHz only when one or 2 cores are in use, but if under load, it will max at 2.6 or 2.7 GHz which is very slow.
the 2990wx turbos up to 4.2 GHz, so you should be fine, but I would recommend a good board like the Meg Creation and good cooling, to manually OC this CPU to 3.7 GHz or so
So you make sure that frequency doesn't drop when more cores are being used.

[Alex_M]

Manual overclocking is not really needed anymore on 2nd gen Ryzen CPUs, including Threadripper 2990WX. These new Ryzen CPU are very intelligent and boost all cores as high as possible if cooling solution and the power delivery of the motherboard allows it. You just enable PBO (Precision Boost Overdrive) in BIOS and everything is taken care of. It's that simple and you don't need to waste time fiddling with settings for hours or risking messing up something. PBO even increases single core performance better than manual overclocking since you are not fixing all cores at a particular frequency but rather let the CPU choose which is the best performing core and boost it as high as it can. Anyways, with or without PBO, the single core performance of Threadripper 2 (2990WX, 2950X etc.) is better than i9 7980XE.

Check out these graphs:

[Muhammed_Hamed]

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[Alex_M]

PBO is not a good idea for rendering.
Not only you are voiding your CPU and Motherboard warranties on using PBO, but like any other Auto OC features that has been around since 2012, it pushes your core voltage up to 1.45 and 1.5
After few minutes, your VRMs will be melting, so frequency will still drop to base clock or you will crash

Maybe you're not that well informed about PBO. It is actually advertised by AMD themselves in place of manual OC in case you want to push your system further than factory operation. You think they will advertise it if it will melt your PC? Also, there's no real problem for Threadripper getting 1.45 Volts as long as it's on 1-2 cores and for short periods of time. It will throttle the voltage back to lower values as soon as PBO detects increased heat or more cores under load. PBO even communicates with your motherboard to understand how much extra VRM current capacity (TDC) it can provide so it won't "melt" your VRMs. But if you are doing manual overclocking then I agree, pumping 1.45-1.5V is not a good idea because when you load all cores the temps will skyrocket.

And yes, traditional manual overclock DOES void your warranty too since it, and I quote AMD, "enables operation of the processor outside of specifications and in excess of factory settings". Don't believe me, check AMD's warranty page (Step2 at the bottom). If you botch your manual OC, you will get burn marks/deformation on your CPU and your warranty is void. You really think AMD will void your warranty with automatic PBO overclocking but not with manual overclocking where a ton of things might go wrong if you don't know what you're doing? Once they find burn marks/deformation on your chip REGARDLESS of the reason (manual OC included), they will decline your warranty.

Nope! OC doesn't void your warranty(unless you intentionally fry your chip)

Well duh! But when you DO fry your chip because of incompetent manual OC, then your warranty is void (Step 2 at the bottom).

Also, no need to push your hardware to its limits. To achieve 3.7 or 3.8 like what I mentioned above it is very simple and takes few seconds to figure out.
You only need to use xmp profile for your RAM, then set ratio to 38 and Core voltage to 1.225 or so
4.1 and 4.2 GHz will take more time to make sure it is stable, but you don't need to. 3.8 GHz should be good enough single core performance

Why settle for low 3.7-3.8 Ghz fixed clock speed when PBO will boost single core/thread loads way above that - like 4.2Ghz and more, giving you essentially 7980XE single core/thread speeds (not overclocked)?

This is not how PBO works. It pushes all cores as high as it could just like manual OC
And there is nothing wrong with pushing all cores to specific frequency. With PBO or manual OC, you will be at low frequency at idle and will only go higher whenever needed.

Yes, IT IS how PBO works. It pushes the LOADED cores (be it 1 or all 32 of them) as high as possible until a thermal or a current limit is hit. All automatically for you. Again, you can refer to AMD's own article on PBO.

Without PBO/OC, the 7980xe can reach up to 4.4 GHz with Max turbo boost compared to 4.2 GHz with XFR for the 2990wx
With OC, the 7980xe can reach 4.4 GHz at worst case, and scores nearly 200 on cinebench
I've used this CPU many times and the average chip can reach 4.5 to 4.6 GHz, scoring over 200 single core and 4500 multi core on Cinebench
good chips can go up to 4.8 GHz scoring 215 single core and 4800 multi core .. Bad chips can reach 4.4 Ghz like what I mentioned above

I don't own a 7980XE CPU so I can't comment from experience but that's a bit hard for me to believe after reading/watching numerous 7980XE reviews... Good luck sustaining 4.4 - 4.8 Ghz on all cores for more than a few minutes of rendering without using an expensive custom water loop or a chiller. No way in hell you can run it at these speed for longer rendering sessions with an air cooler or an AIO water cooler. After a couple of minutes 7980XE will reach 100*C and throttle right back at sub 3 Ghz clocks. You would also likely need to install a fan blowing at the VRMs. This CPU pulls ~500 Watts at 4.4 Ghz on all cores. Good luck finding a cooler that can dissipate that kind of heat. Sure, you can make it run at 4.5-4.6 Ghz for short tests which typically run for a few seconds like Cinebench, Vray benchmark etc, but not with real world rendering scenarios where the CPU is pegged at 100% for minutes and even hours. 4.2 Ghz is probably the highest overclock I would recommend for a 7980XE if you're using it for rendering. Just 10 minutes of sustained full core load at only 4Ghz sends 7980XE at 82*C. Running a CPU over 85*C for a long period of time is not recommended.

[Muhammed_Hamed]

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