hardware upgrade

[Tom Valks]

Hi all,

I have a hardware question, I want to be able to render faster, currently i use my
I7 3770 quad core 8gb memory on windows 7 64 bit.

I have 2 options

option 1 2 x I7 3930 hexacore hyper threading 3,2 oc 4,1 ghrz 16 gb ddr3
cost euro 3200,-

option 2 3 x AMDFX 8350 8 core 16 gb ddr3
cost euro 2400,-

I would use my I7 pc as main machine, materials etc. on my nas, and the new pc's
as render nodes.

My question is:

- should i spent the extra money for option 1 or use 3 pcs option 2?
-What works better for VRay on Rhino , AMD or INTEL?
- is it possible to make a rough estimation of how much render I would be saving?

Thanks in advance!

Tom

[Micha]

I would use the fastest machine as main machine, because I don't use DR for smaller renderings, but it's great to get a quick render fast as possible. Also I try to keep the machine count low as possible, because power consumption and easier upgrade in the future. Also for animation calculation DR doesn't work so good (if the render time per frame is low), because a lot of time could be wasted for communication. A powerful single machine works better.

I'm not sure about the price of option 1. Your slave machines can be quite simple, cheapest graphic card, old hard disk, used components from old machines ... . Maybe you get option 1 cheaper.

During my last upgrade I looked at the Cinebench tables and compared the CB points. It's quite the same power relation like for Vray.

http://www.cbscores.com/index.php?sort=ogl&order=desc
http://www.legitreviews.com/amd-fx-8...review_2055/12

I found a CB score for the 8350 ... approx. 7 CB points. So we get:
Option 1 - 24 CB points (OCC)
Option 2 - 21 CB points

So, I would go with Option 1, but try to get it cheaper.