Render Hardware: Intel i7 970 with 6 cores or 2 AMD Opteron Quadcore?

[Robert1977]

Dear users,

I have heard by a colleague that the i7 970 processor with 6 cores accelerates the rendering with vray much more then the pure processor speed in GHz. Is that true? Calculated together the tact rate with the number of cores the amd opteron quadcore with dual cpus on the board should be faster than the i7 970 with 6 cores on a single processor. Is vray designed for i7 or can i just count together the number of cores multiplied with the Gigahertz tactrate?

Best regards

Robert

[3DMK]

Just remember that VRAY is built very well to use every last bit of processor power no matter what your machine, & is faster with hyper threading on as well. 3ds max isn't built well for multi-core machines, most things max does only use one core, so core speed can become an issue.

I find the i7 great because I have 2 bios setup so I can run the CPU overclocked & hyper threading off for modeling, giving me a faster core speed for modeling tasks & when I do a final HR render I boot up with HT on & I have 12 cores out redering in vray.

Hope this helps

[Robert1977]

Thank you for sharing your information. What I found for the viewport of 3ds max is, that is is accelerating the framerate a lot if you can use a quadro fx graphics card, because it can then use the 3ds max performance driver by nvidia, which lets max run the viewport much faster than pure opengl or directx. but of course this doesnt' accelerating rendering out images.
For me the cpu would have to do mostly with rendering, so I think about amd opteron, since there i have 8 cores (2 quadcores) and 16 threads (hyperthreading) built on a mainboard while the i7 970 has 6 cores and 12 threads with hyperthreading on a single cpu per mainboard. But you are right, the i7 970 has the higher clock rate which might speed up calculations in max.

Probably both systems are similar concerning the render speed:

1 cpu Intel i7 970 with 6 cores, 12 threads: 6 x 3,2 GHz = 19,2 Ghz, overclocking: 6 x 3,46GHz = 20,76
2 amd opteron quadcore 2,8 GHz: 8 x 2,8 GHz = 22,4

or there are other factors like bus speed, cache etc.

[Inaxis]

No doubt that i7 will win. These Opterons unfortunately are quite outdated... If you wait a few month there will be some decent upgrades in the Opteron line. Let's hope that AMD can offer some competitive processors against Intel.
Right now the new i7 processors especially the Sandy Bridge cores are unbeatable in rendering speed. Not to mention the price/speed ratio. The i7 970 is a Gulftown core processor which is more than one year old and its performance is side by side with a quadcore i7 2600. I have to tell you that you can easily reach a 4,5 GHz core speed with a better aircooler.

[Robert1977]

That sounds good, thanks for the information. So which i7 processor you would recommend to me? Is there a specific model? As far as I understood you a modern quadcore is faster than the one year old i7 970 with six cores?

Cheers

Robert

[Six8]

^^
i7 2600K

[Robert1977]

The core i7 980x seems to be even faster :

http://www.pc-max.de/artikel/prozessoren/sandy-bridge-intel-core-i5-2500k-und-core-i7-2600k/7711

I don't understand now why the i7 970 is twice the price of the i7 2600k.

[Six8]

It is faster but not enough to justify the extra cost over the 2600K, at least for me.

[Robert1977]

thats right. cool that the cheaper chip is faster than the i970. one last question, how do the xeon processors perform, would you purchase a workstation or server with xeons for render jobs or is the core i7 also better?

[Six8]

I haven't looked at xeons in a while but I think the cost/performance ratio is probably better with a 2600K.

[arobbert]

I don't see much evidence to support the 2600 being faster than a 970. I found a few instances when it was as fast, due to very high over clocking. Over all the 970 does better in the benchmarks I've found (see below). There's no doubt that the 2600K is a great value and does very well for the price and if the money saved will allow important upgrades to other components not otherwise possible I think it's a good way to go. If you can afford to spend more on the processor I would go straight for a 990X which you can OC easily. I wouldn't do this at the expense of other important components though.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

http://randomcontrol.com/index.php?o...=140&benchid=1

http://www.cbscores.com/

[RobPhoboS]

Although I'm using Maya, I guess this is still relevant (perhaps a new section to the forums for hardware?), I'm torn about what kind of system to build next.
And after doing some reading I think AMD are probably out of my choice now (although I'd still like to see how their 6 & 8 cores perform with vray)...
but it's probably between the SandyBridge 2600 overclocked to 4.5Ghz with water cooling & the i7 Gulftown 980, (watercooled) but I don't know how much I can overclock it ?

It would be nice if there were more dual board options, rather than just the 'server' priced stuff.

[krassi]

well i actually have an 970 which runs stable for a week in a row 24/7 rendering on 4ghz or max 4,2ghz.. well its the best bang for the bug and is faster than a 8core xeon at 3,2 ghz.. oh and its air cooled!

3,46 ghz haha dude, this proz can do much much more and shoot rockets and cook coffee at the same time

so i can highly recommend it!

[RobPhoboS]

Cool, well it'll either be one of those two.
Just can't punish my laptop any more for rendering, poor thing.

[Morbid Angel]

Here is what I was faced recently:
I have a dual xeon 5650 12 core work station, totaling of 31.5 ghz. I was looking to add to that render power, where I found that this single work station was able to turn around some heavy frames in a reasonable amount of time.

I have first considered another work station of this kind, however the price for such beast is around $5k usd - I would get same 31.5 ghz.
I have looked at the i990x extreme, I have to add that it was an extreme cpu which has an unlocked multiplier (its important, other cpus at lower cost do not have unlocked mul, you wont be able to over clock them) and 6 cores as mentioned in some posts here already has potential to be over clocked significantly. However the deterring factor was its price which was over $1k.

I ended up going with 3 separate work stations each having a i7 2600k cpu. The cpu it self has also a big over clocking potential. I have over clocked each of the workstations to 5.0Ghz on water cooling successfully and the total price for each computer was less then $1k, that is the cpu, case, and everything else but the video card.
Each of these machines matches my xeon's ghz power under overclock and in some cases outperforms it, since 12 cores at 2.6 ghz each and 8 cores at 5 hz each is a big difference on core per core. The i7 2600k has 4 physical and 8 logical hyper-threaded threads, but even with that it outperforms the xeon.

I have been very happy with this decision as I was able to acquire 3 times the power of my xeon with only spending $2,8k total.

Hope that helps in your decision.