Bang for buck

[glorybound]

What's the single best investment to get more speed. I think I am good on RAM (36Gb) and weak on GHz (2.67GHz). I upgraded to V-Ray 3, hoping to gain some speed, which I think I have. I guess, simply adding a machine would double the speed, but would faster processors be better. The question is, where to put the money to get the most bang for the buck. Intel Xeon X5650 @ 2.6GHz, 36.0GB RAM, NVIDIA GTX 970 - Windows 7 64-bit SP1 - V-Ray 3.0 - 3DS MAX Design 2015 - SSD Drive

[Deflaminis]

L2 cache and front side bus speed are also pretty important, at least used to be.

My supermicro server by itself out rendered 30 computers at one of the studios I contracted for. Yikes. Granted those weren't the best machines as they were made for game development, but their processors were as fast if not faster than mine @ 2.67ghz.

[Morne]

Don't forget to enable EMBREE in the system panel, that should cut times also

The nice thing about VRay 3 is that you don't need such crazy high subdivs to get things clean and fast

[dlparisi]

L2 cache and front side bus speed are also pretty important. My supermicro server by itself out rendered 30 computers at one of the studios I contracted for. Yikes. Granted those weren't the best machines as they were made for game development, but their processors were as fast if not faster than mine @ 2.67ghz.

Honestly, that seems hard to believe. Did they have enough ram? I'd expect a difference but for one machine to outrender 30 machines seems far fetched.

[Deflaminis]

Regarding the 30 machines, this was about four years ago using vray 2. I think the problem was the dynamic RAM setting, which caused their computers to take forever to unload the RAM or they unable to unload the RAM. Sometimes RAM above a certain amount is unstable and I wonder if this was their problem.

I like mb/chip for best upgrade. I am seeing links saying mb isn't important though for real time stuff, so... ymmv.

[Joelaff]

Bobby,

I would look at building yourself a 5960x machine. If you are able to build it yourself you can pick all top quality components, rather than whatever is cheapest (which is what most hardware vendors select). Get a good PSU and a good cooler and you overclock it to 4.3 or better. This will render quite fast, and is the best bang for the buck right now. DR also works well for large still (which I think is most of what you do, no?).

[dlparisi]

Bobby,

I would look at building yourself a 5960x machine. If you are able to build it yourself you can pick all top quality components, rather than whatever is cheapest (which is what most hardware vendors select). Get a good PSU and a good cooler and you overclock it to 4.3 or better. This will render quite fast, and is the best bang for the buck right now. DR also works well for large still (which I think is most of what you do, no?).

I think a 5820x system is a much better bang-for-the-buck value compared to the 5960. The 5960 (8 cores) will certainly render faster than the 5820 (6 cores), probably about 25%, but costs about 3x as much. Plus the per core speed is a little bit faster on the 5820 at 3.3 ghz compared to 3.0 on the 5960 so single threaded operations will be a bit faster on the 5820 (forgetting about overclocking at the moment). You can build a decent 5820 system for about $1000 dpending on how much ram you want to throw in it but your basically lookiing at an additional $650 to bump it up to the 5690.

[glorybound]

I used to build PC's, about 12 years ago. I would build several a month for the company I worked for, but its been awhile. My fear now would be buying an expensive part and frying it or something. Yes, I do stills. I paid $1,200 for my current PC, which was used and I have had it for six months. It has served me well, but it's slowing me down. I always look over at BOXX, but it just seems like you pay a whole lot for a standard PC.

[dlparisi]

My fear now would be buying an expensive part and frying it or something.

Did you fry a lot of them when you built them before? It's pretty simple, really. I've built about a dozen machines in the past few years - no problems whatsoever. Of course my anecdotes don't really help you out if you have a problem though.

[Joelaff]

I think a 5820x system is a much better bang-for-the-buck value compared to the 5960. The 5960 (8 cores) will certainly render faster than the 5820 (6 cores), probably about 25%, but costs about 3x as much. Plus the per core speed is a little bit faster on the 5820 at 3.3 ghz compared to 3.0 on the 5960 so single threaded operations will be a bit faster on the 5820 (forgetting about overclocking at the moment). You can build a decent 5820 system for about $1000 dpending on how much ram you want to throw in it but your basically lookiing at an additional $650 to bump it up to the 5690.

Hmm... It may very well be more bang for the buck.

How overclockable is the 5820k (is there an x model?)

I am a big fan of overclocking. We have been use overclocked render nodes in the farm for years without "wearing out" or degrading the life of the chip (at least not within its useful lifespan of about 3-5 years tops). In fact, a few of the nodes have really been abused, with temps hovering right at 95-98C for days on end. (That is crazy hot. The chips self throttle at 100C. It is much harder to cool rackmount machines, and a single loop of watercooling for all the render nodes is a great idea, until it fails and you lose your entire farm.) They run fine years later.

Once you get your overclock stable there is no reason not to overclock. If that reason is "it voids your warranty" then maybe you should build your own machine without such an absurd policy...

[Syclone1]

Hmm... It may very well be more bang for the buck.

How overclockable is the 5820k (is there an x model?)

I am a big fan of overclocking. We have been use overclocked render nodes in the farm for years without "wearing out" or degrading the life of the chip (at least not within its useful lifespan of about 3-5 years tops). In fact, a few of the nodes have really been abused, with temps hovering right at 95-98C for days on end. (That is crazy hot. The chips self throttle at 100C. It is much harder to cool rackmount machines, and a single loop of watercooling for all the render nodes is a great idea, until it fails and you lose your entire farm.) They run fine years later.

Once you get your overclock stable there is no reason not to overclock. If that reason is "it voids your warranty" then maybe you should build your own machine without such an absurd policy...

Im running a 5820K and although I haven't pushed it further I have it running stable at 4.2Ghz @ 59C-64C (air cooled) under 100% load while rendering.

[glorybound]

I remember frying one motherboard.

Did you fry a lot of them when you built them before? It's pretty simple, really. I've built about a dozen machines in the past few years - no problems whatsoever. Of course my anecdotes don't really help you out if you have a problem though.

[dlparisi]

There's no x version of the 5820, it's just 5820k. AFAIK the k series all feature unlock multipliers so it's just as OC'able as the 5960x depending on the chipset you go with.

[Joelaff]

That is likely the best bang for the buck for a workstation. I think once you factor in the other costs of mobo, a good PSU, RAM, OS, drive, vid card, etc. then the 5960x is where it's at for render nodes.

[dlparisi]

I would think just the opposite as my time is worth a lot more than the render node's time. If I'm sitting waiting for something to finish on my workstation it's delaying me and costing me money because I can't do anything else . If the renderfarm is taking a little longer to finish a animation and I can get onto something else so be it. Of course DR rendering gets fuzzy because speed everywhere helps for that. Regardless, I don't think either is a bad choice. The extra $ for the 5960 isn't really that big of deal compared to the performance you get.