I’m about to buy new hardware, mainly to get a better experience with the interactive render. Like the workflow of seeing the real deal. Now it takes a couple of seconds for each update interval which is pretty annoying.
I have a budget of approx $2000 which include CPU, GPU, ram and motherboard. I’m a bit worried that it won’t make a big difference though. Maybe you can share your hardware setup that you’re satisfied within that price range?
My setup is very old and everything will be better no matter what. But I’m not in need of this upgrade unless the interactive render won’t be better lol
What do you currently have, hardware wise? That will help people comment on whether the set ups they post will lead to better render times/faster IR (they go hand in hand). You can also use the Benchmark results for reference, since final render time is affected in much the same way as IR is (ie faster final renders in benchmark = faster IR, in about the same proportion), see Benchmark Results | Corona Renderer and look up your current CPU and one you are considering purchasing.
With that budget I think a 7950x oriented build will probably be the way to go for you. Top notch single threaded and really high multi threaded performance combined in one package. I think it should fit the bill as well.
Not that it matters for rendering performance (it does for viewport though) but given that you are on a GPU with 1GB of VRAM I think upgrading to something old(er) you can get for real cheap like a 980ti would still be an upgrade plus you’d get the ability to use the fast preview denoiser during IR - which can be quite handy.
The i7 930 as cool as it was back in the day will sort of be orders of magnitude slower than something like a 7950x you can get today. As Tom said, just looking at the benchmark numbers should give you a much better idea of how one CPU stacks against another.
Thanks a lot for your answer! Much appreciated! I’ll look into your suggestions further!
Been looking at the benchmarks shown and at least the first 50+ pages seem to use top-of-the-line (read expensive) products
A handy tip for the Benchmark results is you can search for a particular processor, e.g. one you are considering purchasing. Then you can compare its results to whatever your current machine gets, to see how much of an improvement that particular CPU would offer.
Here comes the specifications. These parts are from approx 2012 so they’ve served me well