Help me build a Blender box

[KevinL92]

Hi, I was planning on buying parts to build a new computer, it will be for Blender, but gaming too. I have three questions:

1 - My original plan was to get a 3770K as I was after a powerful CPU to decrease render time. But I recently decided that GPU rendering seems like the way to go. So I wouldn't need such a powerful CPU right? I could save some money and put it towards a video card right?

2 - Also what makes a video card good for GPU rendering? I currently have a GTX460SE and was planning on buying a GT640 (4GB) specifically for GPU rendering. It has 4x more memory and more cuda cores. Does that make it better at GPU rendering than the 460SE?

3 - Also, instead of buying the gt640 I might buy a good gaming card to replace my 460. Do you guys know any nvidia cards that are excellent value for money, great gaming cards, great for gpu rendering and has at the very least 4gb of memory. I'm uncertain as to which would be the best strategy, buy one card for gaming and one card for rendering, or get one card that does both. I want to spend around £150 ($200) on the card.

Thanks
Astralogic


Hi
Your 460 SE is actualy a lot netter than a gt640. At least in cycles.
maybe the 640 would be better for games. but i dont think so.
i recently bought a GTX580 3GB for about 270€ (350$ ???) wich is currently about the best you can get. But any GTX5xx should do. Dont buy a GTX 6xx they are great for gaming, but Nvidia crippled their CUDA abilities to sell more Teslas, so they suck for rendering in cycles.

4GB would be great, but only the cheaper Cards have such ammounts of VRAM. They dont speed up your rendertimes though.

I recomend buying a cheap 560Ti or you could just keep your card (and buy a second one if your Mainboard supports 2 cards)

I hope i could help a little.

[Astralogic]

Two 580's in SLI would be twice as fast yes?

Is there a benchmarking site that lists the performance of all available cards' performance in Cycles/GPU rendering?

I will definitely get a 580, then one day down the line add another one to my computer.

[Astralogic]

I spoke too soon, I decided on a 3gb 580 before even looking at the prices. They are way too expensive, I'm looking to spend about half that.

The memory size is really the main thing, I think I might go back to my original idea of a GT640, it might be slow but it has 4gb. From what I can tell the good gaming cards that have 3gb or more (even 2gb really) seem to get extremely expensive.

So a GT640 plus a decent gaming card of about £150 ($200) seem to be the only viable option.

Unless of course anyone has any other suggestions that I can look into?

Thanks
Astralogic