I don’t know much about CPUs, and I can’t understand why the the 3.5 GHz i7-5930K:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117403
is so much more expensive than the 4.0 GHz i7-4790K:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117369
Does it have something to do with the L3 cache size? What significance does that have for 3D rendering?
The main point is that the 4790 is a 4 Core CPU, while the 5930 is a six Core.
Also the 5930 is one generation newer and slightly faster at the same clockrate.
For rendering the 5930 should be about 20-40% faster.
It looks like LGA 2011 motherboards are generally more expensive and most are built for DDR4 ram, which is also more expensive, so I’ll probably go with the LGA 1150 cpu.
You must be talking about LGA-2011-3 motherboards. I have an LGA-2011 board that uses 64 GB DDR3 RAM (ASUS Rampage IV Extreme Black Edition).
@umblefugly
Yeah, I guess in my search on Newegg I was seeing mainly LGA 2011-v3 listed, didn’t realize that that was different than 2011. I see now that the LGA 2011 are made for DDR3. Still, the LGA 2011 motherboards are more expensive than most of the 1150 motherboards.
5930k is a pretty pointless CPU anyway for CG artists - only thing it brings over the much cheaper 5920k is more PCI-E lanes (only really important to gamers) & a tiny increase in clockspeed (easily overcome with a multiplier bump). Render & editor speed is basically the same.
Look how cheap the 5920k is in comparison, hardly costs more than the 4970k (of course it will need a bit overclock to reach similar editor speeds, but the renderspeed is good).
Here in the UK, DDR4 is hardly more expensive than DDR3.
Bear in mind, CG is hardly bothered about memory speed, so you can buy the cheapest DDR4 like this for example :
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-178-CR&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=2557
Another thing is basically all LG 2011-3 boards are high end, so again, you can go for the cheapest, like :
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-280-MS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2875
Mileage might vary in the US though.
thanks, really helpful information! That motherboard isn’t too much more expensive than the 1150 motherboard I was going to get.
At least in US prices, the DDR4 ram still seems to be much more expensive though. Even the cheapest Crucial 32GB kit is $410, while the DDR3 set I was going to get was $280. I’m just not sure the benefit of more CPU cores will be worth that much extra cost.
However, the 2011-v3 board does support much more ram, so I would be able to upgrade if necessary.
also, I’m not really comfortable overclocking, so comparing the clock speeds * # of cores:
4790K: 4.0 * 4 = 16
5920k: 3.3 * 6 = 19.8
not that much of a difference in render speed
If youre not overclocking, get the 4 core. But dont be afraid of doing it. Every motherboard these days has a single button you can press to do a simple overclock.
This type of calculation is usually misleading but in this example, you are actually comparing 2 CPUs of the exact same architecture & version, so this is a good way to judge all-core rendering performance.
Agree 100% with Mash, what I would call a modest overclock, lets say 4 - 4.2ghz for a 5820k is stupidly easy. Nowadays Intel will even warranty an overclock for a small fee which shows how mainstream it is.
My computer at work even applied an overclock just when I enabled XMP - took the max turbo speed of 3.9ghz & made it apply to all cores under full load indefinitely.
well, I decided to actually buy the i7-5960X, and a water cooler for overclocking… I realized my rendering needs are a lot more demanding than I was thinking. I use a render farm for final renders, but I have to make some really detailed test renders on my machine.
I think it will pay for itself (fingers crossed).
There was something else I was wondering about though. Why is the AMD 8350 8-core 4GHz less than half the speed of the i7-5960X in render benchmarks? In the rankings the AMD takes a spot I would expect would belong to a 4-core cpu, not an 8-core.
I understand that the architecture is different, but can it make that much of a difference? I actually don’t really understand how the architecture affects the speed. Or is the difference caused by the disparity in cache size?
The AMD chips just aren’t very fast but they’re priced to reflect that. So yes, the architecture does make that much difference.
In general, you can’t just look for a single number or spec as the cause of the difference, they’re just fundamentally different in many ways.
It only ever makes sense to compare specs between CPUs of the same manufacturer & the same series.
Even if you take a 3ghz Intel chip from 5 years ago, its going to be slower than a 3ghz intel chip now.
Same applies to GPUs, there just isn’t a spec that explains the performance difference between different companies or generations - if only it were that simple.
Nice choice by the way, the 8-core is a beast.
Good choice, Im running my 5960x at 4.3ghz here. It will do 4.5, but that bumps up the fan noise a bit for little speed difference. It also means I can leave the voltage set to automatic so its quiet when not rendering.
The AMD 8 core chips arent 8 full cores, it only has 4 FPUs, which for us is the most vital part, hence they only benchmark at the speed of 4 core chips.
Corsair H120. It does 4ghz on air from what I’ve read. I mostly did the water cooler for the noise. Was easier to install than some air coolers ive used. The corsairs arent great quality though, but they work.
All-in-one (AIO) water coolers in my experience are much easier to set up than equivalently performing air coolers, especially on socket 2011/ 2011-3 where they have this lovely built in backplate & screws so you don’t have to mess with some horrible mounting system.
The really high end air coolers in my experience are huge hunks of metal, that lacerate fingers & force you to work around their huge bulk to access anything (not to mention making access to a host of other on board connections really uncomfortable).
With an AIO, in contrast, if you have room for the radiator & fans, the rest is childs play.
Yeah, it looks like the one I bought should be easy to set up in my full-tower case.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835181060
The heatsink mount for my old LGA 1366 i7-920 really sucks. It’s basically four holes in the motherboard that you have to stick flimsy plastic pins into. Looking forward to the LGA 2011 screw mount.