CPU / video card for lighting/rendering/particles and compositing

#1

Getting back into CG after a few years off, so I am not up to speed with what works well with new software.

I will be working with Max and V-Ray in terms of lighting/rendering/particles and Nuke with compositing (with some deviation into Houdini Apprentice for personal interest)

Main concerns are: ensuring high level of viewport interactivity/feedback for both max lighting/simulations and nuke comping/lighting. Render times are not really a concern.

My budget for the rig is about $1000-1500 (no monitor, keyboard etc). I don’t need the newest or fastest, but overclockability is obviously high on the list :smiley:

Cheers.

#2

If you don’t care about render times when why would you overlock it? :shrug:

Take a look at the recent build threads in that price range. Lately a popular processor for lower end workstations has been the Core i7-4770K.

#3

Hey, you have to render it sometime, so if you can get something that can get some extra horsepower squeezed out of it for a lot less money than the next level, why not?

I have seen the 4770K come up a bit. It seems that with video cards, any decent gaming cards will do these days. I have been out of it since a lot of processing went to the GPU though so have no idea if some cards are better than others or which software or processes takes advantage of them.

#4

Very few things utilize the GPU outside of 3D viewports. There are a few renderers that run on the GPU but their uses are very limited because they lack many features standard in other renderers (motion blur, hair, displacements, instancing). Adobe uses the GPU in a few applications to improve canvas performance or preview performance, and in their media encoder to improve H.264 encoding performance. A few applications like Houdini use the GPU to accelerate fluid simulations but are limited by the memory of the graphics card.

#5

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