QUESTIONS about Hardware for 3ds max.Which Graphics Card for rendering?and Xeon vs i7

#1

Hi! I’m going to build powerful pc for 3ds max, Maya and maybe Zbrush, and NEED you HELP, PLEASE!

I did a lot of research about GPU rendering. People say that gtx 580 is the best option cause CUDA cores were better on geforce 5 series. and all that quadro and gtx 6 series are trash.

1. I would like to know about multi-gpu rendering. Should I buy 3-4 gtx 580 to increase performance? Or it won’t work? If they will work, should I put SLI bridge or not?

2. And about gtx 590. So dual gpu cards are not that good because of 2 cores and how they work with vram. One gtx 580 will be better that one gtx 590. Is it right?

3. And what about quality of gpu rendering? people say that quality is not so good. I will have some noise and other trash on final picture. Is that right?

4. I also want to play games on my 27 inch monitor. Is it possible to install gtx 690 for gaming and gtx 580 (or two gtx 580) for rendering?

5. And should I buy dual Xeon e5-2690 for cpu rendering, or better stick with 3930k ? I saw that performance is about 2 times better in rendering on dual Xeon CPUs.

Hope to hear answers from people who own similar configuration or tested it. Not that rurmors that you read on other forum.

And some information: What about that Quadro series? Is it marketing ONLY? How come they cost too much and can’t perform as well? Why can’t I use TESLA card for 3ds max rendering? Nvidia claims that Quadro + Tesla will be very fast in rendering?

#2

Hola Gleb,

It will not work for IPR in Maya… they do not support SLI configurations. period. You would need to look at the Maximus solution which uses the Quadro + Tesla combination and related performance drivers.

They’re great in SLI, “if” the applications support it… which are normally games, and they do not “cluster” the memory, only break up calculation tasks between the two GPU’s.

Sorta, but you need to define and understand what quality really means here… IMO, i think products like Vray, iRay, or tools like IPR are awesome for checking lighting, materials, etc.

Yes, but you can not do SLI like that… you must have the same GPU.

If you are only going to have one machine which you use for your daily work… stick with the i7 as nearly all of your applications will take significant benefit from the higher core speed and single threaded processes… rendering will be good, but not as great if it where off loaded onto a “farm” of Xeons. But most of us work on tight budgets, and can’t afford to un-necessarily through gobs of cash into components that will sit idle 99% of the time.

no, it is not just marketing talk… there are significant differences between the hardware architecture and implementation that the “maximus” configuration offers… BUT, when you are talking “rendering”… are you meaning visualization work or actual raytrace/scan-line rendering done by the CPU… big differences.

#3

  1. I mean if i just set few gtx 580 without sli bridge. Will 3ds max use all CUDA cores from all gtx 580s to increase rendering speed.

  2. 4 x gtx580 vs 2 x gtx590 in 3ds max rendering speed ?

  3. I will use Vray or iRay for rendering. Will it matter if I render with CPU or GPU in terms of outcome picture quality. I’m not so good about 3ds max and rendering and what “quality” can mean. Hope to see your definitions of it. and will I have quality differences? what are they?

  4. about gtx690 and gtx580 - I want to set both card WITHOUT SLI bridge. And hope to see nice GPU rendering performance.

  5. i7 vs 2 x Xeons: I’m going to build only ONE machine. Most of my time I will work with 3d software (3ds max, maya, etc). Other single threaded programs will take very little time of my day…so I don’t even take them into consideration. ABOUT RENDERING: as I understood, dual xeon e5-2690 (without overclocking) will be much better in rendering (vray, iray, etc.) that i7-3930k (overclocked to 4.5ghz for example). RIGHT?

  6. dual Xeon e5-2690 rendering vs 2 x gtx580 rendering? How much time will I save ? for example if dual xeons render 1 hour (for example), will 2 gtx580s will render the same in 30 minutes ?

I don’t know much about 3d software, nowadays I work in Photoshop, but decided to move forward. Want to build powerful render machine now and don’t bother about it later.

#4

about dual xeon vs overclocked 3930k,

maya and 3dsmax don’t scale perfectly with more processor cores. You’ll run into diminishing returns. While something like cinebench might show the dual xeon having a 2x score than the OC 3930k, but in the real world, that’s not usually the case. Cinebench is purpose built to show off as much perfect multithreading as possible that doesn’t always reflect normal projects with other renderers.

the 3930k will net you 20-25% faster single-threading than the xeons, while being 20-25% slower at multithreaded rendering for maya/max.

IMO, I’d rather look into a quad-socket E5-4617 system than a dual 2690 system…just saying, if you have dual xeon money, it’s not all that much more expensive. The 4617 doesn’t have hyperthreading, and only 6 cores each, but that’s still around 1.5x the total cpu power as the dual xeon. It’s just a shame the max turbo on them is only 3.5ghz. That’d be a major performance hit for the majority of my work that relies on single-threaded bottlenecks.

Thinkmate and PCs For Everyone sell such systems

#5

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