CPU for CAD, 3D Engineering software.

[William Payne]

I thought I would put this out there and get some opinions on this. I’ve been getting more into CAD software lately and I’ve decided that after many years of not having a PC tower and just using laptops  it is time to build one. 
 

I’m not going to build a PC based on a budget, I’m going to build it based on what is going to perform best with the software. 
 

The one thing I can’t decide on is CPU. I’m ignoring any kind of fan boyism or brand love/hate and going straight to what do I need which according to Puget Systems testing is Clock Speed for most things with rendering and simulation taking advantage of core count. 
 

I am highly considering the new 10900K as I get clock speed and a nice amount of cores where needed.

 

I gave AMD a good look as I wanted to explore all options. However Threadripper would be 2-3x the price for things I’m not going to take advantage of and in testing the 9900K beat out the 3950X at damn near everything within the category that Puget tested it on. 
 

Also here in New Zealand I would be paying less for the 10900K than the 3950X. Motherboard pricing is no better or worse either way here. 
 

I can still get a 9900K but as this is a start from scratch build I may as well use the latest platform. 
 

But hey I’m open to hearing people’s opinion so thought I’d post. 
 

Full Disclosure I don’t do any gaming and I don’t do any content creation or streaming. 
 

 

[ki8aras]

if you're not in a hurry i'd recommend waiting for zen 3 that comes out in august thats supposed to be on the 5nm node

[William Payne]

Just now, ki8aras said:

if you're not in a hurry i'd recommend waiting for zen 3 that comes out in august thats supposed to be on the 5nm node

What advantage would I get out of that as an end user? I am not informed on the different nm specs. My relationship with technology is all about what will it give to me the user. What’s under the hood is not as important. 

[ki8aras]

1 minute ago, William Payne said:

What advantage would I get out of that as an end user? I am not informed on the different nm specs. My relationship with technology is all about what will it give to me the user. What’s under the hood is not as important. 

smaller node= better performance

[Curious Pineapple]

Just now, William Payne said:

What advantage would I get out of that as an end user? I am not informed on the different nm specs. My relationship with technology is all about what will it give to me the user. What’s under the hood is not as important. 

Smaller transistors use less power, spit out less heat and generally provide better performance.

[atm0706]

Zen 3 is also rumored to have ipc improvements of 15-20% over Zen 2. This is based on leaks, but will probably ring true considering the advancement each new gen of Ryzen has made over the last.

 

I would personally think AMD would be the better option for cad and simulation work. It's barely behind Intel in terms of single core speed, like 4%, and the core count usually makes up for it in non gaming tasks. I don't do cad work though and have no first hand experience.

 

And yeah, smaller node = more transistors in the same amount of space. More transistors = more calculations.

[William Payne]

Is there anywhere I can see unbiased peer reviewed testing of that? 
 

That is what I like about Puget Systems. They do the testing to see what will give the best results for their customers. 
 

I just want to be completely unbiased in my decision. 
 

Using Solidworks 2020 as an example here is Puget Systems testing for CPU’s. 
 

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/SOLIDWORKS-2020-SP1-CPU-Performance-1681/

 

I’ll happily buy AMD based on proven performance advantage but I won’t buy based on any kind of bias. Same goes for Intel. 

 

[William Payne]

Here’s an example of my purchasing decisions. I’m highly considering initially buying a Nvidia Quadro P2200 or RTX 4000. There are far more powerful cards available for less money  but the quadro cards are shown to perform better in testing in these types of applications. 

[William Payne]

I’m going to read up on zen 3. I’m not informed enough on it to have a good opinion. 

[Beerzerker]

That's the key to it.
Do the research and you'll see what would be the best fit for your situation. Intel chips historically are known more for gaming and so on, AMD's historically are known to be number crunchers but both can do either and do it well - For what you are looking for the best thing to do ATM is exactly what you are planning to do right now.

 

This way the money you use is spent wisely and yes, once you pay for it, it's yours.
Buy once, buy right.

[ki8aras]

then i guess you can wait until puget benchmarks zen 3 and make your decision on that

[William Payne]

1 minute ago, ki8aras said:

then i guess you can wait until puget benchmarks zen 3 and make your decision on that

I may do. I’m not in that much of a hurry. I will see how it goes. I’ll do some reading on zen 3 so that I can make an informed choice. 

[igormp]

42 minutes ago, William Payne said:

The one thing I can’t decide on is CPU. I’m ignoring any kind of fan boyism or brand love/hate and going straight to what do I need which according to Puget Systems testing is Clock Speed for most things with rendering and simulation taking advantage of core count. 
 

I am highly considering the new 10900K as I get clock speed and a nice amount of cores where needed.

 

Also here in New Zealand I would be paying less for the 10900K than the 3950X. Motherboard pricing is no better or worse either way here. 

If youc can afford to wait 3~5 months to see what AMD bring with their Zen 3, I'd recommend to do so. Otherwise, the 10900k would be your best bet for this kind of application.

[William Payne]

Just now, igormp said:

If youc can afford to wait 3~5 months to see what AMD bring with their Zen 3, I'd recommend to do so. Otherwise, the 10900k would be your best bet for this kind of application.

I’ll see. I’m feeling a lot more patient and less impulsive lately so may be able to wait. 

[atm0706]

Just checked the Puget systems link. It seems like the types of work you are going to be doing are going to dictate which direction you should go.

 

From what I can tell, most of the things that the Intel cpus excell at are single threaded tasks, which AMD is very close behind at. On the other hand, it seems AMD is quite far ahead when you start factoring in multi thread heavy tasks. 

 

If you are not in a rush, do more research on Zen 3 (while taking everything with a grain of salt since it hasn't been released yet) and also research Nvidia Ampere which will also be coming out soon and will have major improvement in this type of work.

[William Payne]

2 minutes ago, atm0706 said:

Just checked the Puget systems link. It seems like the types of work you are going to be doing are going to dictate which direction you should go.

 

From what I can tell, most of the things that the Intel cpus excell at are single threaded tasks, which AMD is very close behind at. On the other hand, it seems AMD is quite far ahead when you start factoring in multi thread heavy tasks. 

 

If you are not in a rush, do more research on Zen 3 (while taking everything with a grain of salt since it hasn't been released yet) and also research Nvidia Ampere which will also be coming out soon and will have major improvement in this type of work.

Will do. Nvidia is probably the only thing I kind of am semi fanboying over. 
 

Yes from what I can gather it is an annoying scenario where I sort of need a mix of both high clock speed and cores to get the balance right. For the modelling side it is pretty much all clock speed. If I decide to render something or run a simulation cores have the advantage. 

 

[Kilrah]

23 minutes ago, William Payne said:

I’ll do some reading on zen 3 so that I can make an informed choice. 

For now it's only rumors and it'll probably be several months before any real test data is available...

[William Payne]

1 minute ago, Kilrah said:

For now it's only rumors and it'll probably be several months before any real testi data is available...

Yip. Still worth a read. Honestly. I’m used to the almost throwaway instantly obsolete way tech is going with new releases. Whatever I buy doesn’t mean I have to still be using that in a year. 

[William Payne]

Thanks for the input guys. 

[William Payne]

Holy thread resurrection Batman. So finally after a long time of procrastinating I have brought all the components to build a PC. 

 

As this is the CPU thread I started I brought a 5900x. Fingers crossed the parts I’m still waiting on arrive tomorrow so that I can do the build on the weekend. 

[William Payne]

I also have an RTX A4000 sitting in the box next to me waiting on the other parts to arrive.