Titan x, z, or Tesla K80 for Blender?

[dustinauman]

I am using Blender cycles to animate some short "how to" videos for my work. I may be getting a $10,000 budget for a tower. I having been looking at what kind of build would be best with Blender, but having issues nailing down the best card to use. Considering that the software aside from Windows is free, pretty much leaves me to using the budget for the hardware completely. (Yes, my companies Firewall and network IT's make it Hell for anyone not using Windows, so that's a must.) I am thinking that the best CPU for the buck is a XEON E5 v3. If there is anyone with a better CPU in mind, please let me know. As for the GPU, I am looking at the Titan X. Mostly because of the 12 GB of memory. My current laptop card, a Quadro K2100M, (sucks for Blender), only has 2 GB memory. So it is limiting my ability to render nice scenes. (Crashes) But, someone said that a Titan Z would be better due to it being a double core card, versus the X's single core card. But that limits my memory to 6GB. I hope 6 GB would be enough for anyone. But didn't want to take the chance. Plus I was thinking of putting in a few Titan X cards. The other thing I considered was getting a Tesla K80, or even two K40's. I do not have a great wealth of knowledge when it comes to this stuff, and hope that someone with good experience out there can shed some light on what's best and why. I understand bang for the buck. I simply want a build that will get me the faster render times with a $9,000 - $10,000 limit. Thanks for any help guys! I really appreciate the time. 

 

-Dustin

 

My current PC, is a W540 with the Quadro k2100m, and an i7. It is soooo slow. Just killing me. I know it's a CAD card, but ugh. The most recent BMW render test took the GPU 12-1/2 minutes! Ah!!!! Laptops. 

[FatPenguin]

$10,000 you can do what ever the hell you want get 8 titan x 20 teslas 100 titan Z 

 

In all seriousness I would go with a Tesla for work

[dustinauman]

PS. My brother is literally a rocket scientist, and has built and launched small sats. (Satellites.) He knows how to build PC's and has more experience with any of that than anyone I know. So I have the resources for building the thing. But, he is not extremely familiar with Blender Cycles. And looking into it, I can see Blender can be odd with how well it runs depending on what you are using. 

[dustinauman]

Thanks FP. But really. I know it's a crazy budget. It's a large company. But there is a large workload, so I want my rendering times to be as awesome as they can be. Just hear so much on the internet about why this lower card is better than this higher card. Just don't want to make any mistakes. Mostly because it is such a high budget.

[sgloux3470]

Workstation cards for work.

 

 

[Aphala]

Tesla for sure, if he is serious then Tesla is the one you want

[Zulkkis]

10k computer for "how to" videos at work? How are you trained to do this? Have you worked on professional stuff? If you have been working with that laptop for so long, I can tell you, even a single R9 290 can manage the BMW scene in a minute using the latest master builds (though it's not 100% the same as CUDA result due to not everything being supported yet), and even a GTX 580 will manage it in under 2 minutes.

 

Everything you can get will most likely be an overkill. I'd get a 4k ~40" or so monitor first, 1-2 extra monitors, a good cintiq, and then worry about the computer with whatever you have left.

 

Workstation cards are useless, you can't use iRay in blender so the driver features are meaningless. A quadro would enable 3D vision OpenGL if you need that for some reason, and better support on linux for multiple monitors and whatnot. You only do single-precision and ECC RAM is useless.

 

Your i7 is most likely faster than your GPU at rendering, btw.

[dustinauman]

Thanks Zulkkis. Yeah I think it is just a little bit slower than the GPU. I have graduated in computer animation. But I strictly used MAYA. Blender is familiar, but has a lot of differences. I don't care about a Cintiq, and have a nice monitor already. I can knock out an animation in about 15-60 minutes. But, there are a lot of them. 100's. But the rendering, and the lighting, and materials are slowing me down because I have to wait for the render preview for about a minute. I have already thought about using some of the budget for other things related to the work, and know 10,000 is over kill. I just want to make something that will render as fast as possible. I have been given this budget, and simply looking for what will be the best for the money. 

[dustinauman]

@Aphala Why a Tesla? Would one k80 be better than 4 Titan X's? If so why? I want something that will render in minutes, not days. Thanks again guys for any help.

[Aphala]

@Aphala Why a Tesla? Would one k80 be better than 4 Titan X's? If so why? I want something that will render in minutes, not days. Thanks again guys for any help.

Well if you want Firepro could be better but rendering is rendering you want the best. Firepro seems good as well.

[Snooli]

Someone should stop this madness. Blender cycles are single point only, so going any workstation card is a waste of budget. Also the CPU isnt very utilised so I wouldn't leave any money there.

All you really need is a bunch of cost effective compute cards.

Something like a xeon 1241 v3 is all you need (that is the cheap i7)

Quad 980tis or quad fury Xs for your compute cards and some nice ips 4k screen.