Help! New Build: i7 5960X or Dual Xeon 2630V3?

[timdenby]

Hey guys, looking for some advice on building a Rendering Workstation.

 

I have recently joined a small VFX team working out of Wellington New Zealand. I have been living and working with these guys for almost 2 years and have been building PCs for a while successfully.

 

However I am stumped by a little problem at the moment, whether to go with a i7 5960X or Dual Xeon 2630V3? We are using programs such as Nuke, Adobe AfterEffects (with Element 3D), Cinema 4D as well as possibly some Maya 2015.

 

Price is not really an object as the production budget will be covering this cost, however we would like to keep it below NZ$10000 to stay in good terms with the Director.

 

Here are the parts lists for the two possible builds:

 

Option A: http://nz.pcpartpicker.com/p/7fjgMp

 

Option B: http://nz.pcpartpicker.com/p/dzRynQ

 

Let me know what you guys think, should I go with the i7 or the Xeons? Are the Xeons worth the extra money for this work type? Or is there some other kind of solution that would be better?

 

 

 

[arvark]

i3 4160. Jk For content production, dual Xeons! I wouldn't really suggest Maxwell cards for Contect production, either 700 series or Quadros.

[Elfuego]

If you are happy to but the ungodly amount of hours for OCing and validating (48hrs + stable) then the i7. But I would get dual Xeons because its far less effort for a prograde thing.

[VioDuskar]

if you use programs that can harness GPU's i'd suggest looking at titans instead of consumer GPUs

[Elfuego]

Make sure that the Xeons you choose can be used in a dualsocket config.

 

A 980Ti/Titan Or 2 Should benefit you in stuff that uses CUDA. AME certainly benefits from chucking extra CUDA cores at it.

 

Also only 1 screen.

[arvark]

if you use programs that can harness GPU's i'd suggest looking at titans instead of consumer GPUs

Only old ones, Titan X isn't that great for content creators.

[VioDuskar]

Only old ones, Titan X isn't that great for content creators.

yeah, seems like they cherry picked 980Ti wafers and labeled them titans with earlier release dates than the 980Ti

[ChrisCross]

 

Hey guys, looking for some advice on building a Rendering Workstation.

 

I have recently joined a small VFX team working out of Wellington New Zealand. I have been living and working with these guys for almost 2 years and have been building PCs for a while successfully.

 

However I am stumped by a little problem at the moment, whether to go with a i7 5960X or Dual Xeon 2630V3? We are using programs such as Nuke, Adobe AfterEffects (with Element 3D), Cinema 4D as well as possibly some Maya 2015.

 

Price is not really an object as the production budget will be covering this cost, however we would like to keep it below NZ$10000 to stay in good terms with the Director.

 

Here are the parts lists for the two possible builds:

 

Option A: http://nz.pcpartpicker.com/p/7fjgMp

 

Option B: http://nz.pcpartpicker.com/p/dzRynQ

 

Let me know what you guys think, should I go with the i7 or the Xeons? Are the Xeons worth the extra money for this work type? Or is there some other kind of solution that would be better?

 

these rendering programs can benefit from a lot of cores so the xeons will perform better, also they are a lot more stable than an od'd i7, afterall they are xeons.

also get a quadro. even if you dont use double precision the maxwells just cant reach the quadros

[arvark]

these rendering programs can benefit from a lot of cores so the xeons will perform better, also they are a lot more stable than an od'd i7, afterall they are xeons.

also get a quadro. even if you dont use double precision the maxwells just cant reach the quadros

Yup, double cores / threads.

[Geralt]

A bit OT but any chance the VFX team is WETA Digital?

[nstclair13]

A bit OT but any chance the VFX team is WETA Digital?

Since he said small VFX team I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's not Weta Besides, WETA wouldn't be building single machines for a user like this to render. They have a pretty massive render farm.

[Geralt]

Since he said small VFX team I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's not Weta Besides, WETA wouldn't be building single machines for a user like this to render. They have a pretty massive render farm.

Yeah makes sense that a big company like WETA would have render farms.

Would be cool to actually work with the guys who animated the LOTR movies tho.

[timdenby]

A bit OT but any chance the VFX team is WETA Digital?

We are a small team of 4 made up of two ex Weta Digital artists (one of which being me) and two Freelancers. Weta Digital has their own IT department that would no doubt know everything they need to to put stuff like this together. But because I am only a concept artist and the other guy was in the Camera department, we needed the extra advice.

 

Thanks everyone for the input on this, looks like we are going to go with the Xeon build. Though I have heard that you need balanced memory configurations in order to get the most out of the hardware. What kind of memory setup would you recommend? We currently have a single 64GB kit (4x16GB), however as this is quad channel will there be any issue if we assign two sticks to one cpu and two to the other?

 

Since he said small VFX team I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's not Weta Besides, WETA wouldn't be building single machines for a user like this to render. They have a pretty massive render farm.

Weta does also use render boxes, the render wall does occasionally get bogged down by users, so a separate linux box can be a life-saver.

[Geralt]

We are a small team of 4 made up of two ex Weta Digital artists (one of which being me) and two Freelancers. Weta Digital has their own IT department that would no doubt know everything they need to to put stuff like this together. But because I am only a concept artist and the other guy was in the Camera department, we needed the extra advice.

 

Thanks everyone for the input on this, looks like we are going to go with the Xeon build. Though I have heard that you need balanced memory configurations in order to get the most out of the hardware. What kind of memory setup would you recommend? We currently have a single 64GB kit (4x16GB), however as this is quad channel will there be any issue if we assign two sticks to one cpu and two to the other?

Wow. You weta guys sure are hardcore at VFX. Good luck to you guys!

If you're doing heavy rendering, I suggest that you max out all the ram slots. The render will eat through your ram. As for the 4 stick config, I think 2 sticks to one cpu should work.

[Elfuego]

2 on each CPU will work; but if you have the budget chuck 128 gb in there, so you can work while rendering . (You wont get any performance boost though, so you could just go 8x8gb and have 8 slots left over .

 

Also take a look at upgrading the GPU to a 980/Ti. More CUDA Cores always good.

[King_Tuna]

Xeon E5 blows i7. Just go with 2 Xeons if you have budget.