New 3dmax, Photoshop and gaming rig

[Mo2teye]

Greatings guys,

 

Friend of mine is planning on a new system build but knows nothing so asked me for help. If it was a game oriented rig the choice to go with ivy and a beefy GPU is easy and could have handled it myself.

 

But the guy is an architect and needs to do a lot of Photoshop, 3D-max and use many design oriented software so it got me thinking.

 

I know rendering needs a hell lot more RAM than gaming so i should include more ram, but yet again, is it really necessary to go for something as high as high end gaming card for 3D-max and such ? ( considering its a limited budget so i cant go all high i have to skim on some stuff ).

 

So i have a list of questions to ask and hope you guys could help me out here for i am confused on what to get him ;

 

1 ) The CPU, I7 is a must here since all the software mentioned above utilize hyper-threading and 8 cores will be a good bonus, but question is will it be worth it going LGA2011 ( looking at i7 3820 not 3930k or 3960x ) or rendering gain between it and Ivy's 3770k is not worth shifting to x79 platform ?

 

2 ) The GPU, he has a 1080p monitor so i'm thinking about a 7950 would be enough, but still not sure what do you guys think ? Now what got me thinking here is that i once read that the above software barely use GPU acceleration in rendering so the GPU is basically for satisfying the gaming purposes of the rig, and at 1080p a 7950 will be ample. And if the budget gets very tight i may have to downgrade this to 7870.

 

3 ) Will an SSD really help rendering performance ?

 

EDIT : 4 ) forgot to ask this, about memory, the more the better for rendering, but does memory clocks matter in rendering ? Meaning will getting 1866 MHz memory benefit anything ?

 

Problem i will be facing is that the budget is very tight and what will make it worse is that i live in Lebanon so i will have to ship everything here from USA ( because ****** ********* ************ ************** *************** this country and availability here ) so it will cost us a fortune to ship these. Initial budget is 1500$ but we will consider it 1000$ for shipping purposes.

 

And note : there will be not overclocking whatsoever involved and all on stock coolers including CPU ( unless the 3820 doesn't come with cooler ill get a low end cooler just to run the thing ) .

 

Thanks everyone for reading and hope you could help me out

Edited September 1, 2012 by Mo2teye

[Mo2teye]

Just bumping this thread up cause no one noticed it :/

[ir_cow]

heres my short response because I'm about to head out and saw your post.

 

1) I would switch to the 2011 if your budget allows you do, 6 core does wonders and down the road you can go with 8. remember the 2011 socket is the Intel server chips so the chances of getting an 8 core consumer i7 first is higher. also the extra L3 cache is always good for rendering

 

2) if your playing games also generally the fastest consumer card is near performance of the entry level pro cards. Now here is the tricky part. Right now generally the video card is only used for display and pro cards are better but with viewport 2.0 (built in) your performance can be higher with a consumer card and with the addition iray (built in) you can have your video card give your preview renders on the fly. therefor the cpu is only used for production renders. Personally I switched to nvidia card a long time ago since Ati drivers always crashed everything. I'm sure by now they fixed stuff.

 

3) Not really, but it will help with transfers and response times. I just use a 120gb ssd as a full temp drive for all my apps. I don't think I ever want to go back. though from 3d stuff, it just opens faster.

 

4). memory clocks have very little impact, the more ram the better. back during DDR1 you can lose seconds per render (which adds up) now with 1600 the difference isn't noticed (to a point). if you had 2400 vs 1333 you would see a boost but I must rather have 64gb for the same price as a 16gb kit of 2400.

 

if you search the threads for 3d rig you'll find a few other people with similar questions i've always answered , I gotta run, I hope that helps.