AMD VS Intel for 3D Rendering / Editing PC

[ringmany]

Hi everyone,

I'm building a PC for my friend who is needs a PC for 3D Rending and image editing. The software's that she uses are:

• 
  Maya
  3DS Max
  Zbrush
  Photoshop
  4D
  MarvelousDesigner

At the moment, I'm having some conflict choosing an AMD VS Intel CPU, as there's quite a lot of debate on which is more optimised for the above software. Many people recommend the AMD Ryzen 5 & 7 due to the amount of CPU cores helping handle the above, although the GPU is quite important in rending, so a lot of the budget is going to the GPU.

Whereas others are stating that Intel I7 CPU are better for more powerful core processors rather than the amount of CPU cores for some of these.

I don't have an exact budget, but I'm hoping to keep it under £1600 / $2000 here's a list of the parts I have so far:

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/n3MpXH

As you can see, the most expensive item is the 1080 GPU, I wasn't certain whether a 1070 would be sufficient for this build. I'm quite happy for the majority of the parts to be modified, especially if it's to save money without sacrificing a large amount of performance, such as only needing 16GB RAM.

In all honestly, I'm a little unfamiliar with the above software, as I built my PC for gaming and most guides and benchmarks I see are for gaming, which is why I'm asking for help here, if anyone has experience with these software and can recommend what CPU and GPU they found to be most beneficial.

Any advice and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[trevor_dennis]

Puget Systems is the go to site for that sort of build. They do real world comparisons with the sort of hardware you'd be interested in for image, video, 3D, CAD builds using the software you are likely to be using.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/all_news.php

[EDIT] Just to add that I'd be leaning towards Threadripper for 'most' of the apps you quote, but Photoshop does not particularly like lots of cores/threads. 90% of my workload is Photoshop (I am an Adobe Community Professional) so I am looking at 7900X as the 'sweet spot' compromise. I'm trying to tie down the CPU cooling issues with that chip before committing though. It seems counter intuitive that you can't run a particular CPU flat out because it is likely get too hot and throttle back.

 

[Atomicdonut17]

As it stands, I would personally say Intel. While Ryzen is very nice when it comes to their value and, when looking at their past blunders (cough Bulldozer cough FX cough), their nice lineup of Ryzen 7s makes alot of Intel's stuff look really overpriced. But, it's just a matter of fact that Intel has an outstanding IPC on their processors, and it's all the more improved with their newest 'release' (more like refresh but I digress) of their 8th Gen processors, Coffee Lake.

So, to answer the very basic question, I would keep in the 8th Gen for Intel, specifically the i7's. As infamously wonderful as the i7 7700k was, I can imagine it's only going to be better with their i7 8770k, or even their i9, if you're looking.

Now, for pricing, that's where Intel's greedy green thumbs start to stick out. Ryzen has them beat on their value to performance, any day. With processors comparatively powerful and nearly neck-in-neck, if it weren't for the subinfancy of Ryzen's microarchitecture and the supposed necessity for higher clocked RAM to utilize it's true potential, I would suggest Ryzen in all forms. However, with Ryzen's most budget boards honing in on crucial things like overclocking and higher memory clocks, it's not that hard to believe why more mid-tier computers are well better off with Ryzen.

If you're looking for the best performance all-in-all, Intel is just the option. Otherwise, Ryzen isn't bad.

 

[drinkingcola86]

It truly depends on what you are doing most in those programs. If your time is being spent generating models and such, then the intel is the way to lean. However if you are looking at render times, AMD Ryzen or Threadripper are the ways to go.

For instance, I teach design drafting using inventor, Solidworks, and Revit at my school. We use Dell systems and in them we have an Xeon E5-1620 V3 in them which is a 4 core 8 thread cpu. This is equivalent to a Haswell I7. Current price new is about $310 us. It does the base render in revit at best quality in 1 hour 24 minutes.

At home I have a Ryzen 7 1700 which is a 8 core 16 thread cpu and it costs $299 us. It does that same render in 24 minutes. That is why I said that it depends on what you will be doing mostly in those programs. I would say, if you are spending 60%+ on the modeling or photo editing, go with intel. It will save you the most time and money. If you are going to spend 40%+ rendering, then the speed/core count of ryzen or threadripper will benefit you the most.

 

[ringmany]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone,

I've been modifying some of the PC components and here's the new list:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor (£178.50 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350 Pro4 ATX AM4 Motherboard (£79.37 @ BT Shop)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£163.20 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£86.98 @ BT Shop)
Storage: Western Digital - Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (£92.39 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB Video Card (£159.97 @ More Computers)
Case: Fractal Design - Define S ATX Mid Tower Case (£67.70 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: EVGA - 600B 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£62.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit
Total: £891.10
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-10-18 12:05 BST+0100

Decided that for the price and the amount of cores, the AMD Ryzen would be quite good for handling a lot of the processors. The CPU being the most important component possibly. 32GB of RAM was a little overkill, so I've reduced to 16GB and also lowered the PSU. I don't need the CPU cooler as the Ryzen CPU models are better for heat and come with a better stock cooler than intel.

Was discussing the build with an IT friend and he suggests that a GPU that powerful is simply overkill for a work station and most of the processing will be done via the CPU, so a 1050 would be sufficient for this built.

Ideally I want the PC to be fairly quick for working within the moment and also not have to send 15+ hours rendering.

Any any suggestions to add? Cheers.

 

[drinkingcola86]

My only comment would be is to look at render times differences between the R5 1600 and the R7 1700. I don't believe there will be that much of a difference but just something to check. Not sure if the extra 2 cores, 4 threads will make that much of a difference in time. My guess would be about 10-15 minutes which for an extra £85 might or might not be worth it.

 

[Bungle11]

Thanks for the suggestions everyone,

I've been modifying some of the PC components and here's the new list:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor (£178.50 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350 Pro4 ATX AM4 Motherboard (£79.37 @ BT Shop)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£163.20 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£86.98 @ BT Shop)
Storage: Western Digital - Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (£92.39 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB Video Card (£159.97 @ More Computers)
Case: Fractal Design - Define S ATX Mid Tower Case (£67.70 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: EVGA - 600B 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£62.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit
Total: £891.10
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-10-18 12:05 BST+0100

Decided that for the price and the amount of cores, the AMD Ryzen would be quite good for handling a lot of the processors. The CPU being the most important component possibly. 32GB of RAM was a little overkill, so I've reduced to 16GB and also lowered the PSU. I don't need the CPU cooler as the Ryzen CPU models are better for heat and come with a better stock cooler than intel.

Was discussing the build with an IT friend and he suggests that a GPU that powerful is simply overkill for a work station and most of the processing will be done via the CPU, so a 1050 would be sufficient for this built.

Ideally I want the PC to be fairly quick for working within the moment and also not have to send 15+ hours rendering.

Any any suggestions to add? Cheers.

I thought your budget was £1600? Anyway. Three suggestions. Get the R1700. with the stock cooler. The R5 stock cooler isn't great for overclocking. You can easly overclock a R7 to 3.8ghz on all cores with the stock cooler. So the R7 is worth the extra £80ish bucks. Plus, if they use programs which rely on CUDA, a GTX1060 6GB would be a better choice of the number of CUDA cores and amount of video card memory. 6GB is the minimum i would recommend. Plus try to get at least 3200mhz ram. Look at the mobo's QVL for compatibility. Ryzen loves fast ram. You probably see a good performance boost. R7, GTX1060, and faster ram will probably add £200 to the build. But worth the extra cost.

Benchmarks also show the R7 will be far better.
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Ryzen-7-1700-vs-AMD-Ryzen-5-1600/3917vs3919

 

[ringmany]

I thought your budget was £1600? Anyway. Three suggestions. Get the R1700. with the stock cooler. The R5 stock cooler isn't great for overclocking. You can easly overclock a R7 to 3.8ghz on all cores with the stock cooler. So the R7 is worth the extra £80ish bucks. Plus, if they use programs which rely on CUDA, a GTX1060 6GB would be a better choice of the number of CUDA cores and amount of video card memory. 6GB is the minimum i would recommend. Plus try to get at least 3200mhz ram. Look at the mobo's QVL for compatibility. Ryzen loves fast ram. You probably see a good performance boost. R7, GTX1060, and faster ram will probably add £200 to the build. But worth the extra cost.

Benchmarks also show the R7 will be far better.
http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/AMD-Ryzen-7-1700-vs-AMD-Ryzen-5-1600/3917vs3919

Cheers for the reply,

The budget was originally £1500, but I decided I wanted to try save as much as possible, esspecially on the comparison charts where spending an extra £200 on a component only gives a 10% performance boost, £1500 was kinda the max I wanted to go, not what I wanted to spend specifically, so I should have phrased that better. Plus I forgot that I needed to buy a monitor to go with the build. I want to get a 4K monitor, so I've added one to the build which adds £400 although Amazon US it's only $400 which is like £330. So that's taken up a lot.

I decided to upgrade the GPU to a 1060. I spoke with my friend and most of the software she uses she renders using CPU rather than GPU, so I don't need the 1070. I modified some of the components due to suggestions from various people:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor (£178.50 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350 Pro4 ATX AM4 Motherboard (£79.37 @ BT Shop)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (£163.20 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Samsung - 850 EVO 250GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (£88.29 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda 3TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£75.00 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: EVGA - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB SC GAMING Video Card (£239.99 @ Novatech)
Case: Thermaltake - Versa H21 ATX Mid Tower Case (£33.99 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA G2 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (£86.14 @ Amazon UK)
Operating System: Microsoft - Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit
Monitor: BenQ - BL2711U 27.0" 3840x2160 60Hz Monitor (£467.12 @ PC World Business)
Total: £1411.60
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-10-21 18:43 BST+0100