Looking to make a build for Maya, Zbrush, Photoshop, Unreal (~1500 CAD)

[SeeYouSpaceCowboy]

Hi,

I'm looking to make a PC build and I'm currently kind of stuck without going over 1500 (accounting for a keyboard and a fairly decent monitor as well). I'm mainly using it for art, 3D modelling and rendering, and some game development. (Possibly some very casual gaming, but this isn't priority at all.)

This is what I have so far, but it comes close to 2 grand which is much too expensive.
(And please, no AMD cards. Only nightmare experiences from them both at my work and at home.)

• 
  
  Microsoft Windows 10 Home (64 bit) OEM
  
  Kingston HyperX FURY Black 16GB DDR3-1866MHz CL10 Dual Channel Kit (2x8GB)
  
  Intel Core™ i7-4790K Processor, 4.00GHz w/ 8MB Cache
  
  Corsair Carbide Series 300R Compact Mid-Tower, Black
  
  Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI w/ DDR3 1600, 7.1 Audio, Gigabit Lan, CrossFireX / SLI
  
  MSI GTX960 Tiger OC GeForce GTX 960 4GB PCI-E w/ DVI, HDMI, Triple DP
  
  Samsung 850 EVO Series mSATA Solid State Drive, 500GB
  
  EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G2 Modular 750W Power Supply

Can anyone recommend a build that's still powerful enough to handle these programs without completely breaking the bank? I'd be so appreciative!

 

[Mr Kagouris]

Well no wonder you can't stay in budget, the budget allocation is very poor in your list.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1241 V3 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($339.99 @ Amazon Canada)
Motherboard: MSI B85-G41 PC Mate ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($90.00 @ Vuugo)
Memory: Patriot Viper 3 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($79.99 @ Amazon Canada)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($65.75 @ shopRBC)
Video Card: ATI FirePro W4100 2GB Video Card ($233.98 @ Newegg Canada)
Case: Fractal Design Core 2300 ATX Mid Tower Case ($57.99 @ NCIX)
Power Supply: EVGA 750W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($104.02 @ DirectCanada)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM (64-bit) ($124.00 @ shopRBC)
Monitor: LG 29UM57-P 60Hz 29.0" Monitor ($350.00 @ Vuugo)
Keyboard: Cooler Master CM Storm Devastator Gaming Bundle Wired Gaming Keyboard w/Optical Mouse ($38.55 @ Vuugo)
Total: $1484.27

Maya heavily favors Firepro cards over Quadros (consumer cards just get totally steamrolled by the professional grade ones), while your other software is pretty indifferent between Firepro and Quadro, so really your best choice would be a Firepro. If you can spend a couple hundred more and get a Firepro W5100 that would be much better, but the W4100 works fine.

 

[bambiboom]

SeeYouSpaceCowboy,

Mr. Kagouris has a very good list for building a new system- the Xeon E3-1241 v3 has an excellent Passmark single-threaded performance of 2255, but I like if at all possible to use LGA2011 for memory bandwidth and the possibility of using 6, 8, or 10 core CPU's for CPU rendering with which I've had better results on single-images.

For "Maya, Zbrush, Photoshop" on a budget a used workstation is the fastest and best cost / performance LGA2011 solution. Maya especially is very demanding of the single-threaded performance, to calculate all the polygons. On a budget this means also a four core or six-core at most. As mentioned, it's useful to try and have an LGA2011 system so the CPU can eventually be a fast 8-core of better. Buying a used workstation also saves the effort of researching, ordering, assembling, configuring, and testing a new system.

The Xeon E5-1620 4-core at 3.6 / 3.8GHz has a Passmark single-threaded rating of 1929. For an idea of what happens, when there are more cores, the CPU with the score of 1930 is the E5-2687w which is 8-core but cost new $2.050 US instead of the $350 of the E5-1620.

There were a lot of HP z420's and Dell Precision T3600's with the E5-1620:

HP Z420 Workstation-Intel Quad Core Xeon E5-1620 3.6GHz-16GB-500GB-Q600-Desktop > sold for C $599 + C$45 shipping.

DELL Precision T3600 Workstation E5-1620 QC 3.6GHz 1TB 250GB DVD-RW W7Pro > Buy It Now C 490 + C 40 shipping

> and etc.

The GPU is important and for Maya, I'd recommend a Quadro as Autodesk is CUDA accelerated and can run x64 anti-aliasing and viewports. If you can find one at this sort of price, the best cost /performance is a Quadro K2200 (4GB)

Nvidia Quadro K2200 4GB, DVI Output, DisplayPort, GDDR5 SDR, Graphic Card Video sold for C 291

I have an HP z420 with an E5-1620 ,K2200, 24 GB of RAM, Intel 730 480GB / WD Black 1TB:

Rating: 4402
CPU: 9280
2D: 797
3D: 3480
Mem: 2558
Disk: 4498

The K1200 DisplayPort only cousin to the K2200 is a possibility as well:

NVIDIA Quadro K-1200 PCI-e Graphics adapter - Low Profile Buy It Now C 266

The Passmark average 3D score for the K1200 is 2882, it is DisplayPort only, and the 4GB is useful in the large file sizes for Maya. There are 512 CUDA cores to assist in rendering.

Other good possibilities are : Quadro K620 (2GB), Quadro 5000 (2.5GB) and Firepro W5000 (4GB). I have an HP z420 with an E5-1620 ,K2200, 24 GB of RAM, Intel 730 480GB /WD Black 1TB:

Rating: 4402
CPU: 9280
2D: 797
3D: 3480
Mem: 2558
Disk: 4498

Add a Samsung 850 Evo 250GB SSD > C $130.

And WD Black 1TB > C $90

_____________________________

System: C $530 (T3600) (incl. shipping)
GPU: $201
SSD: $120
HS: 90

__________________________

TOTAL= C $ 941.

Then as this kind of work so often runs multiple applications simultaneously, have two 24" monitors, for example:

ASUS VS248H-P Black 24" 2ms HDMI LED Backlight Widescreen LCD Monitor 250 cd/m2 ASCR 50,000,000:1 > C 430 ($215 each)

_________________________

System and Monitors = about C $1,371

Performance should be very good.

Cheers,

BambiBoom

Modeling:

1. HP z420 (2015) > Xeon E5-1660 v2 (6-core @ 3.7 / 4.0GHz) > 32GB DDR3 1866 ECC RAM > Quadro K4200 (4GB) > Intel 730 480GB (9SSDSC2BP480G4R5) > Western Digital Black WD1003FZEX 1TB> M-Audio 192 sound card > 600W PSU> > Windows 7 Professional 64-bit > Logitech z2300 speakers > 2X Dell Ultrasharp U2715H (2560 X 1440)>
[ Passmark Rating = 5064 > CPU= 13989 / 2D= 819 / 3D= 4596 / Mem= 2772 / Disk= 4555]
[Cinebench R15 > CPU = 1014 OpenGL= 126.59 FPS] 7.8.15
[Passmark V9.0 Beta Rating = 5019.1 > CPU= 14206 / 2D= 779 / 3D= 5032 / Mem= 2707 / Disk= 4760]

Rendering:

2. Dell Precision T5500 (2011) (Revised) > 2X Xeon X5680 (6 -core @ 3.33 / 3.6GHz), 48GB DDR3 1333 ECC Reg. > Quadro K2200 (4GB ) > PERC H310 / Samsung 840 250GB / WD RE4 Enterprise 1TB > M-Audio 192 sound card > Logitech z313 > 875W PSU > Windows 7 Professional 64> HP 2711x (27", 1920 X 1080)
[ Passmark system rating = 3844 / CPU = 15047 / 2D= 662 / 3D= 3550 / Mem= 1785 / Disk= 2649] (12.30.15)

 

[Mr Kagouris]

I agree with most of what you say Bambiboom, but isn't Maya actually more pro-Firepro? Any benchmarks I've found seem to heavily favor Firepro cards over equally priced Quadros.

 

[bambiboom]

I agree with most of what you say Bambiboom, but isn't Maya actually more pro-Firepro? Any benchmarks I've found seem to heavily favor Firepro cards over equally priced Quadros.

Mr. Kagouris,

As my direct experience with Maya has only been to evaluate it for office use, you may be better informed with Maya then I. My understanding of Maya is that modeling and rendering aspects can really confuse hardware choices. If the models are heavily textures or have particles or hair, the modeling is immensely CPU-intensive polygons positional calculations but rendering animation speed of those same models benefits from GPU-accleration. I use Vray for Sketchup and 3ds which is OpenCL, while Maya in modeling uses OpenGL. Some rendering programs such as Arion use both CPU and GPU, Octane and Lightworks are GPU, and the list of modes of optimization are endless and confusing. When I use VRay, it still lights up all twelve CPU threads in Task Manager Performance.

As NVIDIA makes a fuss about their association with Autodesk, Adobe, and Solidworks ( I used to run a Soldiworks x128 anti-aliasing driver on a Quadro FX4800), I tend to graviatate towards Quadros for those software manuf.rs programs.

As for benchmarks, the CPU / GPU / OpenGL / OpenCL equation is so complex it is tempting to rely on benchmarks, but I if I were really intent on choosing the perfect Maya GPU, I would want to see the ratings in exactly the combination of modeling and rendering software. One very good extravaganza of benchmarkery is the outdated test on this site in 2013: Workstation Graphics: 14 FirePro And Quadro Cards from this site in 2013 has a good, clear explanation. See Page 8 for Maya results in which a Quadro K5000 has the top place followed by the Firepro W9000 which at the time listed for $4,000 to the K5000's $2,500. Notice too how the $175 Firepro V3900 is three times faster than a $1,000 GTX Titan.

To me, rendering is the one of the most difficult and complex issues and my solution has been to have a molding system based on single-threaded speed and a separate rendering system with 12 cores, a lot of RAM, and a fair number of CUDA cores as well that can sit in the corner and take as long as it likes.

If you have links to benchmark testing of rendering hardware that you respect, I'd enjoy having a look.

Cheers,

BambiBoom

 

[Mr Kagouris]

That is a very interesting article you linked. Quadros don't seem to have massively better performance though. I'd say it's best to get whatever card is better value for the money instead of choosing specifically either Quadro or Firepro. Also, AMD cards have the benefit of lacking that annoying nvidia "only PCIe x8 or greater" limitation, making them more versatile.

 

[bambiboom]

That is a very interesting article you linked. Quadros don't seem to have massively better performance though. I'd say it's best to get whatever card is better value for the money instead of choosing specifically either Quadro or Firepro. Also, AMD cards have the benefit of lacking that annoying nvidia "only PCIe x8 or greater" limitation, making them more versatile.

Mr Kagouris,

On general, cost / performance is the most efficient / effective direction, and performance of course is within the context of the specific use. Because there are so many variations on the way software optimizes performance, choosing workstation hardware, especially, GPU's, is really difficult.

To some degree I've surrendered to the idea that with Autodesk, Adobe, and Dessault software I should have the fastest Quadro I can afford because all those companies use CUDA accleration. Solidworks in particular is extremely Quadro oriented- "partnered" as NVIDIA says. I had a Quadro FX 4800 and at the time, Solidworks had a special x128 AA driver and NVIDIA made a version of the FX 4800 - $1,400- called the "CX" intended for Solidworks.

As I've had good perfrmance in Autodesk, and Adobe with perfect reliability using Quadros since 2003, and all but two were purchased used, I've been a used Quadro advocate. I have a 2003 FX 580 (512MB) (paid $30 in 2007) and it's the perfect server GPU.

But, Firepros do have really good performance for the cost. I bought both of my HP z420's with lower end GPU's; the E5-1620 arrived with a Firepro V4900 ($190) and the E5-1660 v2 had a Quadro K600 ($170). The Passmark 3D score for the V4900 was 1350 and the K600 scored 890 so the V4900 wins in cost / Passmark points.

However, for SeeYouSpaceCowboy, because of Maya, the best direct comparison in the 2013 Tom's workstation GPU test showed the $2,500 Quadro K5000 ahead of the $4,000 Firepro W9000. At the mid-level, though the Firepro W5000 ($350) is faster than a Quadro K4000 ($625).

What GPU would you suggest for this use?

Cheers,

BambiBoom

 

[Mr Kagouris]

That's why I was leaning towards Firepro for this specific case. Strangely, the W9000 loses to a cheaper Quadro, but in the low-mid end the Firepros seem to win. The W5000 (or the W5100) might be the better choice at this price point.