Upgrading my PC, looking for suggestions.

[RealBinary]

So I do ALOT of game design and development as well as heavy gaming, video editing, and graphic design. My system has just seemed slower in the past year, and im noticing a huge graphical lag when trying to render 3D animations for my games. I am thinking about upgrading, but im on a small budget which is about 2k (Maybe less) and im wondering what my best approach would be? My current specs are as follows:

-Asus z170 AR Motherboard
-Intel Core i7 6700K
-Dual Nvidia GTX 1080's SLI
-Corsair H60 Liquid Cooler
-32GB Corsair Vengeance LPX RAM
-NZXT Phantom Original Case (Doubt this really matters haha)

Considering my budget, what would be the best step from here for better performance when doing 3D animation and modeling?

 

[lumineZ]

content creation I would just go X99 or X299 from intel. Or Ryzen 7 1800X from AMD

For most bang for the buck I got to say AMD even if I am an intel fan for the kind of workloads you are talking about. I would even consider waiting just alittlebit and wait for Threadripper to come out from AMD ( happens in August if I remember correct )

 

[RealBinary]

content creation I would just go X99 or X299 from intel. Or Ryzen 7 1800X from AMD

For most bang for the buck I got to say AMD even if I am an intel fan for the kind of workloads you are talking about. I would even consider waiting just alittlebit and wait for Threadripper to come out from AMD ( happens in August if I remember correct )

Im not gonna switch from Intel to AMD. Plus i dont see how the CPU is gonna be an important upgrade when graphics are clearly the issue.

 

[cryoburner]

Is this rendering dependent more on the CPU or GPUs? Those specs are still rather high-end, though if your rendering is being performed on the CPU, moving to a platform with more processor cores could potentially help.

If the system seems to be performing noticeably slower than it was before, you might also want to make sure something isn't just overheating. Monitor both CPU and GPU temps under load. It's possible that the pump could have gone out on your CPU cooler, for example, and they don't tend to provide any obvious indication when that happens.

 

[lumineZ]

Ok so no AMD
Reason I sayd this it because if you go for X99 - X299 you get more pci-e lanes to work with.
Upgrading GPU`s atm for you is a waste if you ask me... I mean you have two 1080`s... going above that is either two 1080ti`s or titanXP`s... even maybe a Quadro ( no experience with that card what so ever + outside you budget I belive )

I dont see you gain that mutch from what you already have. Sure it will go faster... But by how mutch with running your current setup and swapping only the GPU`s... Cost vs what you gain is WAY to small if you ask me.

Getting the ability to run Quad channel ram, more pci-e lanes to work with, ability to go past 64gb of ram if you should need to, ability to run SLI x16 speed and not SLI x8 speed.

Or if it was me, I would just not do anything atm and wait for new grapich card to be released to be honest.

 

[RealBinary]

Is this rendering dependent more on the CPU or GPUs? Those specs are still rather high-end, though if your rendering is being performed on the CPU, moving to a platform with more processor cores could potentially help.

If the system seems to be performing noticeably slower than it was before, you might also want to make sure something isn't just overheating. Monitor both CPU and GPU temps under load. It's possible that the pump could have gone out on your CPU cooler, for example, and they don't tend to provide any obvious indication when that happens.

Im putting all the rendering load on the GPU. And ive already checked the cooler, its fine.

 

[cryoburner]

Have you used a monitoring utility to check the CPU and GPU temperatures and load levels during heavy loads though? It is possible that some component could be throttling, since there are a number of relatively high-wattage components in your system.

It might just be that what you are rendering is going to be slow to render on any modern hardware though. There isn't much hardware that's significantly faster than what you already have. A pair of 1080 Tis might only be about 25% faster. Perhaps simply adjusting the complexity of the models you are rendering could provide better performance without visually impacting their quality, though again, I don't know how feasible that option would be for what you are doing.

 

[RealBinary]

Sorry I didnt mean to mark your answer as correct haha! And as ive already stated yes, ive already checked the temp under load of my entire system. The issue is the 1080 is made for gaming, not high intensive 3D animation, rendering, and modeling. I would assume i need to upgrade my GPU. But would the processor really make a better difference?