New CPU Advice
v1si0n4ry
Posts: 82
Hello, all!
I am considering finally retiring my AMD FX8320 and getting a new CPU. I am divided between the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X and the Intel i7 7700K, since they are about the same price range. Does someone know which one is better SPECIFICALLY for Daz Studio/Iray? I am looking for faster scene loading/saving/manipulation since most of the render work is done by my graphics card. Thoughts?
P.S.: let me know if this is the wrong forum
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I can't speak for specifics to DAZ and IRAY, but I can tell you that I've been exceedingly happy with my RYZEN setup (I have the 1800X as I built last year). And that's coming from a diehard Intel follower. Intel is just too expensive...and their newest lineup runs HOT from what I've read (something about the way they changed the soldering or lack of soldering - I depend on my custom build friend to tell me that stuff, lol). My RYZEN is chill to the max.
I'm relatively new to the world of IRAY, but it seems the biggest splash comes with your GPU. In fact, I have mine set up to -only- use my GPU and that way it seems to run the fastest. I have a 1080TI and so far I haven't made a scene yet that can tank it.
Well Daz Iray is made to run on the GPU so that is where your money will go. Be sure the processor chip you decide on has 6 true cores AMD tends to call hyperthreads as cores which they ae not. And make sure you have enough system ram the bare minium is 16gbs.
The RYZEN 2700X should have 8 physical cores, just as the 1800X does.
As others have said, Iray uses your GPU. It generally couldn't care less about a super multi-core CPU. I have an 8 core Ryzen 7 1700 and it sits there unused 90% of the time. More and more software is being re-written to take advantage of GPU's rather than CPU's.
I would spend the least amount of $$ on a CPU, and the most on a GPU. And if you want fast scene loading I'd consider buying a solid state drive (SSD) to put your Studio stuff on. It's one of my favorite purchases. Makes everything so much more responsive. Also get a decent amount of system RAM, preferably more than 16GB if you want stuff to respond real fast. Nothing worse than running out of system RAM and dropping everything to a pagefile.
Okay, one thing is worse....rendering on your CPU and locking it up so you can't do anything else.
So are you talking about manipulating the scene in the Iray preview??
If so, there are settings you should apply to improve the response:
I'm not sure why you're "sold on Ryzen", but hey it's up to you. And like i said, if you're concerned about loading and saving the CPU is somewhat irrelevant, and you'd probably do far better to get an SSD.
I picked up an 8700K processor earlier this year, before I did my homework and knowing what I do now I would have gone with a Ryzen chipset. Basically with Intel boards and the 8700K and its family of processors can only get a maximum of 1 x 16 PCIe. So if you are using multiple cards or are planning to then only one of those cards can run at full speed with the Intel chipset (300 series mobo's), so for my machine I have one card at x16 and the second card is locked at x8 and there simply are not enough lanes available with this processor and mobo architecture to allow for 2 x pcie16 lanes for GPU. This is not a deficit of the mobo, this is just the architecture limits of the chipset.
The Ryzen architecture, however, has more PCIe lanes available depending on the chipset you buy and you can get up to several x16 lanes available depending on the chip.
So, if you are planning on dual GPU look into the architecture of the processor and what board you would go with prior to committing and on the other hand, if dual GPU is not a priority and won't be in the future then go with what is most affordable. Personally, I don't think either chip when at the same speeds are very different from the other.
I am not unhappy with the 8700K but if I could go back a few months and do my homework I would have gone for a Ryzen Thread Ripper. In comparison my old CPU was a 3930K Sandybridge, same number of cores, stock speeds were lower but it actually performed better and I had faster render times. Albeit the 3930K is still a 600.00 processor USD, I picked up the 8700K for less than 300USD.
I am talking about manipulating the scene even in texture shaded or smooth shaded modes. Even with Display Optimization at Best and powering a Titan Xp, I sometimes get laggy manipulation when trying to rotate and move around objects in a crowded scene. I figure that this has something to do with CPU, since my GPU is pretty good for now
No, it's actually due to DAZ Studio being mostly single threaded for those operations so more cores on a CPU won't help at all. You can see this by opening task manager and looking at the CPU usage and see that it's at a percentage equal to the one divieded by total number of cores you currently have.
Either way, it should get better if I get a newer CPU, right?
Are you taking advantage of instancing when you have duplicate items to reduce vram usage? Also, another way to work with crowded scenes can be to make "Billboards" for static background objects. This is how I manage, but I do find that if I load items that have pretty high subd like for instance Swole 7 HD my viewport can get laggy if I'm already pushing the scene, then I just bring the subd down and it sorts itself.