CPU rendering for Carrara, current user experiences ?

Omega Man

With the high end Threadrippers being so powerful but expensive, other CPUs have generally improved, and older powerful machines of the day have dropped in price.  I would appreciate if users could give their own thoughts.  Are the number of cores more important than the CPU base frequency speeds ?  What sort of rendering times are users experiencing for animations ?  I am thinking of getting a used HP Z640 workstation with 2 x Xeon E5-2699 V4, which is 44 cores/88 threads, but am not totally sure how wise is the choice..

WendyLuvsCatz

I never noticed much difference with the number of threads

not that my computers are anything to boast about

but when I upgraded my Win7 intel5 to i7 years ago and ended up with 8 tiles instead of 4, it rendered exactly the same speed

my Win10 which is supposedly vastly inferior renders much the same speed too with its 4 tiles  (AMD Ryzen3)

I don't doubt a Threadripper would be a vast improvement though but I think from my experience the clock speed is more likely the reason why rather than number of cores

unless you are doing multiple tasks on it

many Carrara render options like NPR only use one core anyway which is why many of our forumites have been digging out their old laptops 

what I do use is Octane render, that definitely is still an option if you have a nice otherwise unused in Carrara Nvidia card, but sadly now subscription 

my OR4 was a once off payment while big no more than another mediocre PC would cost and considerably less than a Threadripper!

Steve K

I've been using an AMD 12 core/24 thread cpu for a few years, much faster than my previous Core i7 quad core.  Typical is 5 sec +\- per 1280x720 frame.  In addition, it does VUE animations is an acceptable time, a plus for my 48 Hour Film contest efforts (two days to make a five minute video).  

WendyLuvsCatz

does it have a higher clock speed though too?

this is the thing I have yet to get a definitive answer for

Jonstark

I have a z620 with a pair of e5-2690 xeons which gives me 32 threads of rendering (32 render buckets in Carrara).  It is way way faster to render than my main gaming computer, which has a pretty nice i7.  It's true that the clock speed is slower, but the number of render cores is more important for Carrara rendering (at least with the native render engine, which is what I prefer; if you're thinking of using Octane for Carrara, then that's dependant on your GPU instead).   You can think of it as a high clock speed meaning that each individual 'render bucket' renders faster, but having tons of render buckets which might each be slightly slower individually still overall eclipses the render speed of a much lower thread count.

So yes, I think your idea of a z640 is a FANTASTIC idea for Carrara rendering, in fact I'm very glad I stumbled on this thread because back when I got the z620 (has it already been 5+ years?) the z640's were still out of reach for me price wise.  Now a quick glance at ebay tells me I can likely get one for less than $200.  Moreover it blows my mind to find out that the xeon e5 2699 v4's which were originally listed at over $4000 each, can now be had on ebay for around $200 each.  And after some checking it looks to me like the z640's chipset can use them (more investigation needed to confirm...)   

Whoa.  I'm thinking it's time for me to do an upgrade, as the thought of having 88 render cores at my command is... well very very cool.

I could use this to get a larger solid state hard drive (again looks like I could quadruple my current 1TB to 4TB for around $200 by hunting on ebay), and I'd finally have more than enough room to put in my entire library of DAZ content and still have plenty left over for other things if I wanted. I could even (slightly) upgrade my GPU from a 1070 to a 1080 ti for less than $200, and all told I'd be spending what... around $1k for a new render monster?  

I too was looking with envy at the new threadrippers (and who knows? in 4 or 5 years they too might fall into a reasonable price range) but hey with 88 render cores at such a reasonable price point, who needs to wait on threadrippers?  :)

Steve K

WendyLuvsCatz said:

does it have a higher clock speed though too?

this is the thing I have yet to get a definitive answer for

The newer machine is AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, 3.70GhZ, 12 core, 2020

The previous was Intel Core i7 7700K, 4.2 GhZ, Quad Core,  2017

Here is one set of test results:

https://versus.com/en/amd-ryzen-9-3900x-vs-intel-core-i7-7700k

 

 

WendyLuvsCatz

I do want a Ryzen 9 eventually (I have a Ryzen 3 FFS )

just lost my Win7 PC yesterday, it won't boot up, (the Intel i7 one)

having a bit of a hardware crisis here 

Steve K

WendyLuvsCatz said:

I do want a Ryzen 9 eventually (I have a Ryzen 3 FFS )

just lost my Win7 PC yesterday, it won't boot up, (the Intel i7 one)

having a bit of a hardware crisis here 

Sorry to hear that.  I am also watching an old Win 7 desktop die slowly (my third machine, I no longer use laptops).  As I mentioned back there somewhere, I only use it to play GTAV, since it has all my saved games and the completed map.  I don't do missions, just cruise around the map looking for extras like jumps.  But it looks like one of the two harddrives is failing (one is a bootable backup using Casper from Future Systems Solutions), I get the long DOS correction sequence repeatedly.  Ah, well, GTAVI is due next year, I'm thinking a PS5 (my PS4 runs great, e.g. Red Dead Redemption).  So many toys, so little time.

Samuel S.

This is just my opinion, but I found that more cores work better, especially if the render is more complex.

3drendero

I would look for sales on modern AMD Ryzen 12 or 16 cores or even Intels with more than 12 cores. First you get the single core speed that is noticable on all apps and all Carrara functions, then you also get good muticore rendering, since a modern core is 2x faster than an older core, more or less depending on what generations you are comparing. Here is a standard CPU benchmark saying that the 2020 16 core AMD 5950x is slightly faster than the 2015 44 core Intel Xeon 2699v4: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/2753.2vs3862/[Dual-CPU]-Intel-Xeon-E5-2699-v4-vs-AMD-Ryzen-9-5950X

3drendero

Nowadays there are good AI upscalers, so you can render animations faster in lower resolution, then upscale to HD resolution.

Diomede

3drendero said:

Nowadays there are good AI upscalers, so you can render animations faster in lower resolution, then upscale to HD resolution.

Thanks.  Good suggestion.  I have been dipping a toe in 3D to AI related workflows, and yet didn't think of this benefit, which is obvious only after being pointed out.  

WendyLuvsCatz

Diomede said:

3drendero said:

Nowadays there are good AI upscalers, so you can render animations faster in lower resolution, then upscale to HD resolution.

Thanks.  Good suggestion.  I have been dipping a toe in 3D to AI related workflows, and yet didn't think of this benefit, which is obvious only after being pointed out.  

I use realesrGAN upscaling and RIFE interpolation on renders often

Fettbemme

I guess RAM could speed up render time and CPU frequenzy but I doubt the graphics card has a major impact unless Carrara is using GPU for rendering somehow

Ryzen 5 3500U Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx (8 CPUs) 2.1 GHz (overclockable) 16 GB RAM (maxed out on this system), VRAM 2 GB

I can play Minesweeper

ed3D

Hello   and  just becaus    ~.~

And saw Krita has an A.I. like Adobe except they'r Free
+ Thanx