topic Re: Dedicated render machine for 3ds max vs one single multi core machine? Time in 3ds Max Forum

Dedicated render machine for 3ds max vs one single multi core machine? Time save

Anonymous — Thu, 16 Mar 2017 14:58:50 GMT

I'm researching for our organization Rendering options for a dedicated machine for 3ds max.. i personally dont first hand use 3ds max other than support it on the workstations, so i'm unfamiliar with options here.

The basic original goal was to purchase a dedicated render machine (I assume workstation with windows 10 that just sits there and renders jobs).

Currently everything is done on the same quad core standard workstation with something along the lines of a GTX 6xx series card i believe.

I'm wondering how much does a typical render machine cut the time from doing it on a standard workstation and does the video card in the render machine have any impact or is more so about the cores (pretty sure cores).. Would an 8 core machine (16 threads) make a large time cut? Or, do we need to really up the ante and go with something with 20 or more cores (xeons etc)..

Is it better to just build a beefy workstation (which video card series is best there, quadros or gtx 1080s etc) that does both the creation and rendering, or perhaps a solid but expensive laptop.

Any thoughts or suggestions.

Thanks in advance

Re: Dedicated render machine for 3ds max vs one single multi core machine? Time

dgorsman — Thu, 16 Mar 2017 15:49:31 GMT

A whole lot to go through here...

Hardware choices for rendering are based on what renderer you are using - the commonly used Mental Ray and Arnold are CPU based ie. it doesn't make use of the video card. For these you want more cores, and you also want more RAM to go along with it (typically 1 - 2 GB per core). Other renderers are GPU based ie. it *does* use the video card. For these you want enough VRAM on the video card to hold the scene being rendered. Optimized scenes are very important because unlike CPU rendering if it cannot be loaded into the VRAM it just. won't. run. Multiple cards can be added to reduce rendering time. Mental Ray can now benefit from Quadro/Tesla video cards as well, so do some further investigation first.

A dedicated rendering workstation can be a good idea if you need to render during work hours (whenever those may be - I've seen "hot seating" shift work situations where you have people on a computer 24/7), in which case the users computer needs to be free for work. If you have idle time overnight it's not a bad idea to investigate doing your heavy rendering work during that time. There's also the option of distributed rendering, where you can have multiple workstations on a network acting as slaves for the rendering process. Others are best suited for describing that, so I'll leave it to them to chime in. You don't necessarily want a heavy duty render station (dual oct-core processors, 64 GB RAM, dual 1080Ti video cards, etc.) as a daily workstation - most of that power isn't used on day to day work, only rendering.

You don't want a laptop for rendering. They're built for portability not heavy lifting.

Re: Dedicated render machine for 3ds max vs one single multi core machine? Time

Anonymous — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 14:53:52 GMT

Thanks for the reply..

Some added details.. we are going to be using Mental ray.. and this would be a mixed machine of both rendering and main workstation use throughout the day.

That said, i think that may narrow things down a bit.

We are price tagging a max of $2500 or so for the build and shooting for a pre-built/oem solution, rather than build your own.

That said, the options decrease a tad i think.

I'm wondering how many cores/threads justifies something greater than 8 logical threads total (i7's).

IE: we could go with a xeon dual cpu of Xeon E5-2670's perhaps.. but these are harder to come by these days in the form of New, oem machines.

To me it sounds like something like Dell Precision 7000 series with 6 cores (12 threads) might be the better route, couple that with a 1080 GTX video card (or two?).. not seeing many 8/16 core/thread options.

IE: some specifics..

Dell t5810 is in the right price range i think, depending on CPU:

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-t5810-workstation/pd

Cpu's :

E5-2630 v4 (10/20 threads) 14,124 passmarks per cpu

E5-2650 v4 (12/24) 15,994

e5-2687W v4 (12/24) 20,130

The first two almost keep it in the budget, while the first one certainly does.

If you go the dell route, they offer those oem quadro options (various flavors).. wondering if i should lean towards a quadro or go for the 1080.

I'm guessing the 10/20 route on cpu / threads should be adequate and enough of a boost over a typical say i7-6700k cpu.