Hardware Suggestion for Maya 2024

[drizzit040786]

Hi all,

I am building my first Workstation for animation and rendering and I am kind of torn.

I want to build a Threadripper 7000 Platform but I am really not sure which CPU to get.

The System so far:

Mainboard: Asus Pro WS TRX50-Sage Wifi
Ram: 128gb G-Skill Zeta Z5 Neo 6400mt/s

Storage: 2x Crucial T700 4TB

Cooling: Enermax Liqtech TR4 II

My usage looks like Autodesk Maya for Animation and Rendering, Blender, Daz3d, ZBrush,

Substance Painter, After Effects and Photoshop. I also want do play games on my Workstation, 

if possible while rendering in the Background and would like to model and composite scenes

while simultaneously Rendering in the Background.

So far I mainly use my RTX 3090 for rendering. But since I'm going for learning animation
professionally I think CPU-rendering will become more of an important task going forward? 

Now I am torn between a Threadripper 7980x with 64 Cores and a Threadripper 7970x with 32 Cores.

If I go with the 7970x I would have enough budget to also get a RTX 4090 with AiO.

I'm not sure if it would be more beneficial for me to have more CPU cores or a second GPU.

I would really appreciate it if someone could help me with my decision.

All suggestions and help of any kind will be much appreciated.

KR Sasha

[Christoph_Schaedl]

That depends a lot on your workflow. I would go with less cores on the CPU cause a lot in Maya is single threaded.

And i would only go with one GPU cause rendering wont get much faster with two. 

If you need to render and simulate a lot its better to get two workstations.

[drizzit040786]

Thank you so much for your reply! 

I get the argument of maya being singlecore in many usecases. Getting a second GPU was just a thought I entertained for parallel rendering and viewport workflows so i wouldnt need a second workstation.

Since my post I did a lot of research though, and apart from the price i really don't see a lot thats going for the 7970x over the 7980x.

The letter it seams is not quite, but nearing, twice the speed in rendering, which I realized will be a loooot of my future daily usage, with the 7980x also being close to twice as efficient when it comes to powerdraw and running ten degrees celsius cooler under load. 

And yet i really dont see a lot of advanteges that speak for the 7970x. All benchmarks I saw were along the lines the 7980x is crazy efficient, has more or less +/- 10% the singlecore performance of the 32-core but around 80% more performance when it can utilize its threads.

Since i heavily underestimated my own CPU rendering requirements going forward, and considering power efficiency and speed I believe the 64 core will be the better fit for me.

Unless there is a hardwareproblem or incompatibilty with that many cores that would barr me from using the programs I need?

best,

Sasha