What would be a better computer for Maya?

[T182T]

Hi I am looking to upgrade my PC. I like dell and have used them for many years, so I plan on sticking with them. Here is what I am between based on price. I want to stay in the $5K range. Would the Alienware work good or would I see better performance out of the Workstation below it?

Alienware Area 51 

- Intel® Core™ i7-5960X (8-cores, 20MB Cache, Overclocked up to 4.0 GHz w/ Turbo Boost)

- 32GB Quad Channel DDR4 at 2133MHz

- Dual NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX™ 980 Ti with 6GB GDDR5 each (NVIDIA SLI® Enabled)

OR

Dell Precision Tower 7000 Series (7910)

- Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2630 v3 (8C, 2.4GHz, Turbo, HT, 20M, 85W)

- AMD FirePro W9100, 16GB (6 mDP) (6 mDP to DP adapters)

- 32GB (4x8GB) 2133MHz DDR4 RDIMM ECC 

[Anonymous]

Both of those system's look great to me, but to help you pick the best one for you we would need to know what exactly you use Maya for (Texture Artist, Animator, Simulations, etc).

In my personal opinion, the Alienware will serve you better. You get the same memory configuration with the exception of ECC which to my knowledge doesn't help Maya too much (I've never used it and don't have any problems). The real difference in these machines are the processor and GPU's.

The AMD gives you quite a bit of RAM and adapters, but that much in my mind is only useful if you are texturing everyting at 16K+. Also, AMD hasn't always had the best dedicated drivers for 3D apps. The 2 980 Ti's will serve you plenty well (just disable SLI if you don't game) and you have a very powerful workstation for GPU rendering if you're into that (I personally love Redshift, blazing fast with CUDA). That's another advantage of the GTX cards, you get to use CUDA accelerated applications with them as well.

For the processors, I would also go with the Alienware and it's i7. The Xeon may look like a great deal, but the 26xx series are designed to work best in dual cpu configurations. The only times I would buy a single Xeon are if it's a 16xx (only allows 1 CPU), where it's a better quality i7, and still overclockable, or if I knew I was going to get a second 26xx down the road. If it's just one CPU, the i7 should annihilate that Xeon in any rendering/work tasks, single threaded and multi-threaded.

Above anything else, make sure you have a proper disk configuration in the system. I would recommend an SSD for boot/applications, a large HDD for storing past projects and media files, a fast SSD for working projects (probably around 250/500 gigs for multiple large projects), and maybe another SSD or RAID0 setup for cache files (I use these to store nCache and Fluid bake files, as well as files from AE/PP/Nuke/etc). I'm no pro at disk management, so take this with a grain of salt.

BUT, if you are a texture artist working in extremely high resolutions, maybe that Precision is for you 

-MR

[T182T]

Thanks for the post. I feel like the Alienware would serve me better all around, but at the same time I dont want to make the wrong choice if a similar priced workstation would be better. I dont know much about processors and stuff, just used to trying to buy the most for my money in the past and hoped it worked out.

I am learning Maya currently. I do use programs like Photoshop, Illustrator & Premeir a lot which I know would be fine for the Alienware. I am hoping to be good enough to do photo realistic architectural modeling and animations as well as interactive walk through app's, so that would be where my focus would be with Maya moving forward. I am currently using an Alienware laptop, but the rendering times seem aweful slow and I see there is quite a jump in performance going to a desktop, so that would be my route for sure. 

Since you said to disable SLI. Would a single Titan X GPU be better than dual 980 ti's for this stuff.

[Anonymous]

You said what I was thinking perfectly: "I feel like the Alienware would serve me better all around". That's exactly what I was getting at. For what you do/want to do, the AW will provide a much better experience and range of tasks in comparison to the Precision.

For the GPU's, you need to look at your workflow and programs you'll be using. If the walk-through software (such as a game engine) supports SLI, it may be nice to have two cards to test it out on, but that requires you to set it up to support SLI. In my head, arch viz doesn't use pre-rendered images, so a Titan should be more than enough.

In terms of real life usage, the actual difference between a 980 Ti and Titan X is very small (NVIDIA shot themselves in the foot with that one), you just get more VRAM and a few more CUDA cores with the Titan X.

Either way, both card configurations will work well for you. If you don't plan on using GPU renderers, you can save some money (I assume) on just a Titan X vs 2 980 Ti's, or save more with just one 980 Ti. It all comes down to what you want to pay. Both will serve you perfectly.

[T182T]

Great. Thanks. I thought posting this question in this forum may have opend up a can of worms. Atleast your thoughts are inline with mine.  I will just go with the Alienware and move on.  

[Anonymous]

You helped out by providing two machines to pick from. If you were building your own machine, this thread would be very different 😉

But seriously, picking one and moving on is the best decision to make. Michael Stark, a 3D guy I follow also uses an Alienware machine and loves it, I think you will too.