Hey there! The title pretty much says it all, but I’ll just tell the whole story for those who have time to read it.
I’ve been planning long on a much needed rebuild of my 2008 budget-build PC, and it’s meant to be a serious rebuild which I’d like to last reasonably long. I’ve read lots of reviews and comments about pretty much anything, but the CPU is the most important thing and it’s not yet solved. Basically, I can finally afford a 3770k, which I didn’t count on earlier. It appears to be better at pretty much everything, which should well be for the price difference with the FX-8350 Black Series. There are however 4 reasons that make me want to go AMD:
FX-8350’s got 8 physical cores
FX-8350 has higher clock speed
AMD build is overall cheaper
i7 includes integrated GPU, which I absolutely don’t need (I have a GTX 650ti)
Yet, common sense dictates that the price difference between them should make the i7 better, but my question is, which one performs better with Blender?
I also use Gimp, process videos and do some gaming, but my main interest, and what I want to base my choice on, is Blender.
So what do you guys say? It’s really important for me.
They are more like 4 modules, they are not dedicated cores. 2 “Cores” always share the L1 and L2 cache and the floating point unit.
Clockspeed doesn’t compare anymore unless you compare it within the same architecture. Besides that you can OC the i7 easily. I got the i5, set it in the UEFI to run with 4GHz with one mouseclick, mainboard did the rest. Runs rocksolid.
True, and the difference for brute rendering isn’t big.
It’s great though. I use mine for the secondary display. If I Blend and Cycle, I use it as primary display for Blender and let the GeForce do it’s job.
To sum it up I’d say:
The AMD has more bang for the buck if you render and/or use all cores, however it uses a lot more electricity (which you have to pay) and in single threaded operations it’s not very fast.
If you intend to play some games or do other stuff that requires single/dual core operations, go with the i7.
I actually don’t know how much single threaded stuff is left in Blender.
The AMD is also unlocked and you can OC it, but temperature and power consumption spike pretty soon.
Thanks for fast reply. That pretty much confirmed my i7 build. And yeah, I’ve read that review before. Yet, I think I’ll wait for some more opinions, just to get some contrast. Btw, this would be the complete build:
-NZXT Phantom 530 Case
-ASRock Z77 Extreme4 - I plan on getting dual nVidia cards sometime next year, and that’s the one that fits in the budget. Also considered ASUS P8Z77
-i7-3770k
-8GB DDR3 Kingston HyperX 1600
For now I think I’ll keep the GPU and save for 2 really good ones in the future.
So, as I said, if there are any other opinions there, please post. We all get wiser sharing them, don’t we?
One of my machines got the same mainboard and it’s awesome, especially if you plan to OC.
Very stable, very good OC settings, easy to use, even OC-able directly from Windows.
IMO the best price/performance board with a Z77 chipset.
A word of advice, the fan control isn’t really great - unfortunately. If you don’t use a separate fan controller, get PWM fans.
If you don’t care for noise, just connect and go full force.
Memory be sure to get 24GB to be able to stack up later. I got 44 but should have gotten 2*8
Have you found out about the intel newest technology (Haswell)?
The equivalent to i7-3770K in Haswell is the i7-4770k. In both, “k” if you want to extreme overclock, otherwise you can save some money by buying the model without “k”.
I have read very good reviews about ASRock motherboards, Pro and Extreme series. For the i7-4770, models with Z87 chipset motherboards (equivalent to Z77). In addition, Haswell have better iGPU that ivy bridge.
I know it’s something that is not very important, but I love the design and colors of these motherboards.
Regarding the comparison AMD and intel, you pay no attention to the real cores or threads. Intel 3770 works very well on renders with 8 threads (4 cores). You must be enabled HyperThread in the BIOS.
I prefer intel, but if you get to save a lot of money with AMD, might be a good option. I don’t think the energetic consumption matters much in your expenses if you really plan to use GPU to render.
Anyway here you can see some values (BMW scene Benchmark):
*AMD FX-8350
Windows ~ 4 min
Linux ~ 2:30 min
*i7-3770
Windows ~ 3:30 min
Linux ~ 2 min
*i7-4770
Windows ~ 2 min
Linux ~ 1:30 min
I actually don’t know how much single threaded stuff is left in Blender.
Quite a bit, all the python driven parts are still single threaded. Like the UI, all AddOns and Tools. The only time you get benefits of multiple cores in Blender, and most other 3D packages, is when you render using raytracing or generating/baking certain simulations. So a fast single core is always helpful.
