The computer I use for Blender recently gave up turning on and I am trying to figure out how to determine what makes a good computer for blender.
I gave myself a budget of 300 for this and I have found a few refurbished PCs that seem good.
I have thought about building my own but I think that might be to costly for me.
Both are HP and the major differences are the processor and the graphics card.
One is an Intel Core i7 2nd Gen 2600 (3.40 GHz) and the other is an AMD A8-6500 Richland Quad 3.5GZ
If they were both Intel I could probably tell the difference but with out a standard guide I can’t really tell which is better.
The graphics cards are a minor point to me, they both seem good and I figured I would buy a strong Nvidia card later if I felt I needed it, but the AMD has a Radeon 8570Dthat sounds very nice but that’s mostly because it sounds more impressive then an Intel HD 2000 graphics card.
How exactly would I tell if these would be a good fit for Blender?
As for the stuff you listed. The Radeon 8570D is much better than the Intel HD 2000, i don’t know if either of them is supported by cycles though. The A8 6500 is a bit better than the i7 2600.
That’s really helpful thanks! The Amd is the cheaper of the two and I agree with the concern about cycles, I figured if I needed it later I would save up for a new graphics card anyway, truth be told I am unsure about cycles since I only used it sparingly because my old computer was very slow for that.
In terms of CPU performance, the i7 2600 is going to be far better than the A8-6500, in both single and multi threaded benchmarks, so for any simulations/rendering you’ll benefit from the Intel processor.
If you add a GPU, then definitely get the Intel system as well.
However without an added GPU, the Intel system will have worse viewport performance for models with larger amounts of faces, but it will be faster than what you currently have.
Here are some benchmarks; The i7 2600 is roughly 1.5x - 2x as faster for CPU tasks.
Using the passmark benchmarks, the A8 was 4391 vs the i7 at 8228, otherwise also look here:
This is interesting, I have sort of put a hold on buying for a few days to do more research and I ran into an interesting question, is their a difference between the generations of the same processor?
Also are there any recommendations of where to find refurbished pcs, I have tried amazon and newegg but I am wondering if I can find easier places.