i am looking at getting a dual cpu mother bored
yes i know i could get a better gpu for rendering in cycles but no one seems to know what gpu to get 
I would not count on dual CPUs making any substantial benefit with blender.
dual CPU seems to work well, you can see the video of DingTo presenting cycles (see bottom of DingTo posts)
it will be useful if you want to make huge simulation.
for GPU rendering you can buy a computer with a good power supply and starting with two GPU (one dedicated to rendering, ex Titan if you can afford it, or less expensive nvidia card with RAM >=4 Go) > when you will need more speed for rendering, just add another card.
i still dont get what card to get tho and i am yet to see any render times with the titan
i was just looking at getting 1 or more of this http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=21519
cos that is the cheepist for 3gb vram card
Here are a few things Iâve learned about dual GPU cards:
- SLI is NOT used for 3D graphics (I learned this one the hard way)
- Blender can use as many GPUs as you can stuff into your case, singly or all at once WITHOUT SLI
- in SLI mode, the speed improvement with two GPUs over one GPU is about 11% with Blender
- in non-SLI mode, the speed improvement with two GPUs over one GPU is about 17% with Blender
Bottom line: donât bother setting up SLI just for Blender. Itâs a waste of time and self-defeating.
Other bottom line: If you have the money for two GPUs, buy one much better one instead. Your power supply will thank you, youâll have fewer headaches (Google how many people have trouble getting them to work together) and dispelling extra heat from the case wonât be as much of an issue.
Instead of two 660âs, Iâd go for one 780. Just my take.
As for dual CPUs, Blender seems able to work with as many threads as you have available, so in theory, you should be able to use it on dual or quad CPU systems and get a benefit if youâre doing CPU rendering. Iâm not sure it would help speed up the viewport or anything else, so if youâre using Cycles, you might consider going to a more expensive single CPU instead. For instance, if you were considering a dual i7 2600k set-up, why not go for a single i7 3630k instead? Youâd get a 50% boost in speed for less than the price of two 2600ks.
Just my two-cents worth.
Hi red556, games are not suitable to test GFX cards for Cycles.
Tom´s Hardware use Cycles and Octane since a few weeks to test Cuda performance.
Titan is faster than 2 x GTX 580 run cooler with less power and with double VRam.
Cheers, mib.
I know I was contradicted about my hypothesis on dual CPUs & blender the reason I say that is because blenderâs threads are done mostly on the GPU while baking is done on the CPU it doesnât take much to bake and I am struggling with CPU resources in blender on a single i7 the way it is. [Anyways]
Youâll be surprised how fast a 660Ti is you wonât be disapointed and if you get more than one your PC will blow an average PC out of the water.
Because of problems with my $1800 Quadro K5000 video card and Cycles CUDA I have to use CPU rendering - otherwise my system crashes. That being said, I have twin 6 core XEONs for a total of 12 cores and when hyperthreaded, 24 cores.
Blender sees both CPUâs and all 24 cores. Redline monitor shows a fairly even load across all 24 cores during blending rendering too.
I see if youâre CPU rendering then I can see why you would want more CPU power.
Thatâs cool Blender will thread tons of CPU threads when rendering.
well i am thinking about getting one cpu with a low amount of cores and one with an high amount cos form what i have seen not all of blenders things (and some other programs) can use more than 1 core at a time so there for if i just go with a high core count than that part of the program will go real slow
if i just go with a high core count than that part of the program will go real slow
No, modern CPU have a special mode, Intel call it âTurbo Boostâ.
If an application use only one or two cores the CPU start overclocking.
Invest your money better in one high performance system.
Btw. what is your budget?
Cheers, mib.
Iâve been debating dual Xeons for a while now. It seems to be the Intel chip of choice for 3D workstation system builders over Core CPUs but Iâve not found any great information resources justifying that choice. Several Blender features are exclusively powered by CPU only (e.g. Sculpting, Simulations, experimental features). Itâs a more expensive path than single Core CPU and a great GPU card like the Titan, and Haswell Xeons are not yet announced.
ok it looks like Xeons can not be overclocked (not a bad that but it would be âcoolâ so to speek)
also people i know are telling me that you can only have dual xeons cos other cpus can not talk to each other (did not know thay needed to)
the last thing is why are titans so slow ? i have a friend who has one and it renders 500samples in 8s and some one else who can do the same in 5.11s 560ti (just rendering the blender start up scene) dont get me wrong i mean it takes me 8s to do 5 samples if i am lucky but a 560ti costs a LOT less (i know it dos not have much vram but there are ways around that tho i am yet to look in to it)
Hi, Titan is the fastest Cycles card on earth atm., default cube is not suitable for testing.
Test on Tom´ Hardware:
Testfile rendered with 200x200 tiles:
http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?239480-2-61-Cycles-render-benchmark
Cheers, mib.
There are two rules with dual CPUs:
- They must be identical
- They must be designed for dual-CPU use. (like the Xeon E5 series)
On #2, general consumer parts will NOT work. Nor will the low-end Xeons (E3 line) that are really just consumer parts re-badged with ECC left enabled. If you want a dual-CPU setup, you are looking at a pair of CPUs with a 4-digit sticker price each. Blender will use them just fine for rendering, but if you arenât making money with this rig itâs probably not worth it.
If you want a dual-CPU setup, you are looking at a pair of CPUs with a 4-digit sticker price each.
They arenât that expensive. Quadcore Sandy-Bridge Xeon-E5 (2.4Ghz) starts at 260EUR here. However, they have generally lower clocks and prices tend to rise very quickly for higher-clocked models.
Sandy-Bridge Xeons cannot be overclocked, however the older LGA1366 Xeons can be overclocked using the EVGA SR-2.
dam i hate this -_- i need a new pc asap an no one know what works with what and what is the best NOT EVEN THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE THE DAM THINGS⌠but i am yet to ring intel so lets give that a try now
everyone is contradicting everyone else
well so much for that i have no clue where to ring and i am on the wrong side of the world -_-
It not to hard. 
If you would like to go to the double CPU systems buy a mainboard which supports double Xeon´s and 2-4 PCIe slots.
Choose Xeon 4, 6 or 8 Core (8 Core = 1500 Euro), you can start with one 6 Core and upgrade later if needed.
For a single CPU system buy a mainboard for i7 6 Core and 2-4 PCIe slots.
For both systems:
Buy a couple of Titans.
Buy a very good power supply > 1000 Watt´s (depends of quantity of Titans).
Buy 32 GB Ram (for each CPU).
Be happy.
Cheers, mib.
If i had money to burn i would buy Dual Xeon 8 Core and 4 Titan + 64 GB Ram.
Round about 8000 Euro.
If youâre going with dual Xeons, watch out for pre-built workstations. They tend to put slightly slower Xeons in those. Youâre better off doing your own build or, if youâre a bit squeamish about that sort of thing, research the parts and talk it over with your local computer tech and have him build it. Better bang for the buck that way.