Hey! I’m trying to put together a good computer for working with 3D modeling in blender. I need something that can handle working with big projects with a lot of geometry and rendering. Take a look at the specs for the computer Im putting together below:
This will be my first time putting together my own computer and I am trying to achieve this as cheap as possible ofcourse. I did a bit of research and have put together this computer with these pieces for $642. Can anyone take a look at the specs and let me know if it is going to meet my needs? Thanks in advance.
Without the prices of each component I can’t say if you’ll be better off price wise by using different parts but I can be sure that a GT720 is a waste of money, and don’t spend so much on CPU/RAM/MB, put it in the graphics card instead, you can probably get a GTX970 for that much money and still have enough for everything else
Hi, AMD systems are not really suitable for 3D work, they are as slow as they are cheap.
Search for some benchmarks.
I wold go for smallest i7 quad.
You can save some money if you use the integrated GPU of i7, they are good enough for Blender.
Blender 2.8 series will use the GPU much more, you can add a discrete GPU later.
AMD CPU should be ok, so long as there aren’t any driver issues, and so long as you have a good AMD CPU that is a good price for it’s benchmark performances vs. an Intel.
Otherwise, yeah, for modeling and sculpting (and also later when you do shading and texture painting) it’s mostly all GPU. CPU will come into play when you run some operation on the mesh, but displaying it, updating a sculpting stroke, thats GPU (although it can be set to CPU instead of GPU in Blender).
For a multitude of reasons, I think you are going to want to get a really good GPU. You could always try the system with an older GPU you have lying around and see how far CPU processing power alone gets you, maybe it could do the trick, I mean in Blender you can set a lot of things to the CPU or the GPU, like sculpting or cycles rendering, etc… But I don’t suspect you will get too far before you decide to go get a GPU. Get the best bang for your buck, and if it’s anything Radeon or ATI make darned sure drivers won’t be a problem before you buy it, with all the software you use, do a call to see if any other owners have problems/can test quickly the software and tools you need, etc…
Hi Cancer, where you set sculpting to GPU?
Blender does nothing on the GPU except Cycles and some compositing, all other is only display (Ancient Blender OpenGL 1.6).
I had a GTX 750, GTX 560Ti and now GTX 670 and GTX 760, there was really no difference for modeling or sculpting.
For example user nutelZ sculpt 45 million polys with a Geforce 8600GT:
The new Blender 2.8 series will use GPU more but this is in 1-2 Years.
Please not understand as offense but you are fine with a 100$ card if you don´t want to render on GPU.
If you want render on GPU put all money in this direction.
You are correct. This is something I figured out I was wrong about before, then still remembered it yet again, the wrong way.
Sorry I remembered it wrong again. This is what happens when you too frequently step away from your tools/studies for long periods.
So does sculpting use the GPU at all? Or is the calculation/translation of points as they are pushed about by a brush, all done on the CPU? That’s what I am re-affirming from your post, that in Blender it’s currently mostly all CPU?
ZBrush uses CPU, Mudbox (for all intensive purposes) uses the GPU (although newer versions allow for the use of Intel HD graphics but that is still sort of a GPU of sorts).
The performance for sculpting isn’t bad (in Blender), but if CPU is what is going to improve it, and GPU isn’t going to do much of anything, then heck, that is good to know. Changes some of my thinking around.
What about viewport performance in general? Is that GPU or CPU?
(I guess my advice didn’t turn out to be so bad though, aka: Start with a good CPU, see how far you can get with an older GPU you have lying around, and then you will be able to easily be able to see how badly you need a good GPU or not)
Viewport performance is dependent on the GPU and doesn’t touch the CPU much at all, Sculpting on the other hand is dependent on the CPU.
Since sculpting uses the CPU and also updates the viewport it means you’re going to need a good balance of GPU and CPU performance for good performance while sculpting.
As far as I know no mesh calculation use GPU, simulations as smoke, fluid neither.
Viewport performance is more complicated but iirc Blender does not profit from modern GPU as it use very old OpenGL 1.6 for display (latest is 4.4).
Blender 2.77 will update to OpenGL 2.1 and Blender 2.8 to OpenGL 3.0 so GPU will get more and more important in the next 1-2 years.
(I guess my advice didn’t turn out to be so bad though, aka: Start with a good CPU, see how far you can get with an older GPU you have lying around, and then you will be able to easily be able to see how badly you need a good GPU or not)
Yes
@@craigforster, sorry for going off topic but it is important for a feature proof system for the next 4-5 years.
Thank you very much for fixing my mistakes guys. I’m building a new system soon too, so it really helps. I do also use UE4 and that I know, makes heavy use of the GPU. So now I know that I can’t just get a powerful GPU and skimp on the CPU or my Blender sculpting will, at least for now, suffer.
