What I have:
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 980 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 1152 MHz 2048 CUDA Cores OCV1
MotherBoard: MSI Z87-G45 Gaming LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX
Memory: G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2400
Processor: ntel Core i5-4670K Haswell Quad-Core 3.4 GHz
OS: Arch Linux and Windows 10, separate hard drives.
I recently began playing with Manuel Bastioni Lab and ran headlong into the limits of this rig. I am on Arch Linux and really do not have a good grip on what all I might have to do to optimize my setup for Blender, but the bottom line is Bastioni lab makes human figures with well over 200k polys, and when I go to pose them my computer crawls. I anticipate this making animation very difficult.
I also have a desire to stream video both of video games and of my working on Blender. I can well imagine trying to stream myself while also editing 3d is just going to be a nightmare. So I am seriously considering buying a second computer. I am trying to figure out what is the best route for upgrading.
There are workstation graphics cards that are as cheap or cheaper than the video game optimized ones (Quadro k420 for just over $100.00), but I am not sure if they give much better performance even when rendering, much less when actually editing. I am having the devil’s own time finding information online, as all the info I come across compares a gaming gpu to a workstation gpu FOR GAMING, which is … just stupid. I mean I seriously do not understand why this is even out there. It is incredibly misleading stuff.
Questions arise:
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It seems Blender doesn’t really make much use of multiple cores, much less multiple processors, when editing? Is that true? So a multiprocessor board might not really be the way to go on this second computer?
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Do work station GPUs help DURING EDITING as opposed to rendering? Do the cheap ones render better than a another 980 GTX might, or heaven help me a 1080 GTX?
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As a stopgap, is there any sense getting the work station GPU and setting it alongside my gaming GPU in the same case, and somehow directing Blender to use it instead of the 980 GTX?
It seems likely I would be playing video games on the current rig and using the “workstation” to stream, then turning around and using the workstation for editing and using the gaming pc (this current one) to stream. Probably step one is to get the i7 for this motherboard, but for the second computer, given a budget of say $1500, suggestions?
P.S. I would prefer to run the work station on Linux, preferably Arch though Ubuntu is fine, if that makes a difference at all.
