I’m planning my build for my first PC build in a long time. I’m a Mac user but the AMD Ryzen9 3950 has convinced me to come back to the dark side! My big question is should I get 2 graphics cards? I can get dual 5700XTs for less than the price of one 2080ti. I am trying to do as much research as possible before I pull the trigger. All suggestions or current build lists are appreciated.
Please - avoid GPU from AMD if you keep in mind rendering on GPU in any sense.
you can buy 3900x (it fast enough)
you can buy 32GB RAM instead (is enough for 70-80% of scenes)
you can buy simplest and more cheap SSD (there is no such difference)
Just my 2 cents… But the next generation of AMD Ryzen is coming out imminently, and should be able to roflstomp the current line up, with a 50% boost to FPU performance alone, not including other architecture advances and higher clock speeds.
Personally i would not go for AMD GPU because i think for Blender specifically Nvidia RTX & CUDA has an unfair advantage over OpenCL with no tensor cores.
For the RAM whilst top speed RAM does help CPU performance you might be better off getting 128GB of slower but still DDR4 RAM. In 2017 i got 32GB of DDR4 2666 for my Ryzen where as the gamers were getting 16GB of the fastest clocked DDR4 they could get their hands on.
Storage, Samsung is imminently releasing a 980 evo for PCI-4.0 with 6,500MB/s read speed for comparison, that’s equivalent to the speed of DDR2-800 RAM.
Cooling should be fine, but dont expect to run at all core boost clocks whilst rendering with the GPU and CPU maxed to 100% for hrs… its totally different to gaming.
Looking at Blender Open Data, it seems that 5700 XT is actually faster than equally priced Nvidia GPU (either 2070 or 2060 Super). So apart from stability problems which some users do report, it’s actually not a bad choice of GPUs.
I’d say it’s just a question whether you would rather spend more to get a (generally) more compatible system with Nvidia GPU or get better price to performance at a (possibly) less compatible and/or stable system with AMD GPU.
Yup. That is my dilemma in a nutshell. I am waiting to see the new card prices. I had decided to to spend the money on a 2080ti but if the new cards are the same price I may just pull the trigger on the new card. Trying to wait it out and see what Lisa Su has up her sleeve.
I’m having issues with some versions of blender with RX 5700. Seems they MAY have gone away in 2.83. Could not use cycles with 2.81 or 2.82 only 2.8. Luckily I started on 2.8 otherwise I would have just given up as I can’t find an answer to this. Crashes when rendering kernels for the first time EVERY Time.
Yeah. I found it interesting that Blender.org mentions no AMD cards at all. I’m going to wait and get an nVidia card unless AMD just blows me out of the water.
I’ve no experience in building a PC (yet) but I bookmarked this article from Blender Nation a while back as it gives a good overview of how Blender works and which components are best suited for this.
It’s a 10min read? And regularly updtated (June 29 2020)
