Ok, so I think I might have done something really dumb. I decided I was sick of the terribly slow rendering times on my laptop, so I caved in and decided I was going to build a desktop. I bought it, centered around the idea the a 6 core processor would make all the difference in the world as far as blender’s performance goes. I told myself I don’t need a graphics card, so I just bought a motherboard with an onboard GPU, which is all I need to say about that. My question is, how will blender perform? Did I just really make a stupid move, especially considering I’m on a pretty tight budget, or will I be ok? TIA
Looking at it overall you should have gotten a 4-core and a graphics card. But as far I am concerned Blender uses the CPU (only) to render. Also you need a good CPU for baking and simulations. RAM also should be in excess. But if you have nographics card then you can’t uses Octane Render because a lot of renderers require CUDA from Nvidia
Working with more geometry than a low poly game model will almost require a gpu. GLSL will require a gpu. Sculpting and texture painting will require a gpu. And not just a gpu, but a gpu with a decent amount of dedicated VRAM. At least 256-512 megs of vram as a bare minimum. 1-2 gigs is preferred for larger scenes.
Onboard graphics will work on a small scale, but as scenes get serious, it all falls apart, not to mention onboard graphics have the tendency to have graphics glitches and UI problems.
Also, if you want to take advantages of Cycles (the new rendering engine under development) you should probably have a GPU. Onboard graphics will also not be very good with GLSL.
You made a mistake.
However it´s easy to fix. Your rendertimes will be nice, I assume you got a AMD x6, it´s a tad faster for rendering as the Ci7 2600k, but not as OC happy. But that´s not the issue, rendertimes will me kickass.
Desktop mainboards don´t always have bad graphics cards on them, some of them even have discreet memory and don´t use the systems ram. The GPU will be used for everything Blender draws on the display in realtime. A good guesstimation is that you can´t do high poly stuff, might have troubles with volumetrics (smoke) in the viewport, game-engine might run slower and you could run into troubles texture painting in GLSL.
Anyways, you can always buy a graphics card. Currently for Blender and budget, go on ebay, shoot a GTX285.
In DX9 is is almost as fast as a GTX470, and it´s faster in OpenGL (what Blender uses) alternatively go get a AMD HD5870.
You should be able to get either of the cards on ebay for 40-60 Euro.
Since we are talking abot hardware I need some help. i was planning On getont a desktop. Specs would be i7 2600 with a gtx 550. 12gb RAM plus two monitors it would Costa 1652 in US Dollars.also is it Cursors to Build your own pc. Because then i could get all the specs I want.
With a 6-core CPU you will get crazy-good rendertimes, but the 3Dview speed depends only on the videocard. Just stick with the current setup for now and attach a better graphics card later.
@larmannjan - assembling a PC isn’t hard, just read a motherboard manual.
What about warranty. Is it for the individual parts. Can anybody recomman a good configuration.
With a 6-core CPU you will get crazy-good rendertimes
Maybe it is just my scenes, lights and material usage but I often see Blender only using a portion of my quad core CPU. I thought extra cores would mean full CPU usage by Blender. But there are still parts of Blender that are single threaded, like the export, fluid sim, python scripts, baking… Really I only see that full CPU usage when I use raytracing.
So gigahertz is still a consideration. If you have the choice between a 2.5ghz 6 core and a 3.0ghz 4 core you may actually get faster renders on the 4 core. It all comes back to your scene type. I recently had luck overclocking (my first attempt) my 3.0ghz quad up to 3.6ghz. So that is something to think about as well. Six hundred more megaherzt per core equals 2.4ghz more computer power.
Yes, warranty is individually for each part. The configuration itself depends on the amount of money you’re willing to spend.
Maybe it is just my scenes, lights and material usage but I often see Blender only using a portion of my quad core CPU.
Yeah, but that’s Blender’s fault… for rendering you can tweak the tile size and threads, see if you have those adjusted. Also, check how fast Cycles goes on a 6-core, it should be pretty fast!
Thanks for all the reponses guys! I was actually able to cancel my order this morning so I am able to start from scratch. This is the video card I’m looking at getting
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125391
I looked at it in a benchmark comparison versus other cards in the $100 range, and it blows everything away. I am now deciding if I should even spend the extra money on a 6 core, or if the 4 core is fine. I looked at some benchmarks and the 6 core barely performed better than the 4 core (I’m talking AMD Phenom’s — intel is way too expensive imo). I still want to get a 6 core, just cause it’s not really that much more expensive and I do think rendering would be 6/4’ths quicker (lol I know it’s not that simple). .
I guess a compromise would be to get the 3.0 ghz 6 core for $30 less than the 3.3, but i’m not sure $30 is really worth it for essentially a 1.8 ghz drop off (not including OCing which i’m skeptical about).
Anyway’s, thanks again!
you might want to check this out. http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+260
PS: what is your budget
Sceptical about overclocking? Good! If you are using Blender to render out long animations, your computer will already be getting hot hot hot! If you overclock, you better have good cooling.
Back to the subject at hand. Dude! You have to have a good graphics card with Blender or else GLSL sucks! You need a good graphics card so that you can work fast. If you have a crappy card, then everything in the viewport slows down when you are trying to work.
I was hoping $500 or less
Which I was at $450 without a video card, but that changes things. $100 is pretty much my budget for a VC
including a screen and a mouse a keyboard?
I have the GTX 260 and it is a great mid-level card. I use it for Cycles as well as Octane (which are both GPU renderers) and it works great. I eventually plan on upgrading to the GTX 5xx series card (or maybe even a GTX 6xx series card when it comes out), but the 260 is a great card in the interim.
No, I have all those already.
I do not mean to steal thread but I also need help. I have already selected the CPU and GPU
CPU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103913
GPU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814261099
I need a motherboard and at least 8GB of RAM (enough DIMM to upgrade to 12)
how much RAM do you want?