Upgrades to my computer for better preformance

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1

I’ve started doing some modeling for 3d printing purposes but my machine starting to run slow. I think it is because of the high number of polygons I need in order to produce a smooth model and to allow the model to be easily sculpted. I looked on the official website and the recommend specs seem to suggest the I should upgrade my RAM or add a second video card but I don’t know which will help resolve the problem I’m having. My computer specs are i5 Intel processor, a Radeon R7 200 series and 8 gb of ram.

Does anyone know which aspect of my computer I should upgrade? If you need more information about what I’m doing or my system please feel free to ask. I’m considering starting a 3d printing business and this my first step in exploring if I can actually do this well.

Thanks to anyone who offers help or suggestions.

2

your GPU,CPU and Ram should be upgraded in relation to 3d work

but this

My computer specs are i5 Intel processor, a Radeon R7 200 series and 8 gb of ram.

Is pretty vague
What’s the model of the I5 intel processor, all I5 really means is that it has turbo boost and a better IGPU
and Radeon R7 200 series is really broad.

Please be more specific

3

Your specs are perfectly good unless you are using a really old computer. In fact, they are better than what I have! Best thing is to optimize your methods: don’t apply modifiers unless necessary(sculpt with multires or dyntopo, but dyntopo is slower), use smooth shading, etc. You have a better rig than I do, and I can support upto 1mil polys. Something’s wrong with your stuff.
But anyways, switch from Intel to AMD. AMD is much better for 3D modeling in my experience. Plus AMD GPU(you already have that) supports Cycles OpenCL rendering, something Intel doesn’t have.(Though that’s not relevant unless you are showing off your models.)

4

The main reason for poor viewport performance in Blender is poorly performing code and poor default settings. GPU is secondary and CPU is tertiary. RAM doesn’t matter unless you run out of it (check your task manager).

The first thing you should do is enable VBOs under Preferences->System. The second thing you should do is wait for the next Blender release, because it has a lot of improvements in terms of viewport performance.

Your GPU is worth upgrading, your CPU may be worth upgrading. Putting in another 8GB of RAM won’t hurt either.

edit:

That’s nonsense. Intel CPUs are better than AMD CPUs in basically every regard. AMD only competes on price. Intel CPUs also have way better single-core performance, and lots of areas in Blender are single-threaded.

5

Exactly
I was going to say that as well.
But then I thought that it would be insensitive.

oh and

Plus AMD GPU

Cuda performs much much better than openCL
and OP hasn’t specified what model he has so we don’t know whether or not he should upgrade.

6

I’ve built many a PC and sold many a PC, I have a couple cents to share.

If you’re on a budget, go for and AMD 8 core. The motherboard for this will also cost less.
If you’ve got more money, go for an i7, don’t settle for less, dat hyper-threading…

On the AMD side there are several different versions of their 8core CPU, most all of them identical architecture wise and the only differences are the standard quality of silicon (to a degree) and the clock speeds. I’d try and go with an 8370 which has better grade silicon than a 8350 and is pretty much an under-clocked 9570/9590.
But seriously, overclock the crap out of that thing. a nice air cooler or a decent water cooler will take you to 5 GHz at about 1.5 volts. You’ll want the best chip-set available to the am3+ socket though.
I personally owned the 8370 for a little while, and I was pretty happy with it.

On the intel side, i7s all the way!!! I got the 5820k and I FREAKING love it, but a 4790k or whatever will be pretty dang good still and you wont have to pay more for the DDR4 and new socket that the 5xxx series chips need.
The 4790k is a solid chip, preforms great, overclocks well, good power usage, gamer’s dream.

GPU wise, I did a LOT of testing with an R9-390x, 980ti, and TitanX recently and I got to say the 390x was a pretty solid player, OpenCL is promising in Cycles and seems to be preforming better for geometry, but there are a few features unsupported and a few certain things will take longer to render in OpenCL than CUDA.

Get an r9 380 at least on the AMD side.
or
GTX 970 at least on the Nvidia side.

Which company depends on if you’re willing to work with openCL while it’s being ironed out. Keep in mind though that the 380 has 8GB of VRAM, which is pretty neat!

If you got the money, get the best you can, and that means intel. For the best experience, you’ll probably want Nvidia.

7

@John
speaking of PC builds,
I am getting an I7 2700k(because it’s a fricking 8 threads CPU!.. and also because it’s the only one that will fit with the Mobo)
what’s the catch? It seems way too good to be true(it costs relatively low, and yes, I know it’s a 2nd gen CPU but hey I guess I have to deal with it)

8

If you’re really just looking to do some sculpting (not rendering), you can just ignore all this advice to get a multicore-CPU and enthusiast-level GPU. It won’t make much of a difference when many Blender feature don’t use multiple cores (again, watch your task manager).

Processor frequency makes an impact, but the gains from e.g. 2.5Ghz to 4Ghz is only 60% - not so noticable and not worth upgrading for. Sculpt mode drawing performance isn’t going to be much faster on a 390X than on a midrange GPU, either.

You’re welcome.

9

That CPU is just fine! As I recall sandy bridge overclocked rather well too! According to the benchmarks, it’s a bit ahead of the 8370 in terms of performance and a fair bit better in power usage, cuzz Intel.

You should be able to get 4.5Ghz on that thing easy, 4.8 if your cooling is good. It will be pretty fast!

But if your motherboard is on the cheaper end you may not get quite that high.

10

CPU is a Intel Core i5 CPU 2.67Ghz , w/ 4 Cores.

The GPU is most likely eith the R7 240 Low profile 2GB DDR3 PCI-e Video Card.

11

The computer I have now is a 8 yr old pre built computer with a video card upgrade. I have done the completely custom computer in the past but that was way back in high school before college, and unemployment for 2 years afterwords.

Can you give me some prices on the motherboards, GPU and CPUs you’ve mentioned?\

Also from what you said it sounds like RAM isn’t really going to be a player unless I’m running out of it correct?

12

Duplicate POST, Admin Please Delete.

13

That definitely sounds like a RAM issue. If your MOBO allows for it and you have the budget for it then it’s that you need to upgrade to handle high poly data in your scene.

14

He means R9 390.

15

Found out my old motherboard is cap at 16 gb of Ram. I’m not sure if this includes the ram from my graphics card. Is the upgrade still worth it if I can only go to 16 GB of Ram?

16

I think your right in when it comes to optimizing my methods. Can you give me some more examples? Will applying the modifiers before I move on to the next modifier?

Below are main modifiers I’m going to be using. How would the optimization apply to these : (In order of importance to current project)

  1. Displace <- my bread and butter for what I’m currently doing
  2. Multiresolution / Subsurf - I think I’m leaning more toward Multirez since I need to be able to sculpt afterwords
  3. Laplacian Smooth Modifier
  4. Smoother
17

After reading some more about vertex groups, it sounds like using them would allow be to limit the memory usage. Does this sound right to you?