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Cpu upgrade help for speeding up LW render?

Not that it makes a big difference but Cinebench is now up to R20:


And there are a couple of benchmarking threads elsewhere on these forums:


 
for Budget, i recommend this setup >

-AMD 1700 (buy used for $150)
-8GB DDR 4 ($50)
-MSI B450 ($90)

unfortunately upgrading CPU only for your system just won't be worth it.
the good thing about the above PC, is that you can easily upgrade to a strong CPU later on. (3900X or such)
 
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don't, it is Very slow.
have a look at these ones instead >

I prefer CPU Benchmark
e.g.

Intel Xeon E5 2680 has score 18156 (mine has 2870 ;) )
On CPU Benchmark its price is $450
For $550 you can get
which has score 39427
$100 difference and > 2 times faster..

The only (theoretical) advantage of such Xeon is that you can plug multiple in one mobo.
 
I prefer CPU Benchmark
e.g.

Intel Xeon E5 2680 has score 18156 (mine has 2870 ;) )
On CPU Benchmark its price is $450
For $550 you can get
which has score 39427
$100 difference and > 2 times faster..

The only (theoretical) advantage of such Xeon is that you can plug multiple in one mobo.
My dual E5 2680 v3 setup has a score of 25118:


but as the whole box only cost me £430, the price comparison is pretty good.

For this thread, I do not think genesis1 has the budget to replace his motherboard and cpu. Hence why he is looking at just a CPU upgrade. He has my sympathies, I just got really lucky with my upgrade options last year and I'm happy I don't have to try for something right now as all of the prices are heading in the wrong direction.
 

14700 is less than 18200,
yes, but is it worth it ?
the B450 can pop out the 1700 and insert a 3950x later (2.7 times faster)
MSI B450 ($900)
sorry... yes, $90... darnit.
bcwLfNX.gif


 
but as the whole box only cost me £430, the price comparison is pretty good.
Absolutely!
bcwLfNX.gif


yes, if $300 is too much, i agree, but personally wouldn't do it, i'd save a few dollars 1 month and buy the $300 setup.
then at a later time, just pop out the CPU and upgrade it to a 3950X that is almost 3 times faster.

but i get it, low cash is never fun. been there / am there.
 
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I prefer CPU Benchmark
e.g.

Intel Xeon E5 2680 has score 18156 (mine has 2870 ;) )
On CPU Benchmark its price is $450
For $550 you can get
which has score 39427
$100 difference and > 2 times faster..

The only (theoretical) advantage of such Xeon is that you can plug multiple in one mobo.
$450 for e5 2680 v4?? Not where I'm looking. Only £140- 200 now. However I'm seeing the logic of the Ryzen for future proofing. I know practicaly nothing of Ryzen systems except I have heard of people having problems but then that can be said of most systems from time to time. I guess I need to just hang on and save.
Is there any other improvements I could do? I have 16gb ddr4. Would more memory benefit? I've dabbled with overclocking with air cooling and have had it stable at 4.6 but you can hear the fans thrashing and temps at around 83-87deg. I just wouldn't feel comfortable doing an overnight render at those settings. So I've always been happy with stock. I have xmp turned on but ram is 4x4 2400mhz ddr4 or 2133 stock.
 

16GB DDR4 is nice. I only got 8GB on this machine, need to upgrade, but amazed how well it actually works.
LightWave is Very "RAM friendly".
For very heavy Fluids dynamics lots of Ram is good in any system. but 16GB should do fine for starters.

Overclocking is mostly a hype imo, you'll gain 5% perhaps, not really worth it. (i looked quite a bit into it)

Your best "win" is often waiting patiently for a good deal on a good CPU on eBay.
bcwLfNX.gif


 
16GB DDR4 is nice. I only got 8GB on this machine, need to upgrade, but amazed how well it actually works.
LightWave is Very "RAM friendly".
For very heavy Fluids dynamics lots of Ram is good in any system. but 16GB should do fine for starters.

Overclocking is mostly a hype imo, you'll gain 5% perhaps, not really worth it. (i looked quite a bit into it)

Your best "win" is often waiting patiently for a good deal on a good CPU on eBay.
bcwLfNX.gif
Yes, I found oc shaved about 2-3 minutes off a render. Which I suppose over a 600 frame render would reduce render time quite a bit but also the worry of shortening the lifespan of the system.
Yes, as impatient as I am, I guess it's going to be a waiting game.

Going back to ryzen chips for a moment. What's the best air cooler for these? Would also need to price that into the equation for totting up a budget.
 
Would more memory benefit?
If you are not running out of memory in your scenes, no. Additional memory won't change a thing. But if your scenes are so heavy that they require virtual memory usage, yes.
Do you have NVMe storage? It is much faster than SSD..
SSD has ~550 MB/s
NVMe can have ~3500 MB/s
 
Short-term you'll find a decently-priced commercial farm service, like GarageFarm, is much more economical than upgrading MB components (esp. older ones where what you really need is an entirely new system). Just a thought.
 

GarageFarm
yes, have considered it. unsure about plugin support, (they state "several plugins") but one could just mail them.

for commercial projects it can be a very good option, especially hasty ones.

 
I’d always pick cores over ghz when it comes to LW. Unless of course you are a Octane user.
 
NRC works fine here.

To save power (and to deal with the unavailable gpu's): the pc's don't even need a gpu if you have a renderfarm for LighWave and Fusion.
What you do need: SSD's, memory and a fast network.

I'm glad to have cpu rendering!
 
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