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CPU - more cores or a higher clock speed for Daz?

GreatGonzoGreatGonzo Posts: 55
edited November 13 in The Commons

Here is my core question for Daz would you go for
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 3.4 GHz or AMD Ryzen 7 7700X 4.5 GHz
They are both more or less the same cost, one has more cores/threads, and the other has a higher clock speed.
Or... does it matter (honestly, I know very little about CPUs)

I have finally reached the point where I need to upgrade my system to catch up with my GPUs and honestly, I am not the most techy person in the world, and trolling through pages of fanboy contradictory opinions on Toms Hardware seems like a lot of work... so I'm going to ask you.

Before anyone says anything, GPU's are not an issue, the current system has 2x 4090 cards sitting in it.
(The whole system sits in an in old open Bitcoin mining rig to prevent heat build-up).

I have the new system 'more or less' specced up, and am probably going with an AMD processor (but I'm not married to it), however, am not sure which one would be the better choice.

Obviously, money is not unlimited in this project - if it was this would not even be a question,  I'd slap a Ryzen 9 7950X3D 5.7 GHz and get on with my day (but I'd also like to eat and pay the bills :D )

Post edited by GreatGonzo on

Comments

  • richardandtracyrichardandtracy Posts: 5,660
    edited November 13

    The answer has to be 'It Depends on Circumstances'

    DS is basically a single thread program most of the time. It is multi thread when rendering, and it uses as many threads as necessary. So..

    • In 'normal' posing, positioning etc use, you want as fast a single core performance as you can get.
    • If you are rendering with an nVidia card that has sufficient VRAM, it doesn't matter too much how fast the CPU is, just so long as it can feed the next facet info to the card fast enough. Most current CPU's are fast enough to keep up with an appropriate card - a mid range CPU will feed a mid range card, a top end card may need a CPU a bit higher than mid range to keep up. I don't know AMD chip performances, but an i5-12 is perfectly adequate to feed an RTX3060, and probably an i9 for a RTX4090.
    • If the GPU regularly drops to CPU (ie <12Gb VRAM) or you use big scenes, it's probably better to go for multi-thread performance rather than single thread performance. However, it'd be better still to invest in a better GPU.

    Sorry for the 'On one hand.. and on the other hand' type of answer, but it is appropriate in this case.

    ETA: Doh, I'd missed the fact you have 2x4090's. To be honest, that sort of grunt needs a machine with a better than average CPU, but if you have a good single thread machine, it should be adequate for feeding the GPU's. My 'decent when running a single thread' i5-13600 was at 8% load feeding my RTX3060 when rendering, so that would probably be close to 100% with 2x RTX4090, but should be just about able to cope, so an AMD with at least that single thread performance should be able to cope.

    I suspect it's too late to suggest Intel for the CPU, but when I was looking (close to 2 years ago now), Intel seemed to be producing the best single thread performance for the price. And my i5-13600 had the same performance as an i7-12xxx and i9-11xxx while being cheaper. The i5-13xxx is now unavailable, and the i5-14xxx has better performance for the same price.

    Regards,

    Richard 

    Post edited by richardandtracy on
  • HavosHavos Posts: 5,361

    I would say go with the CPU with the fastest single thread processor. I am assuming you render GPU only, I certainly would with two 4090s, as almost any CPU would make little or no difference to render time. As such the CPU is only relevant for building the scene, and browsing through it, and, as Richard says, that all happens on one thread. I believe there are some other actions that are multiple threaded (dForce, maybe?), but they are relatively rare.

  • GreatGonzoGreatGonzo Posts: 55

    Thanks :) Nothing is set in stone at the moment, the system currently uses an Intel CPU, I'm only thinking AMD because the motherboard I am looking at has a AMD socket and Wifi6 onboard.  I think it is probably going to be the R7, I have in the back of my mind that the R9 is actually a pretty old chip.  But let me see what the Black Friday sales are doing.

    Wifi6 is pretty important as the house network is W6 and I have a plan to stick remote desktop on the big system, that way I can work from the roof, or garden on a nice day on my laptop (which should in theory work as all the grunt work is being done by the local system.

    )

  • oddboboddbob Posts: 394

    Speed over number of cores but clock speed alone isn't an absolute indicator of performance. Look for a comparison of the single threaded performance of the chips you're considering.

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