Which videocard in new workstation?

[Joe Piler]

Hello,

I'm at the point of buying a new pc workstation with Dual Intel Xeon E5-2650 8 Core processors, Nvidia Quadro K4000 3GB video card, 64GB Memory and 240GB SSD Disk.

Think that this will work great with Octane/Vray, I hate my current 2009 Imac, it's to slow...

But, my question...
Is the Quadro K4000 a fast videocard for preview renders with Octane?
I can't test it...

There are 3 extra PCI ports for videocards available, which means I can update whenever I want.

I don't want to spent +2000 dollars for a videocard.
Rendering is not my main business, it's a part of my business.

The whole videocard chapter is a grey area for me.

Hope you can help me out.
I just want a new workstation, to work without worries for the next 5 years.

Thanks in advance!!
Joep

[prehabitat]

That's a hell of a lot of processing power, do you need all that?

Firstly; general hardware comments;
For most apps i run (Revit, Rhino, CS6) I've found that HDD access, RAM access speed & throughput, and processor SPEED offer the biggest speedier 'feel' advantage.
16 cores is great, and will give you some real horsepower in true multi-threaded apps, but if they are all 2.1ghz (or 2.anything) the single-threaded apps you run will still feel slower than 2of quad cores at much higher frequency (ghz).
My advice; consider dropping the cpu's to 4 or 6 cores with the highest frequency you can get; unless all the apps you really care about are truly multi-threaded.
I might also consider dropping the RAM to 32gb, so long as it is quad channel, and the fastest rating you can find. (See below for justification)

Video cards:
Since getting my baby quadro I've become a massive advocate for using quadro cards for authoring viewport. The 'feel' of a properly recommended workstation graphics card is not comparable to the gaming graphics cards I've used for viewport in the past.
THAT SAID, with the money I'd saved from the CPU & Possible RAM spec changes above I'd invest in a new titan black to render in octane. The quadro's are not as strong as the best gaming cards for octane rendering.
like you said you have 3 more card slots free; so you have a nice upgrade path late if visualisation becomes more a part of 'what you do', but in the meantime you'll start with an impressive workstation which should not offer any limitations to your work.

[Joe Piler]

I'm afraid that I'll buy a new workstation that still isn't fast enough for rendering when choosing for a Intel® Core™i7 Extreme 3rd Generation 4,5Ghz with 6 cores...

I've been working on a 2009 Imac Intel Core Duo II 3,06gHz.
And it's soooo slow and it irritates me the whole day....

And yes, the Titan Black has 2.880 CUDA Cores.....
PFFFF, I believe that's fast....

[prehabitat]

I just checked the price difference on the E5-2643 (3.9ghz) and E5-2650 and the difference is only a few hundred dollars here. So you'd need to save a lot on the RAM to afford a titan black too.
However if you choose an i7-4960x you will save even more.

The biggest question for you; what software is most important; list the software if you want some help finding out if it supports multi-treading or relies heavily on processing power.

Keep in mind, worst case you will have well over 8x the raw processing power of your existing mac, best case you will have more than 16x the processing power.
You mentioned Vray; do you use vray on cpu? Or vray-RT on the gpu?

Overall you need to fit out your system component quantities ( #of cores, RAM gb, Ssd(s) ) to match the software capabilities & demands. Then focus on getting a balance of speed and/or throughput on all your components.

[prehabitat]

Just to clarify the video card advice; i mean for you to get 1xQuadro and 1xtitan black

[Joe Piler]

I found the 3DBOXX 4920 Extreme GPU workstation with 3rd generation Intel® Core™i7 Extreme 6 cores.
I'm not sure if this is the fastest i7 chip available...

I use Vectorworks, Revit, Sketchup, Vray and Cinema4D.
VrayforC4D is not Vray RT yet, I'm still waiting for it.
But when it's there, I want to use GPU rendering for fast previews.

So the only CPU software is Vray at the moment.

[mib2berlin]

Hi, if you don´t need a big Quadro card for you 3d software it is not the best choice for Octane price/performance wise.
These cards are down clocked for 24/7 usage for example, a GTX with the same core is much faster.
You get two Titan Black for the same price and this is a real monster for Octane.

Cheers, mib.