Buying a new computer - what should I focus on?

Hi,

I the next few months I’m going to buy a PC.
I’m not sure if I should look for a good video card or a good CPU. I have a limited budget, so I cant have them both.
Does GPU rendering have worse support than CPU’s in Blender? I guess that I should omit AMD cards in favour of NVidia. I’m asking also about the future because AMDs were supported some time, then they weren’t for a few releases and came again in 2.69 as far as I remember.
PS. I mainly use cycles renderer, but any information regarding other engines would also be very helpful.

Thanks in advance for your answers.

A good GPU is nice but can get pricey, you are better off looking at RAM and CPU, like an i7 and 8Gb or more. Programs are getting more calculation heavy so you’ll be doing yourself a favour by getting something a little more powerful!

Everyone (graphic applications) seem to be headed in the direction of using the GPU for rendering. Personally I would focus on the GPU, then get the fastest processor and as much memory as you can.

It depends entirely on your system or component budget. For Cycles you just need to look out for the following two things for peace of mind with a GPU…

  1. Go with Nvidia for compatibility reasons. Do a little background on the card’s driver and how well it performs.
  2. Ideally you want about 4GB for the card. A slow render is one thing, but a crash due to low memory is quite another.

…there is a third, but its not really a requirement for Cycles(not that I am aware of…)…

  1. Make sure its got CUDA! I can’t think of an Nvidia card that doesn’t have a Cuda count, but hell, double check as some graphics apps are taking advantage of it(top-of-my-head: 3D Coat).

Moved from “Misc: > Off-topic Chat” to “Support > Technical Support”

cycles’ future are likely to be just nvidia support, since it’s been doing it for quite some time now, and it takes time(and supporter’s money) to refine the efficiency of the rendering,
so since the blender cycles rendering has expanded, it it unlikely for any amd support, unless, amd themselves, support it with their own money

CPU is always good to have if you are always looking out for the newest features, since ALL new features will support GPU (if not what will render it?)

but GPU is important too if you want to render scenes quickly

what i recommend, since it’s quite unlikely for budget people to consider this:

but get a i7-4790k, and a GTX 970(cuz they don’t sell the 700s anymore, but if you found some, and it’s in your budget buy them, they are incredibly cheap now)
and get 16GB of memory, because people tend to work on more polygons when having a better system (unless you only work on low poly of simple objects, if that is, then don’t buy an expensive GPU…

It depends all on your budget, if you have 500$ forget about GPU.
A suitable GPU cost 350$, you can get a mid class i7 CPU for it.
8 GB is the minimum for 3d work, better go for 16.
The Ivy, Haswell CPU include on chip GPU, HD 4000 or higher.
These integrated GPU´s are very good for Blender, I test this with my i5 3570K.
May look for a “Bundle”, board, CPU and RAM, then you can use parts of your old PC.
You can add a real GPU later.

Cheers, mib

I really like NVidia over AMD, and this is coming from my personal experiences. I have found that GeForce cards hold up better over a long haul, whereas AMD can begin to deteriorate when it comes to rendering a large file.

Also, try wholesale sites like Newegg or Frys. It is a lot cheaper to build from scratch than to buy from a vendor like HP.

I personally like NVidia over AMD. I noticed that when rendering large media files NVidia holds up better, whereas AMD begins to deteriorate and take longer to load.

Also, buy from a wholesaler like Frys or Newegg. I believe it is a lot cheaper to build from scratch than to buy prebuilt from a vendor.

Hello,

I’m just about to buy a NVidia GTX 750. I’m going to use it under Linux. Has anyone been using this card with Linux and Blender for GPU rendering?
Or other NVidia cards. Are they working in that system configuration?

Thanks!

just wait for the big nvidia maxwell gpu in 2016 it’s going to crack a minimum of 12 gb vram for sure

Has anyone ever used a “Hackintosh” with blender? Any issues?

Just a note for others with the same question I asked before.
Ok i bought GTX 750 TI (also tried non-Ti, but 1gb of memory was too little, and 2gb version was unavailable) and it’s running great with Blender and Linux.