Xeon, GPU or CPU?

I am buying a new pc tomorrow(kind of last minute I know) and I am trying to get the best computer possible for rendering on unreal engine, one thing I am wondering is gpu or cpu more important for rendering on unrea?l and whether or not Xeon 22 core cpu is necessary I currently have a 8 core amd fx cpu 4.2ghz and it takes usually anywhere from 2 days to 2 weeks to render architectural scenes which is way to slow and unacceptable when running a business. I am looking to get a Intel Xeon E5 2696 V4 OEM 2.2Ghz Max 3.7Ghz CPU and a GTX 1080 GPU is there anything better that can be recommended or is the Xeon even neccasary for unreal engine I know it is good for 3DS MAX but not sure if the rendering process is different or not and maybe uses gpu more, any suggestions are appreciated, thank you.

Building lighting will depend on the CPU, so getting a faster CPU will help there. For actual gameplay/realtime performance the GPU will have a bigger impact. You can technically get a better graphics card with the GTX Titan X Pascal but the price difference compared to the GTX 1080 isn’t really worth it.

It might be a bit difficult to compare Xeon systems, you’re looking at a single CPU but you have the option to have a system with up to 4 CPU’s s
I would think that one is pretty good though. A big advantage with Xeons is also the reliability.

Also make sure you get enough RAM, if you’re going for a beefy system I’d get 32GB or 64GB, get at least 2400mhz RAM.

I forgot to mention the Xeon cpu is 22 cores 3.7ghz turbo, how much better for rendering would that be then the best i7s? I am just trying to figure out if the xeon is even worth it or necessary and how much faster it is for the high price tags, I will defiantly be getting 64gb of ram and as far as 4 cpu system I think one 22 core cpu is better then 4 6 core cpus if im not mistaken and 4 22 cores I cant afford aha the goal is to get fastest rendering and performance system for unreal engine with only one gpu and cpu, thanks for the reply.

The Xeon 2696 gets a CPU mark of 22041 here: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5-2696+v4+%40+2.20GHz
The i7 6950 gets a 19950: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-6950X+%40+3.00GHz&id=2792

So the Xeon is faster, but it’s also $1,000 more
The other thing is the clock speed, each core of the Xeon is only 2.2Ghz, while the i7 is 3.0Ghz, which means that there can be cases where the i7 will be faster but most likely the Xeon would be faster overall.

Havent seen this model 2696

But i supose you are buying the complete one and not those ES from ebay.Made a similar thread a few months ago

Still haven bought the pc as im waiting for a specific gpu to come out.In your case and in mine i think is better to chose something like the i7 6950x or a fast e5 1660v4 with ecc ram shoud do the thing(my choice).Slow cpu will have some effect on high end gpus.(lose fps).If apart from ue4 you use max to render than i higly recommend one of the two cpus from above and invest the left money in a second gpu for gpu rendering in max(octane render/redshift)Its wayyyyy more faster than a 22 core cpu and it will become standart in a few years.

And something interesting to read.

Thanks for the post, I don’t do as much rendering in max anymore as I do in unreal engine now and as far as the model 2696 I was looking at it on eBay or amazon for $1500 about half the price I can find the i7 6950 at, also performance is less of an issue for me its more about just raw speed for building lighting in unreal engine the xeon e5 1660v4 I cant find that particular one anywhere, whatever will give me fastest possible light builds is all im concerned about and I’ve had faulty amd fx and intel i6 cpus in past and I also like that fact xeons are supposedly more reliable which is huge for me, so im confused about something is the xeon 22 core still best choice? does unreal engine even use that many cores or like in your forums post it sounds like overkill maybe something with less cores will do the trick? I have gotten many responses on other forums aswell and half the people are saying more cores is better so go with the xeon but other people are saying i7 is more then enough but I7 has 10 cores my cpu now has 8 and it takes 2 weeks to render big project so I need something that can render a lot faster and im assuming more cores will do this? right now 22 xeon seems way to go I have to make choice by later today.

The issue with the 22-core Xeon is that the cores themselves are not that fast–it makes up for it with the number of cores. In UE4 it uses a single thread for each object being rendered, which means that you can end up with some objects that take longer and the other cores can’t contribute to render that object, so in that case having faster cores would be better than more cores. There’s also some actions that are not multi-threaded so some smaller tasks could end up being slower because they would only use one core.
Also, the AMD CPU stats are not directly comparable to Intel CPU stats—for example a 3.0Ghz 8-core AMD processor would be slower than a 3.0Ghz 8-Core Intel CPU

I would recommend getting a faster-clocked CPU with fewer cores, and pay less for it, and then use the money you save to buy a second machine (and third, and …) so you can use Swarm rendering.
Or, alternatively, if you’re technically inclined, set up a VPN with some cloud machine instances (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud etc) where you spin up 100 machines for doing rendering, and then shut them down half an hour later when you’re done.

What darthviper said.One core of a amd is not the same perfomance as one core of a new intel cpu.The difference is quite big.A modern 8 core i7 is far superior to a 8 core amd.A red light in my head flashed when you said the xeon is from ebay or amazon.For such a expensive piece just dont go to them as is most probably a ES cpu.(engineering sample).These are the cpus that were made for testing,press release/review etc.They are cripled in speed(and probably other stuff too).With a ES xeon you play the lotery.Some cpus work great other will present a problem.If you are spending 1500 than buy the cpu from some online store that will give you the full version of it and a waranty.

I still think the e5 1660v4 is a great cpu on the xeon side(a litle bit faster than a 6900k) or the 10 core i7 6950x.Beware that if you choose the xeon you must buy ecc ram.(most of the time only 10-20$ more expensive than the regular one so no hit there).In my opinion either cpu will be great future investment.Just like everyone,when rendering you will have to wait and optimize.We all have to wait :rolleyes:

And when you buy such a expensive cpu dont cheap out on the cooler!Get something like the nh-15s to keep it safe(and see if you have enough clearence in the pc case for it).

PassMark Intel vs AMD CPU Benchmarks - High End I found the second best cpu on this chart for only a thousand supposedly not es but retial version aswell, what does this list mean this is confusing does it mean its second overall best cpu?

For only a grand i suspect is not a retail one.Still i recommend reading my last post an a few others.If you want ue4 than you shoud choose FAST cores and as many as you can get.I still think the 8 core xeon is quite fast,the 10 core i7 is less fast but by a small ammount.A e5 2687w v4 is 12 core xeon with high speed.I was wanting to get it but after i saw that is a 160W tdp i decided to back up.

Also, please don’t confuse “hardware threads” (hyperthreading) with “actual cores.”
There exist some workloads where a hardware thread is worth as much as 50% of a regular core, but most often it’s no more than 10%, and sometimes even negative!
So, an “8 thread i7 with hyperthreading” only has 4 cores, and 4 additional hyperthreads. You should experiment with turning hyperthreading on or off, to see which setting gives you the best overall performance.
So, “20 logical cores” is really just 10 physical cores. (Still a nice number!) And “8 logical cores” is only 4 physical cores.

If you want the fastest possible baking time for lightmass on a single machine, then going with lots of real cores is a good idea, as long as those cores are reasonably fast even when all are being used (which means turbo speeds won’t be on.) So, (base speed * number of cores) equals throughput.
A core i7-6700K at 4.0 GHz times 4 physical cores has “16 throughput” whereas a 2.3 GHz times 10 physical cores has “23 throughput” – about 45% faster on full-threaded workloads. Whether that difference is worth the difference in price is up to you. Meanwhile, the Core i7 will likely achieve faster frame rates in gameplay, because it has higher single-core performance, and in the end, rendering becomes bound on a single core. (At least in D3D11 and below)

Thank you everyone for the comments knowledge and suggestions learned a lot this week, I ended up going with GTX Titan X Pascal, i7 6950x, 128gb of ram Asus x99motherboard, nh-15 fan. Cant wait to see how it performs on my projects! Now I can render at max quality aswell will be posting some of the bigger projects on the forums soon.

I guess I’m too late to chime in…

But I would look for a motherboard/chipset that supports both Core i7 and Xeon series CPUs. This would give you future upgrade-ability to more cores, if you ever needed them.

Also, GTX Titan X is probably an overkill unless you plan to do computations and need double precision FP support.

Either way, enjoy your new system.

Thanks. ASUS X99 motherboard supports Xeons and i7s.

Sounds great!

And if you can buy some cheaper computers to just sit on the network (think NUCs or similar) and help you render big scenes, that will help you out a lot!
A shelf full of these may render faster for the money than a single Xeon-based server :slight_smile:

Or maybe pile on these:

If you want to do a budget render farm, a homemade solution like this would be your best option, http://www.helmer-air.com I’d wait for Ryzen though for the best bang for your buck. Nucs and laptops aren’t really meant to run at 100% CPU load for hours.

Laptops can actually be a huge help but yeah wouldn’t maybe get those for massive renders that take days, I was thinking for future getting PassMark CPU Benchmarks - Single Thread Performance i7 7700k cpu best single thread cpu my friend has it and it bakes lighting very fast its a cheap cpu so I can get about 5 of them for just over 2k which is 20 fast cores and I don’t think amd cpus are meant for rendering what so ever I could be wrong and maybe Ryzen will change this but every amd cpu I’ve had fried rendering medium size scenes they have ****** heat issues even with best cooling options and aren’t very stable either, but very good for gaming and budgets.

From curiosity,when you can please post some info on how the 6950x behaves and its idle and load temps with the nh-d15.

Idle the cpu never reaches past 8 degrees Celsius usually hovers around 3-8 and I let it render at 100% cpu power for a day and it never went past 40 degrees Celsius hovered around 31-37, this cpu is beast… I put every mesh at 1024 and 2048 even small ones in my scene and it only took 4 hours to render at .1 flawless lighting. my old cpu with light map resolutions of 256 and 512 rendered at .4 in about 8 hours, im not too sure but it seems having a lot of ram helps with rendering also because each render now uses all my ram memory but my renders are insanely fast now to previous.