Not the best person to answer that particular question, cinematics are not my domain. Here’s what I (think) I know:
compiling is CPU
doing anything non visual in the editor is CPU
building light is CPU
if you’re going down the RTX path, that will be GPU providing you have capable hardware
if you going to simulate a large AI crowd for your video - that’s CPU
expecting comfortable framerate while working in the editor on an asset heavy scene - that’s mostly GPU
heavy post processing - that’s GPU again
you will have more that 1 application open at a time, that’s where a large RAM pool comes in handy and a multithreaded CPU comes in to keep thigns responsive even though we have a lot of stuff going on at the same time
particle systems can be CPU and / or GPU
physics simulation - that’s CPU
heavy polygon lifting and tessellation is GPU
compiling shaders is CPU, using them is GPU (both actually)
fetching anything asset related can be bound by the hard drive / ssd speed / available RAM
It’s a mix and match of everything. The general idea is to build a system with no obvious bottlenecks.
If someone else chimes in claiming they know better than the above, listen to them, they most certainly do.
[ $700 ] GPU: GeForce 3080 (can’t beat bang for buck atm but you may want to wait a month for AMD’s response and general availability of this card), nVidia made it impossible to recommend anything from their previous lineup
[ $450] CPU: R9 3900X
[ $200 ] RAM: 2x 32GB 3200MHz (or faster)
[ $150 - $250 ] MOBO: ASRock AM4/X570 Steel Legend or ASUS Prime X570 (or something at least half decent)
[ $150 - $200 ] PSU: a quality 850W unit, something like EVGA 850 GQ or CORSAIR HX Series HX850, the snazzy Gold / Platinum stuff
[ $150 ] SSD: an M.2 2280 SSD, start with a reputable 1-2TB one, like XPG SX8200 Pro / Sabrent Rocket Nvme or similar. You can add another one later once the next gen tech becomes available, next year perhaps…
[ $150 ] a case that you like
[ $100+ ] a cooling solution, something like Fractal Design S24, air cooling can be had for less (Be Quiet Dark Rock 4 or similar higher end unit)
you’ll need the rest for couple of half decent monitors, peripherals etc.
The above is a rough guestimate of the current prices, and depends on where you are in the world. If you cannot built it yourself from parts, it will cost you a couple hundreds bucks extra for a prebuilt. Conversely, if you’re patient bear and hunt for deals (Black Friday much?) you could potentially shave off around $200 total.
That’s roughly the buying power of $2.5k at the moment. A very comfortable & future-proof setup.
THANK YOU!
You’ve been very helpful, could you explain to me what part of working with unreal ( refering to photorealistic scenes ) it’s handled by gpu and what is handled by cpu?
You can comment here or even @PedroBarbosaU4 to summon somebody’s attention.
Btw, the new line of Ryzen chips is coming on the 5th of Nov. If you can wait that long, it’s going to be worth it one way way or another. Even if the new lineup is not as amazing as advertised, it generally drives the prices down.
you could get away with 3600MHz RAM due to how the snazzy infinity fabric clock works with Ryzen 30xx series
the mobo looks a bit overpriced, can be had where I live for $150 as of today - poke around for deals
the SSD is on the expensive side, 1 TB Sabrent NVMes are fantastic and should be around $120
Just saying that whatever you can save here and there can be invested in other components. On the other hand, if money is of little concern, go for it.
