I’m planning to build a new pc case specifically UE4 and Blender; my budget is 1k5. I do not know if I should go with AMD Ryzen 2700X or Intel i7 8700k (very similar in price). And I do not know which one of these 3 should I go with between Radeon VII, RTX 2080 and GTX 1080. The Radeon has the same price as the RTX but the GTX will save me about $170 which is good. Although I do not know either the Radeon or the RTX 2080 performances with UE4 will justify $170, if so I’m willing to go the extra miles.
Currently, this is what in my wishlist:
_EVGA RTX 2080 - $700
_Thermaltake 650W - $65
_Ryzen 2700X - $310
_Corsair 32GB RAM - $240
_ASRock motherboard -$90 (Or something similar in price if I go for Intel)
_Case - $40
_500GB SSD - $50
_ 3TB HDD - $60
I do not game a lot so I can see why I should not go with the RTX especially there is almost no game on the market right now that support Real-time ray tracing. I cannot speak for the future though. But what I really want is optimal build for Unreal Engine such as compiling, light building, rendering, etc.
The RTX 2080 while not using the raytracing features perform like a GTX 1080TI+ and if you are building the machine from scratch I would definitely put anything RTX there, it would be more future proof imo if you are using for development, not for just playing. RTX 2070 is cheaper but you can’t NVLink bridge it, but can with 2080, so thinking on upgrade ability 2080 is better (2 x 2080 is better than 1 x 2080TI because NVLink will made them see 16GB VRAM while 2080TI has only 11GB and several 3D software sees that many already)
What about the proc. My last 12 pc’s (bought for my company) were all Intel. Been with them since they released the first i series.
But can’t help but wonder if amd isn’t the better option now? with those 8 cores & 16 threads.
One of the things that made me look away form amd was the heat it generated. Fried 2 procs back in 2008. But now it seems that amd has 105 W while intel is at 140 W.
Really tempted.
Anyone tested? Feedback on the ryzen on a 3D workstation ?
For development and archviz I would go all the way AMD. For gamedev, 8/16 cores is a blessing, compile shaders, bake lighting and textures faster, compile C++ code in multiple threads aswel, for archiz more cores for softwares that need CPU for rendering I would choose Threadripper and will worth the investment so anything starting with 12/24 cores (cheap as hell).
Ryzen with stock cooler (2700x) will do fine, unless you want to overclock it, if you live in a very hot country near tropics, I would recommend liquid cooling so you won’t average with the graphics card heat inside the case. Threadripper has now a really good air cooler and unless you overclock it, it will be fine, otherwise liquid cooling with at least 3 x 120 fans and equivalent radiator. The TR air cooler is as much expensive as the liquid cooling solution.
Intel is about generating more heat on their latest CPUs lately, even more on the models which use the 2066 socket. We can live with heat generated bu Intel CPUs, what we can’t justify is the price difference between Intel x AMD. Currently the best performance per dolar is on AMD end and we are talking in a very close performance against Intel. You can justify buy Intel for gaming (you need every bit of speed) but not for gamedev/archviz.