What benefits me more? Cpu or gpu

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

So my budget will allow me to get either:
3600(maybe x) + 2080 super
Or
3700x + 2070 super

Most of my work will be on ue4, using market store as much as possible.

My question is what would I benefit from more while putting things together and some cording on unreal engine 4.
Could you also give me some explanation as to why you reccomend what you do?

Edit:
Thanks for all the reposnses so far, very useful information.
I should mention this game is mostly, really, for me, so if anyone likes it and plays it, that’s a bonus.
From what I’ve read so far though it does look like I’ll go for the processor instead, even though for none logical reasons I want and 80 card, especially now with that 15gigs.

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The main bottleneck when working with UE4 is compiletime. Therefore I would take the stronger processor to boost up my workflow, since faster processor, packed with a decent ssd should mean faster compilation which means faster iteration on your code.

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3

I’d go 2080 super if you want to really use ray tracing features. Otherwise the 3700x.

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4

Ray tracing is something of a special case, otherwise the bottleneck for nearly everything during development is always the cpu.

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[USER=“1100036”]Periculum Facere[/USER] I am assuming you are into developing a game because you mentioned on getting marketplace assets as much as possible, for this most of the advises given were correct regarding the CPU as the most important.

The main issue when developing a game having a too strong card is that you might end up developing things not very optimized for low end hardware at 1st attempt, having to fine tweak later, which might be troublesome and even make you rethink a solution for that. The people which will benefit more from a stronger card is the people working with Arch-viz and film currently, but can be also true for applications using VR since they have higher needs for frame rates per eye.

For gamedev GPU should target:

  • the lowest denominator for VRAM : which depends on the target platforms you are developing: PC, XBOX, PS4, Switch, Mobile etc
  • the lowest performance at certain resolutions: which also depends on the target platforms: Switch while plugged into power cord can do Full HD (1080p), but unplugged switches to HD (720p)
  • special application needs: VR is an example, so the more performance the better

Currently a good GPU for general UE4 development at most wanted platforms would need: 8GB VRAM, this means that any card in the market with that amount of VRAM will be fine. Since you are getting a brand new computer, of course you will get an RTX card, so you can also make your assets and test them with realtime raytracing, so your choice could be RTX 2060 Super and you will be fine, even if you want to venture yourself into anything like VR, the RTXS 2060 Super now also has a USB Type C connector (the regular RTX 2060 didn’t), the new RTX 2070 Super now has NVLink (the regular didn’t) so you can combine in the future 2 cards and have double the memory and performance (also needs to wait the engine to support it).

With all that said, the choice might be hard to make, but you won’t go wrong with 3700x and that is regardless of the activity you will work with. Now for the GPU would be a shame expend more on that above your needs and with that cash get more SSD storage which will greatly improve your workflow.

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[USER=“1210893”][/USER]Thanks this was informative. I actually bought a 512 nvme trying to save money from my budget to increase processor or gpu. Wanting better cable management I didn’t even think about Sli as I thought it wasnt getting much love so I got the msi mortar with only cross link support. :confused:
if amd would have brought out Ray tracing, I would have definatly bought amd.

Will I benifits from having 2 GPUs without bridging them? As in can I have one handle certain things to speed things up?
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I’ve had bad graphical hiccups using SLI before (UI elements in the editor disappearing or overlapping each other among other things). It’s better to get a dual gpu card instead of SLI or crossfiring two gpus. Though, my experience was in 2017 and earlier so those issues may be solved.

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[USER=“1100036”]Periculum Facere[/USER] I will only consider multi GPU once it is implemented in the engine (it is on the Roadmap and spoke about at GDC), for best benefit you need to have multi GPU (bridged SLI or NVLink) if the set of applications you use besides UE4 has support for it, otherwise it is not recommended right now. Keep an eye on next UE4 releases 4.24 and up to see if the support will land or not.