Recommendation for Computer Hardware

JH-CAD-Architekt · Post by **JH-CAD-Architekt** » Fri Dec 21, 2012 12:24 pm

Hi,

is there any page for recommendations for Computer Hardware, that works good with Indigo? I'd like to buy a new Computer, and I wand to know, which CPU, GPU and Memory works optimized together with Indigo Renderings

?

Thanks,
Johannes

Headroom · Post by **Headroom** » Fri Dec 21, 2012 1:08 pm

Generally, any recent quad core i7 is a good choice. That will provide you with 4 "real" + 4 " virtual" or more precisely hyper threading cores.

I'd start with a minimum of 8GB for memory.

There have been several recent threads on what the best GPU is. I guess the consensus is. GeForce 560Ti appears to have the best price performance ratio. There are GeForce 580 if it has to be absolutely the most performance GPU. The newer Kepler chips from Nvidia seem to generally not perform as well for GPGPU computing.

Also always the disclaimer here that Indigo only supports Simple Pathtracing with the GPU. Thus for many applications more CPU power has a higher priority than more GPU power. For example for interior scenes with a lot of small light sources and specular (glass) materials Pathracing is not the best render method.

Also as a commercial license of Indigo comes with two node licenses, adding additional render power by adding less expensive render slaves is a cost efficient method to increase render power. IIRC, adding GPUs to render slaves will utilize these as well and help when Pathtracing is the render method.

Currently Indigo only supports one GPU per computer.

JH-CAD-Architekt · Post by **JH-CAD-Architekt** » Tue Dec 25, 2012 10:44 pm

What about AMD's? They are much cheaper than the i7 in Germany here...

StompinTom · Post by **StompinTom** » Thu Dec 27, 2012 9:14 pm

JH-CAD-Architekt wrote:What about AMD's? They are much cheaper than the i7 in Germany here...

Cheaper, yes. The i7s are widely used and recommended for a reason, though. Intel is definitely leading the race at the moment.

JH-CAD-Architekt · Post by **JH-CAD-Architekt** » Thu Dec 27, 2012 9:37 pm

But why? I get the AMD FX 8350 Octa-Core Prozessor (4GHz, Socket AM3+, 16MB Cache, 125 Watt) for 189€, the Intel Core i7-3770K Prozessor (3,5GHz, L3 Cache, Sockel 1155) for 280€. That are one third of the costs! Is the i7 33% faster than the AMD?

Zom-B · Post by **Zom-B** » Thu Dec 27, 2012 10:54 pm

JH-CAD-Architekt wrote:But why?

because the pure GHz numbers aren't telling you exactly how powerful the CPU is!
A state of the art 1Ghz is faster then 1Ghz 3 years ago, Intel has generally the better performance per GHz ratio.

Here are some benchmarks that show you a trend that is adaptable to Indigo:
http://techreport.com/review/23750/amd- ... eviewed/12

JH-CAD-Architekt · Post by **JH-CAD-Architekt** » Fri Dec 28, 2012 4:34 am

Thanks, that's what I've searched for! Now I can easier compare price and Power...

dcm · Post by **dcm** » Sat Dec 29, 2012 8:52 am

Take 6core i7 3930k, overclock it to 4,5 and you have power of 2x 6core xenons

It costs arm and leg with proper mobo and bunch of RAM but its worth and lasts for few years.

i7 2600k isnt bad for the price but its "old". I own 2600k, running on 4,5ghz and im 15% slower than friend`s dual xenon PC which costs 4 times more than mine .