I am a uni student looking for a powerful enough machine to do some 3D rendering (archicad, revit etc). Not being a pc expert I am very confused about whether to go with AMD or Intel processor and if a gpu makes much of a difference at all. YouTube videos on this topic seem limited and varies in opinion.
I've seen some deals from techfast here recently, would any of those PC's be good?
Thanks in advance fellow ozbargainers.
"You don't want to do 3D rendering or modelling without a GPU."
Yup. When I did 3D modelling for work, the graphics card was around half of the PC cost
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Looking at about 2.5-3k budget wise.
I should've clarified in relation to gpu, thats my bad. i meant like if i would need one of the latest gen ones or if one of the last gen ones would be ok.
CAD packages normally specify a list of preferred options
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Ello Ello~
Architect here who happens to use both ArchiCAD and Revit everyday. I've been out of the tech news for a while but hopefully these are still helpful tidbits.
CPU - Either is fine. Though if you're after bang for your buck processor, AMD is likely the better option here.
GPU - Again, either could work. But with that said, in the past Nvidia drivers were better optimised for rendering / grunt work compared to their AMD counterparts. Go for a decent tier GPU, and assuming workstation cards are out of the question / budget, an Nvidia xx70's series card or AMD x700's series card should suffice. Personally I would avoid going any lower as the performance would dip quite considerably as time goes by.
What hasn't been mentioned is RAM. Get a good amount of fast RAM. Then double it. You'd be surprised how much both the programs use up.
For context, the workstation i'm on right now has 72Gb, and some documents still take an age to process. If getting a lot of RAM is out of the question for now, then at least make sure the PC you get has spare RAM slots for future upgrades.
All of this really depends on your budget. But if you're after a 3D rendering capable PC, I hope you have some decent cash to throw at it.
Thanks for this. Always good to get tips from an industry expert. I had forgotten about RAM, i think 64gb high speed ram should be an essential for me then.
This is great start, i shall start looking for Configurations with these specs.
Work out your budget first then you can determin how much goes to Nvidia
You can get very good deals on used workstations with Xeon/Quadro combos. Would recommend this over buying something new that is more targeted towards gaming.
Example for about half your budget.
All the software you want to use will tell you what specs are best for what you need on their respective websites. Puget systems will also have some information for some of the softwares too.
Generally it will probably be AMD CPU with Nvidia GPU.
Budget?
Won't be too big of a difference. Either is fine.
You don't want to do 3D rendering or modelling without a GPU.