New PC Build help?

Coffinrocket

Hi all,

I'm currently running Daz3D on a nearly seven year old machine, and am thinking about putting together a new build before the end of the year. Unfortunately, I've been out of the PC hardware game for quite a while now, and I'm pretty lost regarding current hardware and trends. While I've been cobbling together a new build on Newegg, it's obvious that the regular users would have a better idea on what's most important for a Daz3d/Photoshop/Entertainment machine.

A few notes:
 

• I'd like to stick with AMD if possible. I know that they're not the best/fastest, but the company I work for does business with AMD, and all of the computers in my family run on AMD, and it's nice being able to recycle older hardware to my less demanding family members.
• I'm not much of a gamer. (Mass Effect 3 was the last game I played, and that was well over two years ago.)
• I run Photoshop and Daz3D a lot, and I like having Spotify/iTunes open, along with Chrome. While Iray is pretty to look at, most of my renders are in 3Delight. (I'm aware that Nvidia is the way to go for Iray.)
• I've got an older Creative Labs X-Fi Titanium soundcard that I love, but I'd be willing to drop it if there's a motherboard with excellent onboard audio. I occassionally record music as well.

My current build is hilariously old, and consists of:

• AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition Triple-Core CPU
• Asus M4A79XTD EVO 
• Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 
• G-Skill Ripjaws DDR3 1066 4GB x 4
• Corsair TX Series 650 watt PSU
• Western Digital WD1003 1 TB 7200 RPM SATA III drive

I'm looking to spend around $750 or so on CPU, mobo, and videocard, but that's assuming that I don't have to invest in new/more memory, a SSD drive, or an updated PSU. I appreciate your input, thanks!

 

Richard Haseltine

The Radeon will not be used by Iray - the Physically Based render engine included with Daz Studio - for that you have to have an nVidia card. 3delight, the other included engine, doesn't use the video card at all. LuxRender, which can be used via the Reality or Luxus plug-ins, will use the Radeon.

Coffinrocket

Richard Haseltine said:

The Radeon will not be used by Iray - the Physically Based render engine included with Daz Studio - for that you have to have an nVidia card. 3delight, the other included engine, doesn't use the video card at all. LuxRender, which can be used via the Reality or Luxus plug-ins, will use the Radeon.

Good to know, thanks! So if I'm understanding right, since 3delight doesn't use the GPU at all, a more powerful processor would take presedence over the videocard? If that's true, what will have a bigger benefit -- a faster processor or more cores?

 

prixat

More cores, slightly slower is best.

I'm still using an X6 1055T in one of my machines. 

You might as well go for the fx9590.

You should be able to get a bundle: motherboard, cpu, cooler and 32GB memory for much less than $750

 

(...but 450 dollars worth of nVidia card will turn that X3 system into a high spec. Iray machine.)

Coffinrocket

prixat said:

 

You might as well go for the fx9590.

 

Thanks for the tip, Prixat! Looks like a beast of a CPU, though I'll probably need to invest in some water-cooling according to the reviews. I do think nVidia is the way to go for the GPU.