Xeon or i9

JImW

Can anyone tell me which is better for rendering, Xeon or i9 and why? Thanks.

alan bard newcomer

if you are using the cpus then the xeons are a better choice. 
Just before iRay, I upgraded my old computer with one for rending in daz. 
the old machine was an i7-920 with 24 g of ddr3 (the max at that time because a regular processor couldn't see more than 4g sticks and it was a triple channel so I had 24g
I remember sitting in front of the computer with nothing going but the system for 2 g, daz for 20g and 2g to spare. 
I had to sit thru every render because the computer would decide we were in trouble and say it was going to close programs to free up memory. 
So I had to be there to say no. 
But the new was dual xeon 2.30 v3 which could see up to 64g stick (if you could afford them) but I got 4 sixteens and still had 12 of 16 ram slots available so could have had 256 with 16s or a terebytel with 64s 
I did get a 980ti and then iray ... oh well I did get a 12g titan x 
which I still pair with a 1080ti in the i7-7000 which only has 32 g of ram and rendering is still good.
but if you're getting a 4090 or such ... you probably don't need xeon power. 
OTOH if you don't have a video card for gpu processing than the xeons are probably a better choice

 

DrunkMonkeyProductions

It's really going to depend on which xeon and i9 you're comparing.

In general though, the i9 is going to win out in raw performance, on a one to one basis, primarily due to higher base clock speeds and higher turbo speeds.

 

The only advantage to xeons, for rendering, is that you can put 2 or more in a single system.

 

 

 

 

 

JImW

Thanks, went with i9 in the end. Got a good deal on Ebay, so came down to money as usual in the end :)