intel Xeon or i7

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amighty007

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Oct 21, 2013
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Which processor series is better intel Xeon or intel i7 for 3D Maya Lighting and Rendering. Please suggest one between 300 $ to 400 $.
 
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Shneiky

Shneiky

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From the 300$ to 400$ range you really can't do much. At least in my region the 4770k is 30 euro cheaper then a comparable Xeon - E3-1270V3. They have the same core count/MHz/Cache/etc/etc. The difference being that the Xeon has some extra features for servers/virtualization (which Maya does not use at all) while the 4770k can be overclocked. In some places the 1270V3 Xeon is cheaper than the 4770k and a lot of people go over the hussle to put a Xeon in a mainstream board (which not always works). I would suggest to just pick a i7 4770/4771 or 4770k paired with a nice motherboard and call it a day.

Cheers
 
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Shneiky

Shneiky

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noidea_77 guess you really don't have an idea. As ECC memory is nice and all, home/semi pro usage of Maya doesn't really care much about it. ECC memory comes in handy to fix error in RAM contained active data. Such as a server environment, where there are multiple non-sequential I/O operations from high count of threads. Maya/Max use RAM in a very structured and sequential way. Throughout all the years, 99.99% of the RAM errors I have seen are a result of a faulty stick. ECC comes handy in a render farm, where you have tons of I/O threads or in a 2P/4P workstation configuration. If you have only 1P system and your PC is not a part of a render network - get normal RAM, put that cash elsewhere. ECC is almost twice the price of normal RAM.
 
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blade of grass

blade of grass

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The only real difference between an i7 and an Xeon is that Xeon's are higher binned. They're the same processor, just under another name.

The 4770k performs equally with a 1270v3 at the same clock speed, but an i7 4770k can be overclocked to receive better performance.

So, if you would like to overclock, get an i7, or, if you don't, get a 1270v3.
You won't see a benefit in ECC RAM for what you're doing, invest that money in an SSD for a scratch disk or something else.
 
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noidea_77

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You should really read a little bit more about the way a cpu and the software uses ram. It has definitely nothing to do with "multiple non-sequential I/O operations" or the number of cpus.
 
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g335

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Will ECC memory benefit semi pro who is using one to two machines to render and who does his own work and sells it and does free lance?
 
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Gaidax

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Not really.

ECC memory is just a way to prevent those rare BSODs' when you get tons of gibberish with memory error and a shut down. It's an extra safety measure that is not needed for your home desktop really, since these BSODs' are very rare (unless you mess up with BIOS, overclocking and such).

Servers obviously need every little piece of stability and fail-proofing they can get so it's used there. But for end user? Maybe it will prevent like one BSOD in a couple of months if you don't mess around - so not worth it.

Also ECC memory is a little slower.
 
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noidea_77

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Yes! Ram error occur more often, as you thing, but they are not detected without ECC. A bit error doesn't affect your work, if it is a pixel in an Email, but it affects your work, if it is part of the color parameter of a rendered picture or the program code and causes a bsod after hours of rendering. That's why workstations use ecc ram: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/precision-t5600-xeon-e5-2687w-workstation,3610.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_memory
 
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Shneiky

Shneiky

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I don't need to read more. I use this software on a daily basis. This is what brings my bread. You know, theory and practice is two different things. Just reading won't help you on this. Gradually, over the years, we put all our workstations to non-ECC RAM to drive the costs down. 64 GB of non-ECC is around 440-480 EUR 1600 9-9-9, while 68 GB of slower ECC 1333 9-9-9 is around 800-900 EUR. This 500 difference is what we put in the render farm. And in the last 5 years I never even got a RAM error while rendering or working on a single work computer. We tried pairing up several non-ECC workstations in a render farm and rarely (once in a year) we get some stray pixels - artifacts. The rule is easy - single workstation with single CPU - non-ECC. Render farm or multiple CPU configuration - ECC.

Also, Maya is more computational heavy than RAM heavy. All your scene is a set of parameters instead of raster images (if you want to illustrate this, think of Illustrator vs Photoshop ram usage). When you begin to render, your scene along with all the parameters are loaded into the RAM (or VRAM or both- depending on the render engine). Afterwards the CPU (or GPU or both - depending on the render engine) takes the data and computes your frame. Since all the data of the current frame is destroyed after it is deployed on the main drive, RAM usage is not really that big. There is of course the situation of dynamics which require a simulation to be previously run. In this case your current frame is dependent on the previous frame, but the data from the simulation is compressed in a rather compact package. All in all Maya is not something like After Effects or Premier Pro or Nuke (even though Nuke eats quite less RAM then the previous two). It functions differently. It is not so RAM heavy as other applications. The major thing is the muscle power - CPU (or GPU or both - depending on the render engine).
 
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