I7-4930K VS Xeon E5-1650 for 3D rendering

legionxbg,

In my view you will have much better results with the Xeon E5-1650 V2 / ECC / K2000 system. The E5-1650 V2 is very fast, has 6 cores /12 threads to assign to rendering, ECC is essential for artifact-free, accurate shadows, reflections, gradients, and particles in rendering, Xeons are configured to run reliably and precisely for long rendering slogs, and the Quadro K2000 is miles ahead of the K600 in 3D, (although the K600 is quite amazing in 2D). The i7-4930K is an excellent CPU, but overclocking is not desirable in workstation use and certainly not as desirable as the ability to use ECC RAM.

On Passmark Performance Test, the high scores K600 are > high 2D= 1176 on an i7-4770K and high 3D= 890 on an E5-1620. For the K2000, the high 2D= 1221 on an i7-4770K and the high 3D= 1829 on an E5-1620 V2 system. The K600 is an excellent 2D card, and must have been designed for Photoshoppers. The K2000 as can be seen by the numbers is much better in 3D.

Just to stir the pot a bit, if you're adventurous, you might consider looking for a good "new other" Quadro K4000 (3GB) on ebahh. I have had five used Quadros over the last twelve years and never a failure. In my Precision T5400, I have run an FX 4800 (1.5GB), $1,200 new, $150 to me when 18- months old, for four years, often 20 hours per day and never a missed beat.

For the Quadro K4000, the high 2D= 1046, again on i7-4770K, with high 2D of 787 on E5-1650 V2 and high 3D= 2915 on the 1650 V2. The K4000 are sometimes sold in the $450-500 range.

Another possibility is the Quadro 5000 (2.5GB) and the K5000 (4GB), which does everything well. Given that rendering is mostly CPU based, but can also be a kind of hybrid that benefits from a lot of GPU-based CUDA cores, and there a move towards OpenGL, a Quadro K5000 seems to me the ideal all-rounder. My hope is to find a good K5000 when they are in the $800-900 range.

You have two solid concepts for your system- the ASUS P9X79 is an excellent choice, but I think the E5 will produce better results.

Cheers,

BambiBoom

HP z420 (2014) > Xeon E5-1620 quad core @ 3.6 / 3.8GHz > 24GB ECC 1600 RAM > Quadro 4000 (2GB)> Samsung 840 SSD 250GB /Western Digital WD1003FZEX 1TB> M-Audio 192 sound card > AE3000 USB WiFi > HP 2711X, 27" 1920 X 1080 > Windows 7 Ultimate 64 > [Passmark system rating = 3815, 2D= 767 / 3D=2044]

Dell Precision T5400 (2008) > 2X Xeon X5460 quad core @3.16GHz > 16GB ECC 667> Quadro FX 4800 (1.5GB) > WD RE4 500GB / Seagate Barracuda 500GB > M-Audio 2496 Sound Card / Linksys 600N WiFi > Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit > [Passmark system rating = 1859, 2D= 512 / 3D=1097]

2D, 3D CAD, Image Processing, Rendering, Text > Architecture, industrial design, graphic design, written projects [AutoCad, Revit, 3ds Max, Vray, Solidworks, Sketchup Adobe CS, WordPerfect and MS Office]