Processor Choice for C4d

[youngy89]

Hi Guys,

First time post, and first time I've thought about making the jump and building (or getting someone else to build) a custom PC for me.

I use C4d and Corona Render, so need the build to be fairly CPU heavy. I have a number of jobs lined up so I can safely say I can afford one of the AMD Threadripper series of Processors. Since I have been lurking around here for a couple of weeks trying to best understand what specs I should be looking at, I have read that the Threadripper Processors, especially the 3990x 64 Core processor suffers from quite low viewport benchmark results and as such will be quite laggy due to the low clock speed. The bench scores I've seen for the 3990x are around the 700 mark.

What I am currently confused about is how my current laptop (macbook pro) with a 2.4ghz 8 core processor is reaching viewport benchmarks of around 1050 whereas the Threadripper is much lower, even though it has a higher base clock speed whilst also having the boost functionality up to 4.3ghz. I've tried to find what boost I have on my current laptop - but it seems apple very kindly hides all mention of it!

Could anyone shed any light?

Thanks,
Tom

 

[Alex Glawion]

Hey Tom,
What render engines will you be using? Physical, standard, or a third-party render engine?

The 3990X really isn't great for active work, so although the huge number of cores might seem appealing, that cpu is best used in a render node.

The MacBook can very well perform adequately in active work. They have Intel CPUs that boost nicely, so 1050 score seems possible.

 

[youngy89]

Hey Alex. Wow that was a quick reply!

I use Corona Render to do Architectural Viz work. Love the quality it can produce.

Yes I have read that the 3990X is best served as a node for rendering. I was just slightly confused how given the gHz for the 3990X , be that either base clock speed and I presume boost clock speed are both faster than my MacBook that it performs way worse than the Macbook running at 2.4gHz. Is this because Intel chips are more efficient?

Obviously ideally the dream setup would be to have a 3990X render node coupled with a Ryzen 5000 series workstation - from what I have read/understood.

 

[Alex Glawion]

Oh sorry, must have slipped past me. Corona, cool -

Sure the 3990X of course is excellent for rendering in corona, but you might find the overall active work speed to be somewhat lacking in your viewport. If your projects aren't all that complex, this doesn't matter much. You can open some typical scenes that you have already created and see at what FPS they run in c4d. Deduct 30% of that and see if your FPS would still be above 30-40~fps, which should be sufficient for responsive active work on the 3990X.

Is this because Intel chips are more efficient?

Up until recently, yes. With the newest Ryzen gen (5xxx) AMD has surpassed Intel in active work performance. But any earlier gen is slower than most modern Intel CPUs, even mobile ones.

Obviously ideally the dream setup would be to have a 3990X render node coupled with a Ryzen 5000 series workstation - from what I have read/understood.

Absolutely! That's what I am sporting, and I'm loving it

 

[Jerry James]

Absolutely! That's what I am sporting, and I'm loving it

Until Threadripper 5000 comes along.

Hope AMD goes with another 64-core monster. It'll be fun to see