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Building a new PC .. Need help picking which CPU: AMD or Intel

Hi all, I’ve been having a hell of a time deciding whether to go with an AMD or Intel CPU for my new computer that will be a happy medium for everything I do for work. I am primarily a 3D modeling/print artist, but also do some game modeling and Illustration. I am not really a gamer other than I do play abit of Overwatch and World of Warcraft.

80% of my time is in Zbrush and the rest is a mix of Maya, Substance Painter, and Photoshop. I do not render a whole lot other than setting up render passes to composite in Photoshop. Getting back into rending in MAYA is planned for this year.

Over the last few weeks I have been trying to do a lot of research and it is getting a little hard to choose. One review will say something like, AMD is better for Zbrush then the next will say that AMD has a lot of bugs which can cause issues ranging from RAM speed to overall performance. Intel seems to have less issues but is a bit more expensive to buy. I know that AMD will render faster and Intel has faster clock-speeds for snappier viewport work.

I have narrowed it down to 4 CPU’s

Ryzen AMD 2700x
Ryzen ThreadRipper 2920X
Intel i7 8700K
Intel i9 9700k

Any suggestions/feedback would be great and really appreciated.

Thanks again,
Kurt

Hi! Did you make your choice yet?
I’m somewhat in the same situation; I need new parts because the motherboard on my current PC is starting to fail.

The Threadripper might render faster than the others, but the Intel and Ryzen 7 has higher clock, which may give you better performance in Zbrush and other single core tasks such as working in Maya.

For rendering I’m not 100% sure whether fewer cores with higher clock speed or more cores with slightly less clock speed will be the winner of the race.

We have a bit different requirements, as I do more heavy lifting stuff which requires more than 64GB RAM (such as World Machine). I’ve removed Intel entirely from the equation because of cost vs. option to use more than 64GB. Ryzen 7 can’t use more than 64GB either unfortunately.

Based on benchmark results between my current i7 5960x and the Threadripper 2920x it seems like a good option in terms of cost vs performance. I’d love to have the 2950x or 2970x for CPU intensive tasks, but even the 2920x seems to be a slight upgrade for now. It will be interesting to see what Threadripper 3 brings to the table when it’s rumored to appear in August or thereabout.

Ya I built a new PC as I had some bigger projects starting up. I was going to go with Ryzen but could not wait till the new chips in the fall so I went Intel again which will most likely be the last time as Ryzen is catching up with Intel.

I went with I9 9900k build with 32 gigs of 3200mhz dd4 ram and will upgrade to 64 down the road.

So far so good, Zbrush is snappy fast all around and rendering in Arnold is pretty quick as well.