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Which is more important for ZBrush, Cores or RAM?

I’ve been considering whether or not to purchase a new computer that’s more well set up than my current one for using ZBrush and Unreal Engine 4, mostly the former. I’m on something of a budget, so I’m trying to figure out how to get the most out of ZBrush for a low price. What I’ve been wondering is how important the processor cores are to ZBrush compared to the RAM? Would I get a good performance just with 16 Gbs of RAM, or would I need a better processor too?

My current specs is a desktop HP Pavilion, with a 2.5 Ghz Quad-Core processor and 8 Gb of RAM.

You’ll hit diminishing returns on either, so a balance between the two would be best. 16GB is fine for Zbrush as long as you have any kind of file discipline, and it’s much easier to add more RAM down the road than it is to swap out a CPU.

So I’d say if you have to choose which to favor right now, it would be a solid CPU. Quantity of RAM impacts the size of files you can comfortably work with, but a CPU will affect the speed of every operation Zbrush performs.

So that’s probably why my current computer is so slow when working with higher resolutions in Dynamesh! That’s really helpful, thanks for the advice!

New question; right now my computer can go up to about 15 million polygons before it slows down to the point of being unresponsive, so I’m wondering which would help deal with this problem, a faster processor or more RAM? Like I listed before, I’m using a 2.5 Ghz processor and 8 Gb of RAM.

Well theoretically the more ram you have, the denser the object you can work on, but like I said you’re going to hit diminishing returns with hardware. A 15 million poly subtool is a fairly dense subtool, and you’ll never be able to throw enough hardware at it to make working with something like that completely trivial. I can feasibly work on objects with larger polycounts than that, but it’s something I avoid doing for performance/stability reasons.

Far better to develop file discipline, and learn how to keep the per subtool polycount down by eliminating geometry where possible, and splitting off bits into different subtools where possible. The point of 64 bit Zbrush is not to be able to work on a single subtool with unlimited polycount, but to be able to work better with large files consisting of many smaller subtools, each under the practical per subtool limit for a particular machine. If you feel you need a 15 million poly mesh to do what you want, chances are there might be a better way to accomplish what you’re after.

One of the things that makes Zbrush special is that it doesn’t need top end hardware to allow you to to work comfortably with pretty substantial polycounts, assuming an efficient workflow. More powerful and expensive hardware will improve that performance to a degree, but not necessarily to a large enough degree that someone on a budget should feel compelled to bankrupt themselves for. I personally think 16GB of RAM coupled with the best CPU you can afford is perfectly adequate to do great work in Zbrush. You can always add more RAM later pretty easily.

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