Xeon e5 1620v3 or Core i7? Please help

Hello,

I understand that Rhino works better with faster single cores. I just want to know if the render speed difference between a xeon E51620v3 and comparably faster core i7 would be huge? Would 400mhz matter that much (Turbo 3.6GHZ versus 4.0GHZ)?
I have the below option that I am considering:
an
HP Z440, with a Xeon E51620V3, 32gb DDR4 Ram, Quadro k2200 and an SSD (Cheaper, Open Box)
A Dell precision T series with core i7 4790, 16gb Ram, Quadro k2200 no SSD (More expensive)
or a Custom i7 4790K with the same specs (Very expensive)

I would be using this for grad school, mainly Rhino with grasshopper and CAD.

Thank you

No, it won’t be huge. I personally got a E5-2670 v0 now and Maxwell still feels slow. V-Ray is okay though. But even this is going to feel slow after a day or two…

Perhaps you should ask your school what they suggest to get.

Go for a custom PC, over clocked i7, and a GTX gpu that you can use for CUDA rendering…

Money is better spent on fast m.2 storage and RAM, than Quadro graphics and Xeon processors Rhino wont fully utilise.

I know it seems more gamer than pro, but having had both, for Rhino it is better.

Hello. Thank you for the feedback. However I am not working with that kind
of dough here.
I’ve found a hp z440 with a xeon e5 1620v3 32gb of ram and a Quadro k2200
for 840$.
Just curious to know if there would be significant difference between a
xeon processor clocked at 3.5ghz and a core i7 clocked at 4ghz? Would it be
significant enough to justify spending an additional 400$ to get a newer
core i7 and less ram?

That sounds ‘used’, but not very cheap. I got my Dell Precision T3600, E5-2670v0 and 32 GB without HDD and graphics card for 530$. I think my Xeon when it comes to rendering is not slower than the i7-4790. When it comes to Rhino/GH, since they are running on one core, the i7 is faster.

On Grasshopper3d.com there is a thread called ‘KangaMark - PC performance Kangaroo benchmarking’. Maybe interesting for you.

If you are in Europe I can tell you where I got mine from. They are in Bavaria, but have positive ratings from all over Europe and UK.

Its not used, its an open box item with warranty till April 2019. Its also
got an SSD, which basically ticks off most of the requirements. The Dell
Precision sounds like a very good deal, however the quadro k2200 goes for
about 300$ and then an SSD for about 100$ which would bring it above this
setups cost. Will look at KangMark as well. Thank you

10% difference is typically nothing you notice.
But note that my older dual Xeon setup is too slow for some HTV Vive demo’s as some of them are purely single core users.

The two cpu’s are compared here:
http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E5-1620-v3-vs-Intel-Core-i7-4790

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I am working on a Z600 and I think the Z440 is not that dissimilar.
What I like about it is that it’s really quiet and feels very solid (whatever that means).
Only disadvantage is that it doesn’t provide much gpu power for additional power-hungry graphics cards for cuda rendering (Octane), though I do manage to run two weaker cards on one six pin lead each (K2200 and 960). Not sure what the Z440 psu is, mine is 750w.
Saying that, it looks like technology is improving to the point where raytracing power requirements could shrink drastically, as stated on OTOY’s website:
“OctaneRender 4 prototype achieves 100+ million rays/second on a 2 watt PowerVR Ray Tracing mobile GPU core – a 10x increase in ray-tracing performance/watt compared to GPGPU compute ray tracing in OctaneRender 3”
Unless I am misinterpreting this.

32 gig of ram also sounds good if you are working on big/complex projects, I have run out of memory on 12gig, but now have 24 which is fine.

Anyway, you probably made your decision already !