Mega Beast VFX PC GFX Upgrade Needed

cccylon

Hi All,

Was hoping to get some help upgrading my current VFX workhorse PC. Interested in adding the NVidia Quadro RTX8000 or a GFX card equally as powerful. I'm venturing into virtual production with motion capture using UNREAL ENGINE and need to max out my render power. 

Would I need to swap out my motherboard, processor, cooling system?

Would it be easier or more affordable to add another GTX1080TI or some other GFXcard to the pc to work in tandem with the current one? 

My budget for this would ideally be around $5000.00 (considering the cost of gfx cards), but if we can make this happen for less and get just as much bang for the buck by adding another powerful gfx card to our system w/ the 1080TI I'm definitely open to it!

My current pc build specs are as follows:

CPU: AMD Threadripper 1950X 3.4 GHz 16-Core Processor

CPU Cooler: Fractal Design Celsius S36 87.6 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler

Thermal Compound used: Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut 1g 1 g Thermal Paste

Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty X399 Professional Gaming ATX sTR4 Motherboard

Memory: (4) Kingston ValueRAM 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-2133 CL15 Memory

Storage: Samsung 850 Pro Series 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive

Storage: Samsung 960 PRO 512 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive

Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11 GB STRIX GAMING OC Video Card

Power supply: Corsair AX1500i 1500 W 80+ Titanium Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply

Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit

Case: Corsair Crystal 570X RGB ATX Mid Tower Case

Case Fan: (6) Corsair SP120 RGB High Performance 52 CFM 120 mm Fan

Thanks so much! 

TSPhillipT

Hello cccylon, welcome to the Micro Center Community!  

I think your best options are between the RTX Quadro 8000 or the RTX Titan.  I am leaning super heavy into the Quadro 8000 however, as it maxes out the CUDA cores and Ray Tracing Cores as well as having 48GBs of memory for all those virtualization renders.  There are a lot of debates for this argument however, and I do think the Titan is a good consideration if you are looking for a budget pick. 

I will also be linking a few videos I used to help come to my opinion;

Linus Tech Tips video on Quadro 8000 vs Titan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EcMKg7awXg

Cinematography Database's video on why he uses the Quadro 8000; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7iYiq0zYiE

I think the Cinematography Database is an important one to watch as he uses a lot of Unreal Engine in the video as well.  

cccylon

Hi TSPhillipT,

Thanks so much for getting back to me. Would I need to upgrade my CPU, motherboard and cooling system, etc. for the RTX Quadro 8000? Would I be looking at new build entirely here to get the best performance out of my system in general? I'm still using AMD's Threadripper 1950x 16 core processor, but would I want to upgrade to something like the Threadripper 3990X or 3970x? I guess what I'm asking here is what things can carry over from my existing cpu to get as much bang for my buck without necessarily breaking the bank with a potential 10k build? If a new build is the best option---can I achieve this around 6k usd all in? Thanks so much for your help!

TSTonyV

You wouldn't need to upgrade your other hardware unless you're lacking performance there. The Quadro 8000 still uses the standard PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, so you can just plug it in, download the drivers and it will work. 

cccylon

Would the AMD 3990x or 3970x give us a significant boost in terms of render processing and 3d workflow in addition to the Quadro 8000 because of the additional cores or would our Threadripper 1950 16 core CPU be enough to see a substantial change in this area to start?  

TSTonyV

If  your workloads rely a lot on CPU rendering and multi-thread CPU resources in general, yes they should make a big difference. If you're not familiar with Gamers Nexus, they do fantastic technical breakdowns and reviews of a lot of computer hardware, and they're my go-to for CPU performance in general. They have a review specifically on the 3970X Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2tzTMN6-qU

You can see in the charts the direct comparison to the 1950x in a variety of applications, and it's always a significant improvement.

That said, I don't know how the differences would look when you take the GPU into consideration. Unfortunately I'm not too familiar with these types of workloads personally, so I can only comment so much on this.