Does 3D rendering use CPU or GPU more?

Question

I'm learning to use Maya Unlimited and I'm getting sick of spending hours rendering high quality images, so as far as a hardware solution, should I upgrade my CPU or my GPU first?

I have a self built computer
AMD Athalon 64 3200+ (Socket 939)
2GB Corsair TWINX Dual Channel DDR
ATI Radeon X1300 Hypermemory
hope that helps

Answer 1

Well honestly to run Maya will you would need an upgrade in both areas, but just for the issue of rendering, it would absolutely be the CPU first. I would definately suggest upgrading to a dual core chip, since Maya is a multi-threaded application you would notice a very substantial improvement. Here is the best available for your socket:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103544 with this processor, your rendering times should be cut to about 45% of what they are now, meaning something that would take 1 hour now, would only take about 27 minutes. Keep in mind you are a little limited by your socket, getting one of the new Intel Quad Core systems could cut what is currently a 1 hour render to around 11 minutes.

Answer 2

You have a very decent system - if you look at some of the better Maya artists that post their work and specs in places such as cgtalk, mograph.net and highend3d - you have a better setup.

Your speed problems probably come from the way your render is set up in Maya. Are you using maya software render? Mental Ray? Renderman? I recently did a project where each frame was taking 18 minutes to render on mental ray. I went in and tweaked my motion blur settings slightly, and ended up taking 4 min per frame with little difference in the end look. Before upgrading your hardware I would look into getting some books about how to optimize your render setup - it will be a lot cheaper and in the end will make you a better Maya artist. A good DVD I got was the digital tutors Mental Ray training disc, email me rayn_fall @ hot mail dot com if you want to know more about it and where to get it.

Answer 3

for rendering reasons, CPu and RAM are actually more an issue. the GPU is only used for output purposes (computer to monitor). rendering requires calculating colors and such. displaying these renderings at higher details, numbers and speeds is what the GPU does.
ATI is actually changing this though as their new x1950 series gpu's focus on doing a lot of quick random calcualtions simultaneously.
but the first poster is correct about it really depending on your harware. More often than not though, it's more CPU/RAM intensive to create it and more GPU intensive to utilize it in say a 3D environment. Multicore processors will really help you.

Answer 4

well honestly, for me to answer your question correctly you would have to give us more information on the specifications of your computer. The amount of ram/memory that you use and the kind of gpu and cpu that you have now are all important factors in a good decision.

But without knowing absolutely anything about your computer, typically, when you buy a computer from Dell or whatnot, you receive a pretty crappy GPU if you didnt upgrade when you built it. So, based only on the info provided. upgrade the Gpu.

Answer 5

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