more cores or faster cores?

[elinasar]

Hi all, a really fast technical question: at a hardware level what is more important for the realtime rendering view performance (just the realtime render), more cores or faster cores? Does the graphic card here matter at all?  We are trying to decide on which new machine to buy.

Thanks for the help!

[DriesV]

more cores or faster cores?

I'd say cores over clock speed. However, both are important considerations.
Dual Xeon E5-2697 v2 (24 cores @ 2.7GHz) will be faster than dual Xeon E5-2687W v2 (16 cores @ 3.4GHz) for rendering.

Does the graphic card here matter at all?

Any graphics card should do. Expect no difference in performance between Quadro K2000 and K6000.

Dries

[dunk]

Overall I would go with more cores because you get cache memory assigned which would help process the data from the bus quicker, and you would have the option of clocking it. You cant add more cores to a high Hz chip but you can increase the speed with cores, as well as using hyper thread. I suppose you have also got the option to run other programs whilst working with keyshot when you have multiple cores.

[andy.engelkemier]

one more confusing thing to consider is processor age. Due to newer instruction sets, and good programming which utilizes it, newer processors with the same number of cores and same speed will actually render considerably faster.
So if you're looking at a few different processors, I'd pick a newer processor over an older one. They also may even fit on the same motherboard. If you're picking that as well, the same thing applies. It makes computer shopping Very confusing. But as a general rule, newer ends up being a better solution for you.

And don't forget about hyper threading. It's a must. Don't compare a cpu that has 6 cores, and 8 cores if one doesn't have hyperthreading.

[elinasar]

Thanks everyone for the replies! So  the realtime rendering also takes advantage of the multithread?

[TpwUK]

Yes it does

Martin