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I'm using an old 32bit computer laptop and I was going to change to a 64bit with two times as much ram but a desktop pc is probalby better and customizable. Are there any recommendations for a good but not too expensive cpu? I don't have a budget yet so price doesn't matter yet but I'm probably not looking for something above 1000 euro's. I prefer to use windows because I'm mainly going to use Kalles Fraktaler and Mandel Machine.

Kalles fraktaler and Mandel Machine both heavily use floating point computations on the main processor. Graphics card is irrelevant to those programs. A quad core Intel i5 is probably best performance per dollar. The i7 series is a bit faster, but considerably more expensive; while the i3 chips are meant for power constrained machines. AMD is pretty much out of the race, sadly.

i've got an i7-3770k and am very happy with it since ... 18(?) months. and it was best bang for the buck.
spend the rest of your budget on ram and especially on ssd harddrive for system an much used stuff. ssd rules and really speeds up,
my windows 8.1 is up within 10 seconds. ssd was the biggest improvement of my upgrades..
and for fractals, check this thread that I'm too lazy to search for now. but my processor scored pretty high and is cheap. I'm happy.

Thanks. Depending on what else I'm going to use these could be a good choice. I can choose between i5 and i7, I'm not making a choice yet because there probably is a lot more to look for. I think I will also get a graphics card for various other reasons. :) I'm not sure whether I need to use windows 7 or 10. But I think 10 should be better, I'm not going to use windows 8 because I think it is too much aimed to tablets and a little inconvenient for a desktop pc.

For the graghics ncard, I would get the GTX 750. That is what I have, and it works like a charm.

I would also use windows 7, because you can upgrade to 10 for free later.

Thats only limited and I don't think I will be able to get it all before that expires. But I think 7 is a good choice.

What about the ammout of ram? I thought 8 would be good. Or should it be more?

i am running with 16 gigs, and still think it is far to less ;)
depending on what you want to do with your computer while rendering, or how many instances you might want to run at the same time,
and most important is that you match the memory speeds with your board speeds, and take the fastest available ram, ram is one of the
most essential things a computer needs, so the faster, the bigger, the better ;)

It will be for rendering mostly, I don't have to worry about Kalles Fraktaler and Mandel Machine not being fast enough. :) But is it possible to use between 8 and 16 ram, for instance 12gb of ram?

Btw, I've been thinking to also install the google neural networks program, and it require quite a lot of computation power so I thought 12 would be good. But is there a sort of quality-scale I can choose from?

regarding deepdream:
i believe the most important thing is ram. I've allocated 12gb to the virtualbox to achieve 2560*1440 resolution.
if you want it to compute faster (large images with 10*4 iterations take around 20 minutes here) you need a nvidia graphic-card that supports cuda. problem is, for the same resolution you would also need 12gb graphics ram... (yes, it is possible to use 12gb, but pay attention to dual-channel ram which (if i remember correctly) is much faster.
when I look at my task manager, it doesn't use all cpus and its going up and down all the time. I don't think the amount of cores is not so important.

Ok. Thanks for the information.

re:deep dream

I have 6G system mem and a 2G nVidia card and I can render 2880x3840 images
Using cnn-vis.py https://github.com/jcjohnson/cnn-vis with cuDNN

in cnn-vis the gfx card mem is used for calculating, not holding image data, the image data goes to a png file,

the --batch-size option controls how much ram is used on the GPU,
I get this output no matter what the image dimensions are when --batch-size=100 ...
I can push it past 128 but at 128 and less seems to perform better :)

Hm... Memory limiting. Good to know, thank you.

I think Im going for the INTEL CORE I7 4770. Im not conpletely sure yet but the price/performance ratio is great. Though it is still expensive in here, I may have to go to gemany for better prices. :)

So, here's what I thought would be a good combination:

-INTEL CORE I7 4770 (approx. 380€)

-Gigabyte G1.SNIPER B6 B85 Motherboard (approx. 125€)

-RAM: Kingston HyperX FURY Red HX313C9FRK2/16 (approx. 150€)

A total of 655€ which is not too bad considering that it should work together quite well and that it does not need a videocard. And may be able to get all these components with slightly better prices.

I don't need to buy a monitor because I still have one that still works. The only thing I need is cooling ,a case and software.

This was just what I think is a good deal for quite a powerfull build. Maybe some things will change.

Don't forget to get a Power Supply! PC Part Picker was a very good tool for me to use, when I was building my own PC.

Youre right. Thanks.

Ive done some more research and the Intel Xeon E3-1231 v3 maybe even a better choice. It has no videocard included like the intel e series, it is much more powerfull and costs about 80 euros less than my previous choice.

Now you're making me think about getting a new processor...  :-\
An imporntant thing to look for in processors in regards to fractals is a good single core speed, which that processor has.

Getting a powerful graphics card only costs about $150, which is a good deal, especially if you are saving $80.

Do I? Thanks for your comment. Because there are some unused laptops here I may be able to the gpu of one of those.

speaking of that. Ive looked into the xeon e5 and e7 series and they dont seem to have a better speed compared to the xeon e3 series. But they do have more cache.

I found a very good combination:


The GIGABYTE GA-B85M-HD3: approx 50 €

Intel Xeon E3-1231 v3: approx 270 €

and Kingston HyperX FURY (8gb to start, will maybe be upgraded to 12 or 16)  60€


In total approx: 380€

And maybe even a better choice than my previous combination.

Ive been looking for intel cpus but some amds have a faster clockspeed.

The AMD Black Edition - AMD FX 4.7 GHz Processor
Has a speed of 4.7ghz and can even be overclocked to 5ghz, it has the same amount of cache as the xeon I chose and it is much cheaper!!!

Don't!!!!!!!!!!!
AMD processors get less work done per clock, so gigahertz doesn't matter. I make that mistake myself, already.

Really?

Unfortunately, Intel does not have a competitor at this time. Since 5 years or so, actually. AMD's CPU offerings are currently no alternative for fractalists. Intel's "Core" branded processors get maybe 40% more done per clock cycle. That holds for most single threaded software; the gap even widens a bit for heavily multithreaded programs.

Worse, the fastest AMD processors share one floating point unit across a pair of cores. So the typical CPU bound fractal application with many threads of heavy number crunching will make Intel processors look even better in comparison.

(There is only one last remaining tiny niche where AMD's offerings can outrun Intel: heavy arbitrary precision arithmetic based on wide integers. But this is no longer relevant for fractalists, because nowadays a new class of algorithms is used to render very deep zooms. Rather than relying exclusively on arbitrary precision arithmetic,  we use perturbation theory now.)

Good point. I will be using perturbation so floating point is essential, if intel is better with floating point I should choose the intel xeon 1231 v3. The same for multi threading.

i7 4790K + nice heatsink for overclocking
32GB DDR

Take that CPU and put it at 4.4 GHz, done.

In one of my previous posts I talked about overclocking but im not really planning on doing that. One other point is that im not sure if the 4790 is better or not compared to the price. But the speed of the 4790 seems reasonable

Intel officially support overclocking, that's what the K in the model number denotes. To not take advantage of it (you just set a single number somewhere) is sort of like throwing money away, if you're paying for performance in the first place.

The only thing better than that CPU is either i7 5775C, or 6/8 core stuff, which is a little exotic and expensive etc.

Ive looked for some reviews of the i7 4790k and although it is better than the intel xeon e3 1231 v3 it still has a few drawbacks I think: It has a gpu which Im not sure I need it (if I can use it is a good deal) and in some reviews I read that the overclocking doesnt work correctly. So it will be a tough choice I think. :/

The iGPU on that thing is badass, very good for OpenCL computation for example :) The one on the 5775C is more than twice as powerful, and has a ridiculous 128MB L4 cache to boot (which benefits normal applications too). Good rendering programs ought to be able to take advantage of the iGPU (in addition to any other GPUs you might have), but I'm not aware of many that do; Chaotica will at least ;)

That's sort of everything I have to say on the matter :D

Well, if that is everything I will have to decide which one I will use. The xeon (with separate gpu) or the 4790k (without the need of a gpu).

I hope you're not under the impression that you can't (or even shouldn't) use another GPU with any of these CPUs?

Regardless of which CPU, ideally get another GPU, AMD or NVIDIA, up to you; there is no real "waste" in having iGPU, in that there's nothing to gain from not having it.

I did this 7680x4320 deep dream http://3dickulus.deviantart.com/art/Medusa-Effect-547596579
on a 4core xeon and GeForce 760 in about 45 min

Quite an impressive image compare to the time. Thanks for the information. But if I want to be sure maybe I need an example from the 4790k with the intel graphics to compare. Lycium can you try something?

My father found a complete intel poweredge 1900 server case. It is two years old and contains two separate 3ghz cpus. He could take it for free, :) but it still needs to be cleaned though. Here are some of the specifications:
https://www.dell.com/downloads/emea/products/pedge/en/PE1900_Spec_Sheet_Quad.pdf


I guess this is good. (but it is very large)

I have done some more research and it does need a bit more power than a normal desktop but it is a decent choice for fractal computation. I still have to find out whether windows 7 can be runned on it.

I am planning on using it but I still need to ask whether my parents are ok with it.

a nice box for crunching fractals  O0

If I start to crunch the fractal, they (http://lord-of-the-ocean-slot.com) become fractured :D
Also, I think that 4790k is good for our purpose.

After a long phase of relative stagnation, CPUs are currently making a jump from four cores to eight or more at upper mainstream prices. Thanks to AMD's "Ryzen" heavily undercutting Intel's offers, the market is in rapid motion.

With respect to GPUs, AMD is less of a driving force for Nvidia. While AMDs RX400 / RX500 series is a good competitor in mainstream and low end, Nvidia is free to dictate prices at the high end. It's not clear that AMD can change that with their upcoming "Vega" GPUs.

Within a few months, AMD will start selling quad-core Ryzen CPUs with an integrated midrange Vega GPU. Those are meant for laptop and all-in-one machines, but could end up with the highest overall combined compute performance per dollar. (AMDs new CPU cores are quite competitive with Intel's, and their on-chip GPUs are notably better at compute than Intel's integrated graphics.)

(Sorry for the emphasis on AMD. Both Intel and Nvidia also announced higher performance products. But IMHO it is AMDs pricing policy this round that will make a real difference for fractalists on a realistic budget.)

I totally forgot about this thread. :D
I have actually bought a desktop a month ago:

Msi Nightblade mi2c-062
i7 6700 cpu 3.4ghz
8gb of ddr4 ram
Nvidia geforce 960 gtx gpu with 4gb of memory

It performs really well, as far as I can tell (I have not worked on any other similar desktops). I got it relatively cheap but I would probably have done to get a desktop with a 4790k.

I think PC is so powerfull now that you can economy on then.  Unless you realy know that you need that power. My outdated ex office PC bought for 10 euros is quite good for 3D. Maybe it just need some graphic card for cuda.