I'm building a workstation for a friend of mine--she's an animator, so she spends a lot of her time rendering. She has a $1000 budget, and I'm at the point where I need to give her advice on GPU's. So far it's going to consist of an Intel Xeon E5-2603 six core, on a dual slot ASRock EP2C602-4L/D16 SSI EEB (so she has room to expand later), with 16 gb RAM. Now, I have 2 of my old Radeon 6950's (just retired them back in January when I upgraded to an R9 290) that I'm willing to sell her for $150. Would it be worthwhile to do that, or to tell her to get a low-end Firepro for around the same price? How would they stack up in terms of render time? How well do GPU accelerated applications handle crossfire?
Really, any advice on this front would be appreciated.
Really, any advice on this front would be appreciated.