I currently have an Intel Core i7-4770. With big models the modelling slows down noticeably after modelling for a couple of hours, at its worst, it takes a couple of minutes between tasks.
I’m considering to upgrade to an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X. Would that improve the modelling performance significantly?
Thanks you very much in advance for any help!
J
This is what you will get as difference…
Thank you for your help, much appreciated!
Your realize, of course, one cannot simply replace the Intel CPU with the AMD CPU.
Their different sockets mean changing the MoBo as well.
Essentially, you’re considering a new system.
Thank you for the advise! I was aware of it, hence I wanted to find out first whether the performance improvement was worth the expense.
Performance could be reduced if you don’t have an equal or better graphic card.
Many parts have to work together, so you can’t guarantee performance improvements on just one part of the whole system.
You also need to optimise your workflow before you should consider hardware upgrades.
@Geo has some great links on how to do that that I’m sure he will happily share with you.
Thank you for your comments and the link, much appreciated.
A more economical approach would be upgrading the existing system CPU.
Generally, throwing money at performance issues doesn’t address the root of the problem.
There are better performing CPUs that fit the LGA1150 socket.
CPU Mark by Socket Type LGA1150 … PassMark Software - CPU Benchmarks - CPU Performance by Socket Type
Existing CPU
Top of the performance list for the LGA1150
Many thanks, GEO for your link!
I believe to have optimized my workflow reasonably well, but was hoping that modelling and rendering could be sped up with a system update.
It is mainly about gauging whether the improvements justify the expense.
Thank you for the helpful feedback!
Thank you!!
The speed increase shown in the charts doesn’t translate directly into user experience. My estimation is that the boost given by changing only the CPU would be hardly noticeable, and if you decided to scrap your whole system for an ultracool whizbang new computer you would not feel that the result justifies the cost. Better wait until your present system is seriously outdated.
Thank you, Anssi. I think that’s the overwhelming opinion on here. 
I dont suppose you happen to have a i7 4770K? If so, a K-series CPU can be overclocked, so 3.9ghz can become approx 4.4ghz (possibly with the addition of a good cpu cooler).
Tip for anyone buying CPUs for Sketchup, overlocking is great because you can boost a single core quite nicely…so always look for an overclock-able CPU, and get a good cooler (which is a good investment in the long run, either way).
@MikeWayzovski This sort of question is a great example of where a benchmark isolating CPU and GPU performance within SketchUp would be very valuable.
Thanks for that tip, much appreciated! J
From my own experience, and upgraded cpu won’t necessarily speed up modelling and rendering times. I have an i9-9900k and with my large models, they can still take a while, but as it has been stated, improving your workflow in SU can make a big difference, which I too have done and it’s made a difference for me. Constrain your workflow to components and groups as often as you can, but with regards to rendering, and this is dependent on what you use as a rendering plugin, the gpu can typically take the brunt of processing. For instance, I use Vray and with their latest updates to Vray Next, it is much improved due to RTX integration, as well as improved performance for gpu rendering, as opposed to cpu rendering. You may also want to visit your preferences in SU to make sure that your settings aren’t set where the cpu would have a harder time keeping up, such as MSAA, texture sizes and fast feedback.
Many thanks for your advise, jmorvay1971. Much apprdciated!
Howdy, I have done a similar upgrade recently and noticed huge improvements. I went from a 4 core Itel CPU with 32gig ram to the 3900X 12 core processor, ASUS TUF Gaming X570 Motherboard and 128gig Corsair Vengeance LPX 64GB (2x32GB) 3200MHz CL16 DDR4 ram. Massively better and money well spent I think! Interestingly some of the bottleneks in performance and now around my network and hard drive speed (I have a small QNAP NAS drive which is great but the drives are not as quick as my Samsung 860 Evo 1TB SSD). I hear there are now some new RAM drives, which while expensive and small would be worth exploring I think, especially for large models. I wonder if this could also help Layout to perform a bit better. I’ve played around with liquid cooling on my last machine (which was a great improvement in performance & stability).
Some info on RAM drives: How Do RAM Drives Work? - YouTube
*Just a note if you go with the motherboard and processor as I have you’ll need a NM-AM4 mounting kit for the CPU mounting. (and a decent cooling system).
I also use Podium Walker for renders & animations and the improvement in that process was huge, ditto for Adobe Creative suite. *Note I did try upgrading to the Pro Walker (GPU) but found this much slower as I have a fair (NVIDIA 1060) graphics card, but I think this would only provide great improvements if you have a much more expensive graphics card. For me sticking with the CPU rendering & animation was great (when I went for the new 12 core AMD 3900X CPU).
There are however a few tricks I have found that might be worth trying;
