Is Nvida's Cuda a really big difference

[Rich_Art]

Hi All,

Now that I decided to buy 3D-Coat, I need a new VideoCard. I have not the most up to date system at the moment. Just an AMD Dualcore with 4GB mem and a Geforce 7900GTX. For my workflow with Cinema4D this system is sufficient. Could be faster of course but I'm in no hurry as it is all Hobby for me.

My question is as follows,

Is the difference between a Nvida 470 and an Ati 5770 really big in performance on 3DCoat? The price of an Ati is much more likable for me.

Or is my system to old to put in a GFX card like the Nvida 470. It would be a waste of money if I buy a new GFX card like the Nvidia and my system is to old to make a difference. I then better could buy a cheaper card like the Ati 5770 which handles very well in my main application Cinema4D.

I hope some 3DCoat expert users can help me with this question.

Thanks.

Peace,

Rich_Art.

[T.H. ROCK]

I'm far from being an expert on 3DCoat, but on my older system, CUDA made a remarkable improvement in speed.

[Rich_Art]

Thanks for the reply.

Peace,

Rich_Art.

[AbnRanger]

Thanks for the reply.

Peace,

Rich_Art.

It mainly boils down to what graphic interface your motherboard has...AGP or PCI Xpress. The later became the new standard a few years ago. CUDA will make a pretty good difference in Voxel brush speed, but the main performance hingepin in voxels is RAM. If you can upgrade that to 8GB or more, you're much better off going that route with your money.

[Rich_Art]

Yeah that is what I'm afraid of. I belief my mobo can't handle more than 4gb. I need to check this.

Thanks.

Peace,

Rich_Art.

EDIT:

It mainly boils down to what graphic interface your motherboard has...AGP or PCI Xpress.

My mobo is an Asus and has indeed PCI-E. It is not that old. (3 or 4 years)

[Taurus]

CUDA is acc only for voxels

[AbnRanger]

CUDA is acc only for voxels

I'm thinking, take that budget (for a 470gtx) and look about on EBay or Newegg for a CPU/MB/RAM upgrade. You can find an AMD black box 955 (black boxes are highly over-clockable)

AMD Quad Core CPU_$150:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103808

MB_$52

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130290R

8GB DDR3 RAM_$150

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231308

That's about $350...in the ballpark of what an NVidia 470gtx would cost.

[Rich_Art]

So I be better off with a quad core and more ram than that I would buy a Nvidia 470 on my "old" dual core..

Mmmm why is it always so difficult to make the proper decision.

(by the way, my Mobo can handle up to 8GB. it is DDR2 and the mobo is an Asus M2N SLI De Luxe.)

Ok I'll rethink what I will buy. Thanks for the help.

Peace,

Rich_Art.

[harel]

I've got core i7 875k@4ghz (4 physical core, 8 hyper Thread)

4gb ddr3 1600mhz cl6

eVGA gtx260

I notice diffrance when cuda is on -

A. When I incrase resulution

B. When I use really big brushes.

[Grandmaster B]

From the manual: "CUDA gives the best speed advantage if you are applying masks and materials over voxel sculpture with big brushes."

However, also: "CUDAs efficiency is limited on very large brushes, so, when reaching a particular radius, CUDA will be automatically disabled in tools like the Airbrush, Increase, Build and Smudge. On a scale of 1:1 it is a radius of around 65. The surface and object tools are not getting any advantage from CUDA."

[AbnRanger]

So I be better off with a quad core and more ram than that I would buy a Nvidia 470 on my "old" dual core..

Mmmm why is it always so difficult to make the proper decision.

(by the way, my Mobo can handle up to 8GB. it is DDR2 and the mobo is an Asus M2N SLI De Luxe.)

Ok I'll rethink what I will buy. Thanks for the help.

Peace,

Rich_Art.

I forgot to ask one very important question...what OS are you using? If you're on a 32bit one, you can't add more memory anyway. In that case, upgrading your card might be the only option

Since Andrew overhauled the Voxel sculpting engine this summer, to allow broader multi-threading, you would notice a greater boost in performance with additional cores and more RAM. CUDA helps in a few scenarios, but CPU and RAM are far more important throughout the entire application. Your Render times in C4D would speed up accordingly as well.

The one drawback with Voxels, if you must find one, is that it is heavily reliant on RAM...the more you have, the more you can push the tools. I have 8GB and in some cases, that's not enough. You can use Cache to Disk along with some efficiency techniques to better manage what you have, but in my own experience, you're pretty limited in voxels with only 4GB or less. The reason for that is just the Volumetric nature of voxels. It has store more data than just vertex locations in space.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7ZJX9Nfy8w

[T.H. ROCK]

Excellent AbnRanger!

Thank you for the video tutorial.

[Rich_Art]

Thanks AbnRanger..Nice to see members helping. I have Win7 64bits so I can go up to 8GB with my Mobo. (After I update the bios)

Next thing, after I bought a new GFX card, is to replace the ram with 4X2 GB instead of the 4X1 I have now. (or save some mony for a complete new mobo and proc and ram)

Peace,

Rich_Art.

[AbnRanger]

Thanks AbnRanger..Nice to see members helping. I have Win7 64bits so I can go up to 8GB with my Mobo. (After I update the bios)

Next thing, after I bought a new GFX card, is to replace the ram with 4X2 GB instead of the 4X1 I have now. (or save some mony for a complete new mobo and proc and ram)

Peace,

Rich_Art.

Glad to help...once you start approaching 15-20mill polys in the voxel room (with 4GBs) you will want to do any further detailing in the Paint Room (after retopologizing the model), where you have another, more memory efficient method...image-based sculpting, where your depth channel is painting live normal maps (Per Pixel Paint mode) or displacement maps (micro-vertex mode), allowing you to see the deformation/depth details in real time. This too, is where a new card will start to pay dividends.

By the way, when you do upgrade your card, I would suggest getting a model that has excellent aftermarket coolers installed from the factory, such as these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125338

http://cgi.ebay.com/Palit-NE5TX470F10DA-GeForce-GTX-470-1GB-320-bit-GDDR5-/220659248658?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item336050ee12

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127513

http://cgi.ebay.com/MSI-nVidia-GeForce-GTX470-GTX-470-Twin-Frozr-II-1280MB-/290471606868?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item43a174fa54

This one has lower clock speeds in the specs only because it is not overclocked from the factory. That doesn't mean it's not as capable as the ones that are. They just let you do the OC'ing yourself, via their OC tuning software. This lets you overclock a lower priced model to give you roughly the same performance as the higher priced model above it. The ones with the stock coolers don't cool nearly as well and thus don't have anywhere near the same headroom to overclock.

[Rich_Art]

Thanks again for the info. Much appreciated.

I will dive deep into this. As said, for my main application Cinema4D, my current system will do.

I buy a new GFX card (a Nvidia with cuda support) And for the rest I'll start saving some money to upgrade my system with a new mobo, proc and plenty of ram.

Until then I'm able to play with 3Dcoat and learn all the ins and outs. It will be hard I think because I use C4D for more then 8 years now.

It will take some time to get used to a new interface and tools.

Yesterday I installed a fresh copy of win7 64bits on my PC (my laptop did not liked 3Dcoat) and installed 3Dcoat. With my current system it worked surprising very well. Ok I think with a higher SubD and a larger object It won't be as smooth as now but for learning the application and tools it is more than ok for me.

Peace,

Rich_Art.