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New GFX card advice.


Kabaal
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Hi all

 

Some advice is needed please. My old 570 graphics card has sadly just died on me so I am now looking for a quick replacement.

 

My choices are:

 

GTX 970, 980 or 980ti

 

Do the 980s give me any advantage over the 970 for 3d Coat and lightwave? All I seem to be able to find online is gaming and gpu rendering benchmarks.

 

I don’t use GPU rendering and I don’t play games on my PC. If they weren’t so expensive I’d think about a quadro m4000 but they are insane money!

 

Does anyone have any recommend cards and “bang for your buck” advice please?

 

The programs I use are:

3D Coat 4.5, Lightwave 11 and a few paint programs along with your usual office apps etc.

 

The rest of my system is an up to date Haswell i7 with 16 Gb of ram

 

Many Thanks :) 

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My personal preference is the x70s in the Geforce line. Very good performance vs price.

 

I think that if you dont game, the extra you spend on a 980 or 980TI would probably go to waste.

My suggestion however would be to get a 970 with at least 3GB ram on board.

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3 out of 3 recommend the 970. So be it. :) The 970 it is, will get one ordered. B)

 

Thanks for the opinions and advice guys, much appreciated.

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Another option, which is the one I took recently, is to go on eBay and/or Amazon and buy a Titan 6GB. I'm talking about the original version of the Titan. They have since come out with the Titan black, Titan X and then Z. The original titan is basically a souped up GTX 780 with 6GB of VRAM, and it's pretty much neck and neck with the 970 and 980...just not the much more expensive 980Ti 6GB.

 

http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-TITAN-vs-GeForce-GTX-970

 

The main reason I went with it over the 970, is at the same price range, I got 2.5GB of VRAM more....which is important for GPU rendering (even if you don't currently use/have a GPU renderer, Andrew may introduce one in 3D Coat before long, as I think he has a developer working on it, or exploring it...could be him just implementing the Cycles plugin or something entirely new)...so that might be a reason to plan ahead a little bit. The render in 3D Coat, now, uses the GPU, but I don't think it uses the CUDA cores at all.

 

Plus, the Titan has a 384bit memory bus, whereas the 970 only has a 256bit bus. I tried to upgrade to a 670 a few years ago, and it had a 256bit bus, too. When you had wireframe turned on in the Sculpt Room, it was just horrible in tumbling performance, compared to what I had (470 w/ a 384bit bus). I sold it on eBay and went back to a GTX 580 3GB, which still works very well in 3D Coat. For this reason, I won't touch another 256bit card again....EVER. The Maxwell architecture may make up for it in other situations, but I simply don't trust NVidia in this regard, anymore. There is no reason to take a step back in bus size, other than to cater to the crowd who wants less power usage....at the expense of performance.

 

To me, it's sort of like buying a Ford F-150 truck to do some hauling, and they sell you a 4-cylinder version...."Oh, but it has eco-boost....blah, blah, blah." Well, why not use that Eco-boost on a larger engine that can tow? If economy is my main concern, I'll just by a hybrid car. I want to tow, dang-it! :D

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Titan 6GB vs GTX 980 (4GB)

 

http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-TITAN-vs-GeForce-GTX-980

 

I only paid about $350 for the one I got on eBay. You might find a similar deal. Most bidders are pretty savvy and won't pay much above that, knowing how close the newer 970's are, in terms of gaming performance.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ASUS-GeForce-GTX-TITAN-6GB-384-bit-GDDR5-PCI-Express-3-0-SLI-Support-Video-Card-/121791168230?hash=item1c5b51bee6:g:DtUAAOSwYHxWI8nv

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Thanks for heads up re the Titans AbnRanger.

 

Sadly I've been stung in the past with 2nd hand pc gear so I only buy new now so I get a full warranty.

 

I had a look on EBay and the Titans go for about £350 ($539) over here in Blighty, quite a bit more than the USA even after you factor in shipping and import costs etc  :o

 

All interesting and useful info. For now though I'm sticking with a 970 as price, power usage and current workflow all make it the most cost effective and useful.

 

Cheers again guys.

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Thanks for heads up re the Titans AbnRanger.

 

Sadly I've been stung in the past with 2nd hand pc gear so I only buy new now so I get a full warranty.

 

I had a look on EBay and the Titans go for about £350 ($539) over here in Blighty, quite a bit more than the USA even after you factor in shipping and import costs etc  :o

 

All interesting and useful info. For now though I'm sticking with a 970 as price, power usage and current workflow all make it the most cost effective and useful.

 

Cheers again guys.

Sorry to hear that. I've had almost entirely good fortune buying/selling things on eBay, here in the US, so I'm not as hesitant as the average person might be. I guess I was shopping on the right day. Some of those BUY NOW prices are absurd, With all of that said, if you can wait til after the first of the year, Nvidia is supposed to come out with a new card with the HBM (High Bandwidth) Memory, in response to the AMD Fury X cards that came out months ago. You might be kicking yourself, thinking "If I had only waited a few more months...Doh!" :D

 

I usually try to wait, if a card has already been out over a year.

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I would normally wait till the January sales but as I said in my first post my existing card has died. So needs must etc etc  :(

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I would normally wait till the January sales but as I said in my first post my existing card has died. So needs must etc etc  :(

Oh, yes. I forgot about that. While I do think the 970 is a great option, if I were buying personally...that 256bit Memory bus would trouble me enough to avoid it and look at AMD's R390. Same price range. Same level of performance, but it has a 512bit Memory bus and a whopping 8GB of VRAM....twice that of the 970. 

 

 

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131672

 

For gaming only, the only thing that distinguishes the GTX 970 is better power efficiency, however, for GPU rendering and working with large texture sizes in 3D Coat, the much larger frame buffer (VRAM) of the AMD R90 would make more sense. When GPU rendering, available VRAM is usually the barrier that prevents or enables one to render a heavy scene. That extra VRAM of the AMD card can mean the difference between being able to render a scene on your GPU or not. So, if you have a scene with a lot of grass and trees, you might not be able to render it on the 970.

 

I also believe, with that 512bit memory bus on the AMD R9 390, your tumbling performance with wireframe turned on (like when you are using LiveClay and you want to see how much it is tessellating while you sculpt), will be much better than the 970. It was miserable for me on the GTX 670 4GB card I bought (which had a 256bit memory bus like the 970/980 does). As for CUDA, It really has a negligible impact in 3D Coat, because it only works with Voxel brushes (not Surface mode) and Andrew hasn't updated/recompiled it at all since it was first added about 7yrs ago....so many performance gains you would get from it, if it were updated to CUDA 6 or so...you don't see because it requires the developer to recompile the CUDA code to take advantage of the newer CUDA technologies. So, you probably wouldn't notice much difference, if any between the two cards when using Voxel brushes.

 

Additionally, Andrew has a developer who is implementing OpenCL in certain areas of the app. The new OpenCL AO baking is the first. It will work with either an NVidia or AMD card. Octane Render 3 is supposed to have OpenCL support. Thea Render has OpenCL support, and I believe Cycles in Blender has it, too. VRayRT has an OpenCL option. Adobe products like AE, PP and even PS use OpenCL, as well. So, having an NVidia card for CUDA is becoming less and less relevant now.  

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Glad you piped up with the AMD

 

What about the new stacked memory Fury cards? 

Those are twice the price and half the memory, but supposed, you don't need as much memory because of the bandwidth is so massive, there is no bottleneck. But with GPU rendering, you still need a fat memory buffer (VRAM) to store the entire scene with, so the R9 390 would seem like the best bang for the buck right now...unless you use 3ds Max regularly. That's because Max uses PhysX for it's dynamics, and if you use iRay in Max, it is still reliant on CUDA. But outside of that, most everything is trending toward OpenCL....at least as an option.

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This is the frustrating thing with most reviews, they only concentrate on gaming performance and nothing else.

Reviews of pro (quadro etc) cover things like viewport perfromance and stuff that matters to us but not the consumer reviews.

Sadly we are a small niche userbase that get overlooked in most mainstream reviews.

But hey we have forums like these to help us out so it's all good.

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Someone can correct me on this but I believe I read nVidia GIMPs their card so you cant use the wireframe optimizations that the Quattro cards have even though the technology is on the card, they just zap the bridge to that circuit area so you have to upgrade to the more expansive Quattro.. 

I never used a Quattro so I dont know what I'm missing :)

 

AMD does not do that, you get full wireframe optimizations off the bat.

 

As for Ram on the card, unless you game or do full GPU renderings, the 4GB on the Fusion will suffice.

But if in doubt, grab the 390 and get that phat 8GB DDR frame buffer.

 

Which ever way you decide, please post back your impressions of the card you bought. I'd really like to hear.

gl!

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Those of us who use the GPU for rendering (Octane, Cycles, Redshift, etc.) vram is very important and the more the better.   It's still an Nvidia/CUDA game, although the most recent version of Cycles has limited AMD support through OpenCL.  Octane is supposed to be getting OpenCL support with version 3.  So things are changing.  

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This is the frustrating thing with most reviews, they only concentrate on gaming performance and nothing else.

Reviews of pro (quadro etc) cover things like viewport perfromance and stuff that matters to us but not the consumer reviews.

Sadly we are a small niche userbase that get overlooked in most mainstream reviews.

But hey we have forums like these to help us out so it's all good.

VRAM is utterly critical when using a GPU render because it remains the biggest if not only limiting factor with GPU renderers....when people compare then to CPU only renderers, VRAM limitations on cards is ALWAYS brought up, and also important when texture painting on large UV maps 4K+. Most developers of GPU renderers use different techniques and tricks to deal with the inherently low VRAM capacities of graphics cards, but it is still critical...especially if you have a large scene with a lot of models w/lots of polygons and large texture maps, etc. So, having a card with 8GB of VRAM is naturally a much better option than one with 3.5 (GTX 970).

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Those of us who use the GPU for rendering (Octane, Cycles, Redshift, etc.) vram is very important and the more the better.   It's still an Nvidia/CUDA game, although the most recent version of Cycles has limited AMD support through OpenCL.  Octane is supposed to be getting OpenCL support with version 3.  So things are changing.  

I have a license of Thea, and it's the most affordable of all the GPU renders (excluding Cycles which is part of Blender). They recently had a sale, where it was about $280 for the 3ds Max bundle (Standalone render app + Max plugin). Octane is twice that, Arion and Furryball are about 3x that. Keyshot, a CPU only render, is 4x that. Thea has an OpenCLversion. So, AMD cards are finally a serious option for GPU rendering, whereas a year ago it was almost entirely Nvidia's domain.

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https://www.thearender.com/site/index.php/news/edition-1-5.html

 

What's really cool about this GPU/CPU hybrid render, is that it has a Substance to Thea Material convertor which can use the image files 3D Coat exports rather than a Substance Material, and generate a Thea Material from it.

 

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Hey all.

 

I have ordered myself an EVGA NVIDIA GTX 970 FTW+ and will let you know how it performs once it arrives. Hopefully Wednesday  :D 

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Well card arrived alright and works like a charm.  :rofl:

 

Super quiet (I actually thought there was a problem) and runs 3d coat really smoothly and Lightwave performance seems improved too. I made the jump to 2560x1440 resolution with a monitor upgrade as well and the extra desktop space is awesome.

 

Overall I can definitely recommend this card, it draws less power and runs quieter than the old 570 and so far is great value.

 

Thanks again for the recommendation.

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