2 X GTX 970 or 2 X GTX 1060

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#1

Hi All,

I have been recently planning to upgrade to a decent desktop, with a primary purpose of Blender and 3D Art. I was hoping to get some advice regarding the GPU. I have prity much narrowed down the other parts, but then again a GPU changes a lot in the configuration. The two GPUs I have narrowed down to which are in my budget of 250-300 $ are the below:

MSI GTX 970 - 279$* after rebates (Newegg)
MSI GTX 1060 - 279$ (Newegg)

So the issue is 970 presents a high CUDA core number than 1060, for a less amount of VRAM (4GB to 6GB). Also under benchmarks I could see the 1060 outperforms a 970 by a second under test

http://blenchmark.com/gpu-benchmarks

My dilemma is do I get a 1060 now, and avoid the SLI up scaling in the future, or get a 970 and keep the SLI in mind. I understand Blender does not react very well to SLI as of now, but is there a possibility that SLI may be introduced as a multi GPU feature for rendering later on. Since both of them are at the same price, its also a factor that the new version should be preferable.

Also, I was hoping to check if anyone in the forum has tried bench marking 2X GTX 1060s and see how their performance stacks up again the rest of the cards especially the 970s.

I would appreciate any help or insight on the above! :slight_smile:

Thank you :slight_smile:

#2

Couldnt pass up the GTX 1060 offer and ordered one! Just to realize the Pascal series isn’t supported by blender yet :slight_smile: hopefully they come up with an official fix soon :slight_smile:

#3

Hi 8hoursleep,
I’m Facing a similar dilema, taking also a used GTX 780ti into consideration since in render times it benchmarks similarly s the 970 despite the worse scores in 3dmark etc.

While limited support by blender for the 10x0 series is a matter of time (look into the builder versions - i heard some of them are handling cuda8 properly), then again as far as I read the gtx 1060 does not support SLI at the moment - which potentially ruins it for multiple GPU builds, which can be a pain for myself eventually. Since the topic questioned for 2x GPU, did you buy two or one? If two, could you run them with SLI?

Also, I haven’t seen any benchmakrs for the 1060, could you please run e.g. the BMW 27 bench? It would be really simplify my decision:
https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?239480-2-7x-Cycles-benchmark-(Updated-BMW)

BR