Hi all,
I’m making a custom workstation build (thread here), and need to replace a placeholder GPU I’m using.
I’m gonna use the card for real-time previews only, and wanted to get a used NVidia. I still want to wait some time before I spend $1K on one of those top-shelf monsters. Current cards don’t quite make a dent yet, so I don’t care that much about gaining a little bit more performance for a whole load more of money.
Can you recommend anything?
I’m mainly looking for perceptual recommendations. So if you have a card you’re satisfied with, it performs well, and you’re not gonna swap anytime soon - please recommend!
The card will be ONLY for Cycles rendering preview in viewport, I don’t care about render times really (though these both are linked, I know :/)
I do need a full size card to plan out the elements I’ll be 3d printing for the chassis, and it’s probably gonna have a custom raiser - so I need to get a physical card to get its measurements to be able to finish the build
Hi, it depends on your budget.
For low budget you can look for a GTX 750Ti, it has 2 GB VRAM and is a good bang for Bug.
It is not a full size card.
I am fine with my GTX 760 4 GB, it is fast and 4 GB is enough for bigger projects (preview need less memory).
You should not buy older than GTX 600 series, GTX 670 4 GB is fine if you get one used.
I have a GTX980 and like it a lot. It’s blazing fast and I haven’t had any problems with it. Cycles hasn’t been optimized for Maxwell architecture yet (I think), but on Octane (which is optimized) my 980 is faster than a Titan. It doesn’t have the memory the Titan has though (4GB vs 6GB).
@mib2berlin: Eh, can’t find good used GTX 7xx series Was thinking about this one: http://ca.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5008#ov
Gigabyte GTX660, 3GB RAM. It’s a pity it’s not a full sized board, I was hoping to cram a bigger one into the build… but the price here is really attractive. Do you think it’s any good?
re: project - all parts designed in Blender I’ll probably post a thread on it later on. I’m using Migius’s CADTools Blender build for some of these things, but yeah… this deserves a thread of its own.
@Grimm - Well, the card is for a machine that has a few years. It’s an mini-ITX board, i7 2600K, 16 GB RAM, PCI-E 2.0. So I don’t need fireworks - especially not now, since it seems AMD finally bounced off the bottom with their GPUs. For Blender at least. And it’s gonna be for real-time previews primarily, since I want to be able to get fast results on light placement, shading, materials, and so on.
I want to get a relatively cheap but decent card for this particular machine. To boost the viewport, but also to test some cooling and construction solutions in a custom case.
Hm, if I resign from additional RAM and cap the card at 2GB, things begin to get interesting. I can get a GTX960 with loads of display ports (do want) in similar price:
But it doesn’t end up high in the benchmark thread
(Yes, I am referring to this thread all the time though the multi-card rendering benchmarks make orientation in it a bit harder).
I am going to use it in viewport only, and it’s gonna be OCed (liquid cooling)… and viewport doesn’t really need all that RAM I would guess…
EDIT: Why does choosing GPUs always feel like having to pick the lesser evil?
Hi again, Cycles is not up to date with the optimizations for latest cards.
In my benchmark also older cards get better results, nobody knows why.
The GTX 960 is a very good card and you are future proof.
Here is a benchmark for Octane, it is also a Cuda powered render engine:
Tested a GTX 960 today, both for real-time display and for rendering.
Performs very well in previews, though I expected a bit more
Compared to 6 core i7 5820K @ 3.3GHz - it outperforms it by a nice margin, test scene rendered in 10 minutes on CPU, and 7 minutes on GPU.
(still, comparing prices, it seems that for larger scenes a CPU+Mobo+Ram gives a better bang per $. Ram is the main issue, SSS is the other, in Cycles at least).
though the multi-card rendering benchmarks make orientation in it a bit harder).