I need help with my PC specs for blender

Hello everyone !!
i am new to this community so i am not sure if i am posting in about this in the right forum so i beg your pardon all …

so what i need help with is the following

I am about to upgrade my GPU setup so um i already have graphic card called

GIGABYTE GTX 1050 OC 2GB GDDR5 128Bit Nvidia GeForce

it’s already attached to my setup and i am about to buy same GPU but instead of 2GB i’ll buy 4BG and put it next to my 2GB GPU so ill have in my PC one GPU 2GB and the other 4GB same brand and everything my motherboard supports Multi-GPU
what i need help with is …

having 2 GPU one 2GB and the other 4GB will it help reduce render time in blender ?
and should i use SLI if i had to ? is SLI good or not for rendering ?
and can i use both CPU and GPU to render at the same time to reduce render time ?

I am really not good with pc setups so am reaching your help !!


My current setup is the following

RAM - Ballistix Sport 24GB DDR4 2400MHz
CPU - Core i5 7400 ( 7th gen )
GPU - GIGABYTE GTX 1050 OC 2GB GDDR5 128Bit Nvidia GeForce
HARDISK #1 - 120 gb SSD
HARDISK #2 - 500 gb hdd
Motherboard - msi B250 gaming M3

thank you so much in advance

So, yes having multiple GPUs will vastly speed up your renders. The 4 GB won’t add any memory, as your Vram (graphics card memory) is capped at whatever the lowest card has. So, basically, you won’t be able to render any bigger scenes, but it will be definitely faster.

And, also, GPU+CPU rendering together is coming in Blender 2.8

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For SLI you will need to have 2 GPUs of the same architecture (no matter the manufacturer… you can use a EVGA 1050 and a Gigabyte 1050 as long as it is in fact an NVidia 1050… it can not be a 1050 paired with a 1070 or whatever OR a 1050 2GB with a 1050 4GB ) and both cards need to have the same amount of memory (as mentioned)…

however… I am not sure wether Blender really cares… SLI from what I understand is more meant for direct OUTPUT over one port…

Never tried it.

Edit: btw… The Blender “Daily build” supports GPU+CPU rendering at the same time and it doesn’t limit to the GPU-Card’s memory

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It doesn’t limit to the cards memory! This is a revolution!!!

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Omg I didn’t know, that’s so awesome

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Daily builds of 2.79 have it too - if you manage to find a stable one it’s quite nice.

Edit: Kobold’s edit said this, whoops!

The 2.79 daily builds are so overpowered they could be an update all by themselves lol

I’m really hoping for a 2.79c soonish - Principled Volume shader and the CPU + GPU support alone is enough to warrant it and there’s probably 100 other things that I haven’t even noticed that are really nice.

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Hi.
You always mention your budget which you can spend.
2GB vRAM is very little for the requirements of Cycles and Eevee currently. By combining cards you will have faster render times, but you will still be limited by 2GB vRAM cards as maximum memory that Cycles can use.
CPU+GPU is possible in development builds, but it has a render time penalty because it will not use a CPU thread per GPU you use to render. And you would still have problems with those few 2GB vRAM.

SLI configuration is worse for Cycles and I doubt it helps much on Eevee.

My recommendation is that you save money and you buy starting from GTX 1060 6GB vRAM version (not 3GB version) or better card. And it might be convenient for you to wait until the year 2019 where new mid-range nvidia cards will be launched.

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Yea the volumetrics, hybrid render, and new AO node are so so nice, Ive basically completely switched to the dailys for the time being, a new stable release woul be appreciated yea. I honestly just feel blessed that all this is happening, and so quickly

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Blender supports multiple GPUs, but they don’t have to be the same GPU and it’s actually common to mix one weaker GPU (for viewport display only) with one beefier GPU (for Cycles rendering only), because using a GPU attached to displays with Cycles can make your entire system less responsive.

While having two same GPUs is required for SLI, Blender doesn’t use SLI and probably never will. Even games often don’t benefit much from SLI these days.

Even if newer builds of Blender may support scenes not fitting into GPU ram, this will still be slower, so more RAM is better either way.

Considering all that, maybe you’ll want to upgrade to a better GPU like YAFU suggests, or wait a while for GPU prices to come down or newer cards to be released.

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