# Palit GTX 680 2 GB or 4 GB for Blender ? **URL:** \ **Category:** Technical Support\ **Created:** [November 22, 2012, 12:33am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/palit-gtx-680-2-gb-or-4-gb-for-blender/557548 "2012-11-22T00:33:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![cgisoul](https://blenderartists.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/e480ec/32.png) [@cgisoul](https://blenderartists.org/u/cgisoul)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 12:33am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/palit-gtx-680-2-gb-or-4-gb-for-blender/557548/1 "2012-11-22T00:33:24Z")
Hi, I am currently looking to buy a new graphic card. I am eyeing on the Palit GTX 680, however I am not sure which one should I get, the 2 GB or 4 GB version. I don’t do gaming (very rare) and I’m not a gamer. My interest is mainly for Blender use. Does Blender benefit at all with 4 GB ? Cycles? Or should I just get the 2 GB ? I use dual monitor 24" and 22". Would love to hear your opinion. Thank you. ---
**Author:** ![Tame](https://blenderartists.org/user_avatar/blenderartists.org/tame/32/22743_2.png) [@Tame](https://blenderartists.org/u/Tame)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 12:38am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/palit-gtx-680-2-gb-or-4-gb-for-blender/557548/2 "2012-11-22T00:38:41Z")
I’d go with 4GB. Any a little more complex scene quickly starts to use alot memory. It sucks later when you run out of memory on your 2GB card and wish you had bought the 4GB version. ---
**Author:** ![NinthJake](https://blenderartists.org/user_avatar/blenderartists.org/ninthjake/32/10256_2.png) [@NinthJake](https://blenderartists.org/u/NinthJake)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 1:14am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/palit-gtx-680-2-gb-or-4-gb-for-blender/557548/3 "2012-11-22T01:14:36Z")
Unless you play games the 6xx series is pretty much useless to you, the 5xx series have better performance in cycles so I’d go with a 580 with as much memory as you can get your hands on. ---
**Author:** ![cgisoul](https://blenderartists.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/e480ec/32.png) [@cgisoul](https://blenderartists.org/u/cgisoul)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 1:16am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/palit-gtx-680-2-gb-or-4-gb-for-blender/557548/4 "2012-11-22T01:16:49Z")
> [@NinthJake](#): > > Unless you play games the 6xx series is pretty much useless to you, the 5xx series have better performance in cycles so I’d go with a 580 with as much memory as you can get your hands on. I’m currently using GTX 560 Ti 1 GB and find it slow… Why the 6xx series would be slow? Sorry hardware noob here. :spin: ---
**Author:** ![NinthJake](https://blenderartists.org/user_avatar/blenderartists.org/ninthjake/32/10256_2.png) [@NinthJake](https://blenderartists.org/u/NinthJake)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 1:31am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/palit-gtx-680-2-gb-or-4-gb-for-blender/557548/5 "2012-11-22T01:31:22Z")
Apparently Nvidia realized that their gaming cards were faster than their professional cards (quadro/tesla) in terms of GPGPU computing. This is bad for them as they want people to buy their professional cards for gpu rendering so they intentionally crippled the performance for such tasks in their gaming cards starting from the 6xx series and up. ---
**Author:** ![cgisoul](https://blenderartists.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/e480ec/32.png) [@cgisoul](https://blenderartists.org/u/cgisoul)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 1:47am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/palit-gtx-680-2-gb-or-4-gb-for-blender/557548/6 "2012-11-22T01:47:18Z")
> [@NinthJake](#): > > Apparently Nvidia realized that their gaming cards were faster than their professional cards (quadro/tesla) in terms of GPGPU computing. This is bad for them as they want people to buy their professional cards for gpu rendering so they intentionally crippled the performance for such tasks in their gaming cards starting from the 6xx series and up. Thanks NinthJake and Tame. NinthJake, I would love to read more about this. Where did you get that information? Please. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![cgisoul](https://blenderartists.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/e480ec/32.png) [@cgisoul](https://blenderartists.org/u/cgisoul)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 1:50am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/palit-gtx-680-2-gb-or-4-gb-for-blender/557548/7 "2012-11-22T01:50:28Z")
Just found this thread… > **[GTX 680 for Maya, Mudbox and 3DS - Graphics Cards](http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/376380-33-maya-mudbox)** > > "The GTX 680 in SLI is better than the Quadro 4000 for Maya". Gefore cards including the 600 series do work for Maya. Hi I wanted to set the record straight on the use of the 600 Nvidia Geforce graphi... Interesting read. ---
**Author:** ![Zalamander](https://blenderartists.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/f475e1/32.png) [@Zalamander](https://blenderartists.org/u/Zalamander)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 1:53am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/palit-gtx-680-2-gb-or-4-gb-for-blender/557548/8 "2012-11-22T01:53:57Z")
> [@NinthJake](#): > > Apparently Nvidia realized that their gaming cards were faster than their professional cards (quadro/tesla) in terms of GPGPU computing. This is bad for them as they want people to buy their professional cards for gpu rendering so they intentionally crippled the performance for such tasks in their gaming cards starting from the 6xx series and up. This is a convenient assumption to make, but you don’t have the facts to back it up. The reality is that the Kepler architecture [is different](http://www.realworldtech.com/kepler-brief/) and that it doesn’t suit itself as well to _some_ workloads as the previous generation. Also, this issue only affects Cycles GPU rendering, where the 6xx cards would be about 30% slower than the respective 5xx cards. However you can get the 680 with 4GB whereas the 580 tops out at 3GB. GPU memory is only important if you want to do GPU rendering with Cycles: if your scene does not not fit into onboard memory, you cannot render. ---
**Author:** ![cgisoul](https://blenderartists.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/e480ec/32.png) [@cgisoul](https://blenderartists.org/u/cgisoul)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 1:59am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/palit-gtx-680-2-gb-or-4-gb-for-blender/557548/9 "2012-11-22T01:59:48Z")
Well giving the fact that Blender Internal Render development has been discontinued for about 2 years and all efforts have been diverted to Cycles development, I think it makes more sense to go with the 4 GB rams then, since Cycles is GPU based. [http://www.blenderguru.com/4-easy-ways-to-speed-up-cycles/](http://www.blenderguru.com/4-easy-ways-to-speed-up-cycles/) ---
**Author:** ![NinthJake](https://blenderartists.org/user_avatar/blenderartists.org/ninthjake/32/10256_2.png) [@NinthJake](https://blenderartists.org/u/NinthJake)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 10:24am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/palit-gtx-680-2-gb-or-4-gb-for-blender/557548/10 "2012-11-22T10:24:57Z")
> [@Zalamander](#): > > This is a convenient assumption to make, but you don’t have the facts to back it up. The reality is that the Kepler architecture [is different](http://www.realworldtech.com/kepler-brief/) and that it doesn’t suit itself as well to _some_ workloads as the previous generation. Yes it is different and yes it is not suitable for GPU rendering but why did they choose this architecture if not to prevent the use of “cheap” gaming cards from being used in a professional line of work which their **much more expensive** cards are marketed to? Especially considering that the Quadro K5000, 5000, 6000 and Tesla K10 cards are all based on the Kepler architecture. I guess I don’t have any solid written proof on this but that would basically mean an Nvidia employee openly admitting that they are trying to milk you on your money… ---
**Author:** ![Writer\_s\_Block](https://blenderartists.org/user_avatar/blenderartists.org/writer_s_block/32/17762_2.png) [@Writer\_s\_Block](https://blenderartists.org/u/Writer_s_Block)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 11:13am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/palit-gtx-680-2-gb-or-4-gb-for-blender/557548/11 "2012-11-22T11:13:56Z")
> [@cgisoul](#): > > Just found this thread… > > [http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/376380-33-maya-mudbox](http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/376380-33-maya-mudbox) > > Interesting read. Agreed, a very interesting read; sadly, we don’t know if he has a vested interest in professing what he’s discovered. It would be great if someone like Tom’s Hardware was to do a comparriosn - I could get behind that /nod. ---
**Author:** ![Zalamander](https://blenderartists.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/z/f475e1/32.png) [@Zalamander](https://blenderartists.org/u/Zalamander)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2012, 3:37pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/palit-gtx-680-2-gb-or-4-gb-for-blender/557548/12 "2012-11-22T15:37:35Z")
> [@NinthJake](#): > > Yes it is different and yes it is not suitable for GPU rendering but why did they choose this architecture if not to prevent the use of “cheap” gaming cards from being used in a professional line of work which their **much more expensive** cards are marketed to? Especially considering that the Quadro K5000, 5000, 6000 and Tesla K10 cards are all based on the Kepler architecture. I’d say they used this architecture because it is much more efficient for workloads that are relevant to games. Depending on the workload, a GTX6xx can be twice as fast as a GTX5xx even in compute applications. Also, Kepler is a two-stage architecture, GK104 (Geforce 6xx, Tesla K10) and GK110. The “full” Kepler for now is only available as the expensive Tesla K20. The Tesla K10 however is essentially two GK104. If people didn’t have the same complaints with the expensive K10 as with the Geforce 6xx, then you’d have a point - but as far as I heard, they do. Nobody here has so far benchmarked either the K10 or the K20, so until that happens you can only speculate how much deliberate limits NVIDIA has put in there to not cannibalize their professional market. The GPGPU rendering market isn’t really that big. Tesla/Quadro GPUs _do_ have exclusive features that are only relevant to supercomputer-style applications, but that’s not _our_ problem. ---
**Author:** ![Fweeb](https://blenderartists.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/f/ee7513/32.png) [@Fweeb](https://blenderartists.org/u/Fweeb)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2012, 6:56am UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/palit-gtx-680-2-gb-or-4-gb-for-blender/557548/13 "2012-11-26T06:56:03Z")
Moved from “General Forums \> Blender and CG Discussions” to “Support \> Technical Support”