Graphic Cards Again...

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Hirazi Blue
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Graphic Cards Again...

Post by Hirazi Blue » 03 Nov 2015, 16:01

The never-ending story: I am planning to buy a new computer very soon and I haven't got a clue what kind of graphic card I should aim for. The only thing I do know is that my budget is rather limited, so I guess anything more expensive than, let's say, a NVIDIA Quadro K2200 (@ € 488,90) would be out of the question. It should work with Softimage 2015 and Maya 2016. I am not doing any rendering on the GPU, as I don't own a Redshift license, but using CUDA on 3D Coat makes me opt for a card from NVIDIA, I guess.
Any ideas/suggestions are more than welcome...
:-ss
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BenR
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Re: Graphic Cards Again...

Post by BenR » 03 Nov 2015, 18:00

Are you really thinking Quadro rather than Geforce? If so, why?
Ben

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Hirazi Blue
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Re: Graphic Cards Again...

Post by Hirazi Blue » 03 Nov 2015, 18:10

BenR wrote:Are you really thinking Quadro rather than Geforce? If so, why?
Ben
No, although I have considered this specific Quadro,
I mention it more as an indication of the maximum I was planning to spend on a graphic card...
My current workstation is equipped with a Quadro 4000,
but those were the days I had way more money to burn than I have nowadays...
=((
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BenR
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Re: Graphic Cards Again...

Post by BenR » 03 Nov 2015, 18:20

Well Geforce will give you far more "bang for the euro". I haven't run into any situations with DCC's that really needed the Quadro.

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Re: Graphic Cards Again...

Post by bb3d » 03 Nov 2015, 19:26

The best Geforce within this price range would be the GTX 970, but this is the one with the "memory allocation cheat" which makes the upper 512 MB of the 4GB more or less unusable.

You may think about getting a GTX 780 6GB instead which provides the same performance level, but with 6GB VRAM. It will be hard to get a new one, but used ones are being sold on Ebay for around 300€.
I have the Asus STRIX 780 6GB in my main workstation and I am very satisfied with it. Very powerful, but silent.

Or if you want to save money, the GTX 960 could be sufficient as a display card. Still good performance, full 4GB VRAM and available for around 250€.

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Hirazi Blue
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Re: Graphic Cards Again...

Post by Hirazi Blue » 03 Nov 2015, 19:34

Something I forgot to mention: my current video card, the Quadro 4000, offers two DisplayPort connections, which I bought the appropriate monitors for (for a dual monitor setup), so two DisplayPort connections would seem a must too...

edit: this was one of the reasons the Quadro K2200 originally appealed to me.
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mc_axe
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Re: Graphic Cards Again...

Post by mc_axe » 03 Nov 2015, 19:54

You can also consider a used gtx 980 ti from ebay or smthing, mainly because of almost 3000 cuda cores

But if you want to avoid risks just get a new card

gtx 980 is also within the price range i think

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Re: Graphic Cards Again...

Post by bb3d » 03 Nov 2015, 21:40

Hirazi Blue wrote:Something I forgot to mention: my current video card, the Quadro 4000, offers two DisplayPort connections, which I bought the appropriate monitors for (for a dual monitor setup), so two DisplayPort connections would seem a must too...

edit: this was one of the reasons the Quadro K2200 originally appealed to me.
That would exclude the GTX 780, but all GTX 9x0 cards have 3x Displayport 1.2.

The K2200 has very similar specs to the GTX 750 ti, a 130€ entry level card :-j

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Hirazi Blue
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Re: Graphic Cards Again...

Post by Hirazi Blue » 04 Nov 2015, 10:45

So GTX 980 would be preferable?
I found this system on a German website at a slightly higher price than I originally envisioned, (which was about €1500 total):
Acer Predator G3-605 DT.SQYEG.407.
The description is in German, but the Tech Specs should be readable to anyone knowing what to look for (not me, sadly). ~x(

At the same webshop systems with the GTX 970 are slightly more affordable/would fit my original price range better. Is the GTX 980 worth it to invest the extra cash in for Softimage 2015 and Maya 2016?
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mc_axe
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Re: Graphic Cards Again...

Post by mc_axe » 04 Nov 2015, 16:25

970 has 1664cudas vs 2048 in 980. You can see a basic comparison of 'unknown measures' :P here. But you get a picture.

Personally i don't see much of a difference you can go for 970

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Hirazi Blue
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Re: Graphic Cards Again...

Post by Hirazi Blue » 04 Nov 2015, 16:59

And both the GTX 970 and GTX 980 run Softimage 2015 (and Maya 2016) smoothly under Windows 10? :-\
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Re: Graphic Cards Again...

Post by Hirazi Blue » 05 Nov 2015, 11:14

After someone on the German Forum pointed out that the 8GB RAM in the system I mentioned in my earlier post probably isn't enough, I found myself a new candidate, with 16GB RAM and a GTX 970: Komplett PC Hero7-970 i7 4790K/16GB/2TB/120GB/GTX970, which offers the following specs:
Prozessor: Intel i7 4790K @ 4x 4,0GHz
Mainboard: ASUS ROG Maximus VII Hero Gaming MB
Speicher: 16GB DDR3-1600 (2x8GB)
Kühler: EKL Alpenföhn Brocken 2
Laufwerk: DVD Brenner
SSD: 120GB Samsung SSD 850 EVO
Festplatte: 2TB 7200U/Min
Grafik: Geforce GTX970 4GB
Netzteil: 600W
Gehäuse: Corsair Carbide 300R
BxHxT: 210x450x548mm
So what do you think? :-?
Did I already mention, I haven't got a clue where hardware is concerned?
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Re: Graphic Cards Again...

Post by mc_axe » 05 Nov 2015, 17:58

Much better now 4Ghz on 8 processes is nice, 2x8gb ram (check if that duo is dual channel) , and the gtx 970 of course, all looks good, i have almost same setup with an old gpu .

Now about compatibility i don't rly know. but*

Many users alrdy stated that soft runs perfectly on win 10 .
And Soft viewport is just basic open gl stuff (Like many popular games out there).

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Re: Graphic Cards Again...

Post by bb3d » 05 Nov 2015, 20:26

@Hirazi Blue:
That setup looks quite solid and the GTX 970 will provide good performance as long as the crippled VRAM is not an issue for you.

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Re: Graphic Cards Again...

Post by Hirazi Blue » 06 Nov 2015, 10:05

bb3d wrote:as long as the crippled VRAM is not an issue for you.
I assume this would only be a problem in scenes "heavier" than I am ever going to produce, so I guess this wouldn't bug me much. And I am not much of a gamer these days so that shouldn't be a real problem either (although I was eyeing Fallout 4, but its specs would still fit my new machine).

Thank you, guys, for boosting my confidence in such a puzzling quest as buying new hardware is to me... :x :-bd

The days of NVIDIA crippling Geforces intentionally in OpenGL performance, as rumoured some years ago, are over?
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julius
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Re: Graphic Cards Again...

Post by julius » 06 Nov 2015, 10:45

I have two gtx 970 coupled with redshift.

I have big performances, no problem at all.

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