Help Deciding on Graphics Card?
deleted user
Posts: 1,204
I have a few options in front of me that I'm looking at but unsure what to get mainly because I don't know how physically large the cards are, how much power I would need, and what kind of motherboard.
Infront of me is the
Nivida Gefore 980 4G
Nvida Geforece TI 6G
Nvida Geforce gtx 1080 8G
I would LIKE the 8G but I don't really know what kind of mother board, casing, power supply and proccessor speed I would need to support, any of these... Surely I can stick any of them into my computer, if it will fit, but why have a 1080 8G if my proccessor or motherboard or power supply bottle necks? It's kind of self defeating... I need someone with some knowhow to tell me what kind power I would need for each of these. I'm not looking for overkill power. I just want the thing to be able to run smoothly. As it should. Can anyone help me puzzle together the requirments for each, with no bottle necking, and also which is most suitable for 3D rendering? I want the best speed I can within a reasonable price. Thats why I ask. If the 8G requires a thousand dollar proccessor, count me out. hehe
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double post by accident
Hi, Angel - Wings. First off, the CPU should not have an affect on the graphics card, so I wouldn't be concerned about that. Certainly your CPU will have an effect on overall system performance, but otherwise wouldn't be a critical factor in selecting your graphics card. For everything else, your best bet is to visit Nvidia's site and look up the specifications for the GPUs you are interested in. Be warned, however, that the specs there are for Nvidias reference designs, and the actual card manufacturers (Nvidia makes the GPUs, not the cards themselves) can often modify the reference designs, so verifying the specifications at that manufacturers website is only prudent. For example, the physical dimensions of the card can vary, as well as other requirements and specifications.
The physical size of the card will have a potential impact in that the available space will vary from case (enclosure) to case. You will need to take a few measurements to confirm compared to the specs. Length can often be a determining factor, but you should also look out for how many slots the card takes up - it will plug into only one, but may overlap others making them unuseable. Insofar as the power supply is concerned, the specs for each card should provide the minimum power supply requirements. My advice here would be to exceed the minimum requirements. If the requirement is for a 600 Watt PSU, i'd go for a 650 +, just to be safe. Also, not all PSUs are created equal, regardless of the wattage claimed, and you should always go for a quality PSU since it can affect all the components in your PC. You should also check the specifications for the power connectors on the card - some use more than one - and ensure your PSU provides the necessary connectors. (adapters are sometimes available if your PSU lacks sufficient connectors, but if you are purchasing a new one it makes sense to choose one that has the correct connectors out of the box).
The approach that I would recommend is this:
1. Review your candidates from a price/performance perspective and rank them accordingly.
2. Once you have a preferred GPU, look at the various cards by different manufacturers and rank them as above.
3. At this point you revisit the specifications for the card at the manufacturers site and confirm that the card will physically fit in your PC, and whether your PSU has the necessary power and connectors. If the card won't fit or the PSU is inadequate, you need to either look at purchasing replacements, or revisiting your choices.
4. Once you know which GPU by which manufacturer you want, go shopping. You may get a better deal from some retailers than others.
BTW, the 1080 is the newest Nvidia GPU and the last I heard Iray is not supported yet, although apparently in the offing. Others may be able to confirm this. Oh. and I assume that where you say Nvida Geforece TI, you are referring to the 980 Ti?
How much RAM do you have? I am one of those that need (OK, want) a computer upgrade as well but the way I see it I'd be better off buying an i7 quad core computer and outfitting it with 128GB DDR4 RAM and in the meantime buying a nVidia 970 4GB video card (which are still a hefty $300 approximately) to have a capable computer that's upgradable cheaply as possibly. That would cost me about the same or les than the expensive nVidia cards. Then as new generations of nVidia or maybe better video card tech became availble I could add in a card.
Seeing as I have only a 5 year dual core laptop with build-in graphics though that makes sense for me. You probably already have a PC that is nearly as good as the above.
128GB DR4 RAM in it's most affordable form would be 8 slots x 16GB = about $525 dollars on Amazon. The older styl memory would be maybe a little cheaper (you never know as some dealers take advantage of product phase outs to overcharge worried customers).
If you're planning on more than a couple of cards, ideally you need more than 4 cores/8 threads.
128gb of RAM? What do you do with your rig?
That's overkill for any consumer. I upgraded to 32gb with DAZ Studio and HD models and haven't run out of RAM yet.
Well just what you all do but for instance I tried to do a render still scene at 4K in iRay with:
1. Clothed Genesis 3 Male
2. Clothed Genesis 3 Female
3. Carnival Ferris Wheel
4. Carnival Big Top
5. Carnival Carousel
6. Toonimal Goldfish in Bowl
7. Carnival Grounds
8. 2K HRDI Sky
but with 16GB RAM and 12GB available Windows 10 will shut down DAZ Studio once it uses in above about 12GB RAM while rendering (about 96% of RAM)
So then if I want to do scenes that use Carnival or Howie Farkes environments plus say, 6 Genesis 3 characters in the scene at one time I figure that 128 GB is a big buffer that can along that.
Plus, I would like to do Cararra animation renders and it needs enough horsepower to allow my browser & eMail to continue running and be usable, please start an instance or Unity, Blender, Poser, or a 2nd instance of DAZ Studio (though I'm not sure if DAZ Studio allows that) while a render or animation is being created. I would set the affinity of the rendering/animating program to by 1/2 the available cores.
However, I've been search Amazon since I wrote that and it appears best I can do at consumer level is a computer with Generation 6 Intel CPU with 64GB DDR4 RAM. Definitely want a i5 or i7 and for either of those quad core. Looks like bare bones without nVidia or ATI video card such a setup will cost about $500 - $600.
Ideally I'd buy a ready-build cheaper computer that allow me to upgrade RAM to 64GB later but I haven't found one yet that does.
Thanks for the replys... Much appreciated.
So essentually this is what I'm looking at... Though I'm not sure on the casing how big it is as this is an online purchace. I'll need to find a large case... If anyone can point me in the right direction. Also I don't know my mother boards for squat... All I know is that I heard 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI has a lot more supporting features. I want to make sure it has cross fireing about the case large enough that I can put a 1080 in there next year. By then iRay should be able to support the 1080. I'm going to with the Ti 6G. Not only is the 1080 unsupported. It's launching price is one of its biggest complaints. I would expect it to drop by 100 or 200.00 by next year as well. It would be nice to have 14 gigs of video ram. But $699.99 on launch is a little far fetched for the bragging rights of saying I got the latest gear. If I'm going to spend that kind of money I may as well put an extra 200.00 into it and buy (x2) 1070 8G which is something I thought about doing but the finl price was a little more then I can afford. hehe. Does anyone see anything incompatable here? I'm good at using using computers, not building them. hehe.
Note: I'm not super rich. $1600.00 is about the most I can spend for a tower. This is costing me something like $1750 with free shipping. I know it would be cheaper to build it myself but I'm not trained in that area... Knowing how to drive a car is one thing... knowing how to replace the alternator is another. hehe...
Oh another big question.. Is it even worth it to upgrage. What kind of performace enhacment should I expect from my current tower?
Right now here are the specs of my current PC.. Thats like... All I can find on it... It was brought at bestbuy in 2009 Luckly I wasnt the one who got suckered into buying it for 1300.00... My mom got played really hard cause even back then this PC was nothing short of typical... She gave it to me for free though, so I cant complain.
AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 820 Processor 2.8Ghz
8 Gigs RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 9100
And I keep double posting because my pc is such a hunk of junk... Sorry lol
Well a 2009 PC has to be worth upgrading since you are doing 3D rendering as 2009 preceeds even the beginning of the intel i3, i5, i7 line of CPUs. I have a 2010 2nd Generation i5 that is dual core that I've added RAM too so that it can hold it's own for simple iRay renders but even I'm needing to upgrade to doing anything more complex.
You could save a lot by shopping around and building it yourself but have cut-up my hands in the past doing that myself I can understand why you would skip that part.
The specs of your PC are pretty much the starting specs of the PC I want to build, although I might go for an i5 quad core instead of an i7 quad core to save about $125.
I may buy a ready-made computer and just add RAM but it is difficult to find a Desktop from the big manufacturers that is a good price and upgradable to 64GB RAM:
https://smile.amazon.com/Acer-Predator-AG3-710-UR54-Desktop-Windows/dp/B016Z1I77A/
The one I linked to is, however it has a very silly styled case but if the computer is located so that the case isn't a centerpiece that it would do fine. It doesn't do SLI but for my I'd likely never be able to afford SLI, or rather I'd have other priorities.
It's pretty good, and since you could get it for about $1100 savings over (there is a used one for sale for $603 now) what you are considering to have built it SLI is not in your interests consider it.
I'm not acutally going to buy a new desktop til winter or maybe even next summer but I'm investigating their capabilities and prices now as I will self-build or buy something like the Predator for less that $1000 when I do. It's so frustrating that the $350 ASUS desktops have everything I'd want except the ability to upgrade RAM to 64 or more DDR4 RAM.
I run Daz Studio 4.9 on my secondary computer, which is a Core 2 Duo with 16 GB RAM on Win 10 Home with a 4 GB GTX 960, and have not experienced any significant problems with large scenes. Ican't run the Iray preview, but I certainly don't have problems moving items around or having the program crash. Still, if you want that much memory and can afford it, I say go for it!
I agree with nonesuch00. I have 32GB RAM and whenever I try to create complex scenery (with more than 3 Characters) with DAZ Studio I run into that "not enough RAM" Error.
Their isn`t a to much RAM... sooner or later (most of the time sooner) you find out that you have to less RAM. Same with Graphic Cards; a Graphic Card can`t have to much RAM but always have to less.
Ok so the final upgrade. I'm not trying to get a godly power house. Just something stable, and strong. This is what I ended up buying I hope I made the right choices.
---
INTEL i-7 6-Core 5820k 3.6 GHZ 2011 Haswell
(ZeroTherm ZT100 Advanced Thermal Grease Compound)
Copper Plate Heavy Duty Fan
M.BOARD ASUS X99-A
32Gigs RAM 2133Hz (x4 Memory Heat Spreaders)
2TB TOSHIBA 7200 RPM
GEFORCE GTX 1070 8GB - I was going to get the 1080 but it's launch price is a little much. I'll wait until I can buy 2 for $800.00
Antec Cooling Package (2x) 120mm Case Fans)
ANTEC VSK4000 ATX case
CORSAIR 750W SLI READY Power Supply
WINDOWS 10 PRO 64 bit
I guess that solves that question... Nobodys saying I need to fix anything. =]
I probably would have gone with an i5 to trim a few bucks off but it's not like having a better cpu is a bad thing. I would have suggested pretty much the changes to the specs of the original that are in your final list. Fancy case and motherboard are really not necessary for what you will likely be doing. Motherboard features like being able to use 6 drives are not very useful if you only need one, etc.
About the only change I would have suggested would be more storage space, but I'm a terrible pack rat. An external USB 3 drive for backups would probably be a good thing but you can add that at any time.
I have a Fresh 2T External and an older 1T but its full with my Dragon Ball Z, Avatar and a few other choice Anime's Collections and music ^.^
Yeah Anime is one of the kind of things that I "pack" though I lean more to Bleach and One Piece :-)
If you're thinking of using more than one GPU, say you buy the 980TI now and add the 1070 when it's supported. Or any two GPUs
Look at the width of the cards. Most makes of Nvidia cards will take up two slots, but some makes will take more and fitting two could cause overheating problems.
The MSI cards are quite neat, with good cooling. Whereas some other makes are quite fat.