Gigabyte, EVGA, MSI What is best?
Szark
Posts: 10,634
Geforce, Gigabyte, EVGA, MSI What is best?
Few months back I got help from here regarding what PSU to buy before getting new GC for Iray. Now I am looking to buy a GTX 970 but what I don't know is what manufacturer is best. I know Nvidia's own would be best but you try and find them over here in the UK. I can't, doesn't mean that they don't though. ;)
My budget is around £200. I can go a little more if needed.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
here is what Amazon UK throws up https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias=computers&field-keywords=NVIDIA+GTX+970
Hi Pete
All those letters and numbers...
nVidia don't do any manufacturing themselves they farm it out, and to confuse things further the company that does it for them also have their own cards under the Sapphire name.
the top Gigabyte is the G1 Gaming
the top ASUS is the Strix
the top EVGA is the FTW
EVGA has the best reviews under the FTW brandname and the best cooling (called AVX 2)
One step down from those:
EVGA - SuperClocked (SC) also has good reviews, especially if they have the AVX 2 cooling.
Gigabyte - OC (OverClocked) with 'Windforce' cooling
You might also find an EVGA Super-SuperClocked (SSC), at this point I think they realised the names were getting silly!
The last couple of cards I bought, I went for a Gigabyte OC with Windforce because I found a particularly good price.
But all of these cards and manufacturers are reputable.
Try going to Scan directly, it's cheaper than via Amazon, I've bought several things from them over the years:
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-evga-geforce-gtx-970-ftwplus-gaming-acx-20plus-pcie-30-7010mhz-gddr5-gpu-1216mhz-boost-1367mhz-c
From a reliability standpoint, I have had good results with ASUS and Gigabyte motherboards and video cards.
I find MSI products to be less reliable. I have had failures with their motherboards and video cards. My last experience with MSI was 10 years ago, so they may have improved.
To me, reliability is most important. I find most performance measurements across the same chipsets to be "splitting hairs."
prixat comes to the rescue again, thanks for that. It's a bloody mine field out there, Why can't people just make one 4 GB card, one 8 GB and so on.
Yeah reliability is key for em too
I'm a bit old-school when it comes to electronics of any kind. All these manufacturers build comperable products based on a standard initial design, with proprietary tweaks. So I cross-compare the specifications, prices - and warranty period. In my book, a 5-year warranty for $100 more beats out a 3-year warranty.
Sadly, "Best Reviews" really don't mean anything anymore. They're not verifiable or consistent. You even need to ask yourself what you mean by "best".
I can find a large number of reviews that think the FTW versions are the worst cards ever.
For a given chip, all the vendors are using the same design. Specific ram may vary a bit, but not likely enough to matter. The cooling system/arrangement may be different, but again perhaps not enough to matter under actual use. Every vendor will have seemingly the same card with a 2 fan version and a 3 fan version. In the end, fo Iray, it won't matter. The driver will run the frequency up until it reaches the total power, temperature, reliability voltage, operating voltage, or the GPU Utilization limit. My MSI GTX980TI is one of the OC versions and has a 1190MHz boost frequency, yet in Iray it consistently runs up to ~1320 where is becomes thermally limited at 80C, regardless of the fan profile. My EVGA GTX780 operated the same.
Bottom line, all of the cards are about the same, the "OC" versions have chips that test a little better in QA. All of the vendors have about the same failure rates, not surprising since they don't stray too much from the reference design. Any significant differences are primarily fanboy hype, marketing or both.
Ok can we break down the jargon a bit further. What is OC and FTW?
On the subject of reviews, isn't there also an issue that many of them are geared towards gaming? I haven't gone shopping for a new card for a while (although I think I might need to before too long), but I don't remember seeing any reviews mention pure 3D rendering performance. For the card specs I've browsed since Iray came out, I've sometimes had to hunt a bit for the relevant numbers.
Its not even jargon, Szark. I's call it more of marketing trying to be cool. Anyway, OC stands for overclocked - they've ramped up the GPU frequency somewhat from stock on those cards. FTW is pretty common leet - "For the Win" - in gamer parlance. Apparently these cards win games all by themselves. It is always important to keep in mind that the higher-end graphics cards are invariably targeting gamers so expect a lot of marketing hype along those lines. Likewise you need to filter a lot of reviews due to a gaming-centric tendency. Frames per second (fps) at high settings is king in that retail space.
I haven't looked in the past year - got my 980 TI just about a year ago - but it's probably still the same marketing speak. You'll find <card number>, <card number>OC, and <card number>SC. OC is running the clock rates for both the GPU core and memory around 5 to 8% higher than the reference; SC (Super Clock) may be between 8 and 12% faster. But virtually all the reviewws and ratings will be for gaming, covering FPS (frames per second), not raw rendering speed as such.
All the cards will run up to the thermal design limit, which tends to be about 83 to 85 degrees C. For gaming this is not an issue because the GPU runs in spurts; for rendering, OTOH, you'll hit that limit and stay there for a long time. I've done simple scenes with low lights and reflectivty that drive the card to full speed and gpu utilization and keep it there for 40 or 50 minutes. The downside of running at thermal limit is that the GPU gets cut back in speed, so instead of 97% utilization on my 980TI I'd see it drop as low as 88% utilization.
So - from this side of the pond - 1) Pick the vendor with the best return policy and price; 2) pick the card with the longest manufacturer warranty; 3) use the included utility to create a custom fan profile. I've got my fans running at 50% when idle and peaking at 77% when the GPU hits 97% utilization - and the temp never gets above 70 degrees C. And, according to gpu-z, I'm stuck at 97% utilization because I'm running stock voltage and haven't tweaked it. With the case 4 feet from my chair the fans are inaudable.
Wow a minefield indeed but at least have a path to follow thanks to all your help. namffuak thanks for that extra info, big help.
SixDs LOL the win game themselves. No wonder I didn't know what FTW was or even had a close guess, not a gamer here and never will be. OC thought it wuld be what it stands for.
Here's the EVGA explanation for the 3 levels of card they make:
http://www.evga.com/support/faq/afmviewfaq.aspx?faqid=59163
The one I linked to is an FTW+, sort of the final version as they move on to the 1000 series. They seem to have sorted out the coil whine from earlier versions, and its particularly quite as the fans stay off unless it goes over 60C.
Have you got a particular reason why you can't get the 1060 with 6GB for the same price and wait for the CUDA support?
I like the factory tested bit prixat. Ok now we are getting close.
like this one EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 I take it DS/Iray doesn't support the 1060 yet. I think I have seen threads about this a month or so ago. Old age, man I hate it. :)
Ok it's the Pascal affair...got it now. Still reading to see if we have news about updates coming in the immediate future (see I didn't use the"s" word)
@namffuak "The downside of running at thermal limit is that the GPU gets cut back in speed, so instead of 97% utilization on my 980TI I'd see it drop as low as 88% utilization"
That hasn't been the case with my 980TI. The clock speed ramps up until the thermal limit (80C) is reached, then stay's there for the duration of the render. My renders generally use the default 2 hour duration and typically reach convergence before that. Nvidia designs the cards to operate at the design / thermal limit. They have even cautioned that Iray performance my suffer if the card temps are too low.
3-year warranty should be OK for mother boards and graphics cards because of obsolecence. There will always be something newer and better in 3 years, and the our software will always require and upgrade.
When will IRay be supported on Pascal? Back in May, I heard August.
Some of us run systems until the bearings in the fans give out. :-)
As for the IRay support - probably not before mid-October at the earliest, and that will quite probably be a public beta. I think Nvidia just release the SDK for third-party use and IRay itself is still not quite ready for the new cards. And, once both the SDK and the new IRay are out DAZ will need to update Studio and then verify that nothing currently working breaks.
It's a difficult decision, but that comparison is now between the best 970 (at the best price it's ever been) against an average 1060.
My guess is, the CUDA performance, whenever it comes, will be inferior!
Which makes the 970 more attractive...
...but that extra memory, though?
Yeah now I have to make a choice whether to wait or to dive in and get a 970. I don't know if I can afford to wait to be honest. Hummm wanders off mumbling
Most reviews are about gaming, so it can be hard to find the best card - which is very much subject to opinion anyway - for IRAY.
I presume you are only interested in IRAY; sites such as AnAndTech usually offer compute and rendering results when they review cards; obviously as 10 series cards don't yet support rendering there are no figures available.
Gaming results might give one an idea of render performance for comparrison purposes, but only an idea.
I would definitely concur on going to Scan; it would certainly be worth considering them.
I prefer the Strix, because they are completely silent when not in use, and very quiet even when rendering. But Asus, Gigabyte and EVGA all offer excellent products.
Check out reviews on such sites as:
http://hexus.net/
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/
http://www.anandtech.com/
There are some other good ones for sure, but those I only usually check out when the three above don't offer what I'm looking for, or seem to be in disagreement.
Yeah I am not a gamer in the common sense so it is only for Iray rendering.
I have known of Scan for a while so I am glad they are good to deal with unlike Novatech which left me with trust issues.
Thanks for the links. I will read up tonight but it does look like I will be leaning toward the 970. And hopefully a month after getting that I can grab another 970.
I really appreciate the help folks...been a massive help to me.
I've used ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI motherboards
My personal ranking would be ASUS at the top with Gigabyte not far behind, both boards were very good and never failed on me (I had them until I upgraded past their capabilities)
MSI doesn't even rank with me as every board I've got made by them has failed and I've had to replace it.
As for video cards, I've used zotac (Probably my favorate brand) but my current card is EVGA which is also doing very well for me.
Mid-October!!!!! Well, hopefully in time for the Black Friday sales.
Well I am still sitting on the fence on this one...but thanks to you all I am now armed with info.
Since I am waiting for the 1000 series support proper I am going to upgrade my main monitor GC so obviously no need for cuda but I would still like to stick with Nvidia. I am looking for a small 4GB as I am only running a GT610 and I am upgrading to Photoshop 64 bit next week and need the extra vram now.
Please any good recommendations would be a great help to speand my hard earned money more wisely. UK based sales too. I have the money now to buy now too.
evga out of that bunch
Building a computer for rending is a balancing act Money verses power/speed.
Daz 3d 4.9.3 now supports Iray cool but $450.00 or more for a 1070 with 8 g V ram might be too much for one.
One needs a case that will hold a big card.. One needs a power supply 850 watts or better. One needs a mother board that supports the newer cards.
One needs ram 16 gig duel Chanel (AMD) or Quad Chan.(Intel)
One needs a multi core cpu at least 4.. 8 cores are better!(my 8 core loafs along at half usage during render but i reed books while rendering. so extra head space is nice.
One needs at least 2 hard drives in raid ssd is best
Software drivers!! Software to re-curve the thermal throttle or best thing water cool your video card and the cpu.
So how fast do you want to render a big scene? Balanced against how much money do you want to $ spend $???
LOL teach me to just add to one of my threads.
Sorry guys I am past this now I am now looking for a cheap monitor GC while I wait on 1000 series support.
1000 seris support for what? Iray in DS has support for Pascal cards in the latest release.