*UPDATED with new article - Graphics card upgrade article for DS, Poser, Lux etc
Jim_1831252
Posts: 728
So my aging HD 5770 has started to show signs it wants to retire. In my usual way I ended up spending many, many hours researching many aspects of what graphics cards are best for what programs. Daz Studio and Poser are the easiest. If you just want something to run the program, then just about any card on the shelf will do. Getting better performance is obviously more expensive. Getting good performance in Octane and LuxRender is a whole other game.
With many hours of research under the belt I decided to write an article about upgrading graphics cards. Of course as I began to write more and more questions kept coming up and I'd need to go back into researching. In the end I think I've ended up with a helpful article. I won't tell you what card you NEED to buy (that would just be silly and misleading), but I do attempt to analyse and make viable recommendations.
I still haven't decided which card to get - was having too much fun.
As a LuxRender use, who likes to dabble in SLG, I'm considering a Radeon HD 7970, but considering funds are tight and I want to do my whole system at some point. A HD 7850 might be the way to go... Bha!
So, what's covered in the article?
DAZ Studio
Poser
Professional/workstation graphics cards
CUDA vs OpenCL
Octane
LuxRender
Benchmarking with LuxMark
UPDATE
A few things have cropped up since I wrote the above article, and I thought I'd write a little supplemental. These things always end up chewing up a lot more time than I originally intend, but I aim for accuracy :D
The new article takes an indepth look at some new developments going on with the DAZ Studio Beta (pointed out by Takeo.Kensei - thanks), and Display Optimization preferences (which I was totally ignorant to until tinkering around the other day).
I also touch on AMD's OpenCL Kernal/compile issue, though there is nothing about this in the article that isn't mentioned here - yep, when I say touch on, that's exactly what I mean ;)
Thanks to everyone that has stopped by my blog and read an article or two. Double thanks to those that leave me feedback and thoughts both here and on the blog.
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Comments
Excellent article! I switched to AMD FirePro graphics and really enjoy the GL stability and consiztancy. My render systems run for weeks w/o rebootss.
Thanks. FirePro is pretty high up there on what I'd like to grab. Ideally I'd have one meaty Radeon HD for LuxRender and a FirePro for messing about in openGL heavy programs. I was particularly impressed with their performance in LightWave. Would be good to see some bench marks for DS and Poser, but I guess that just goes to show the state of the game - DS and Poser are largely irrelevant in the industry, at least as far as heavy work loads go.
I don't know what's the plans for poser ans DS but they both implemented OpenSubdiv and this could be a first step in better real time visualisation. And when it comes that will be an other story. I've seen the latest DS beta has some progress on opensubdiv implementation but we don't really know what is worked
It may be a good thing to know what's planned and eventually on which hardware before buying a new GC
For the record I still use an old ATI X800 XL on my desktop computer and I also have a notebook with a Quadro 200M and there is no noticeable difference in DS till the latest stable version. I should eventually test the new openGL preview available on the beta on my notebook because I've seen DS viewport slowing down a bit on my Desktop PC with that
You will get more bang for your buck if you go with gamming cards instead of the FirePro series. Also, if the card does not come with a decent cooler on it I would highly recommend the Artic Cooling series of coolers for your card. PowerColor ATI cards usally come with ArticCooling coolers on them.
ps, still running a Radeon x1950 512 Pro on my rendering machine.
@ Takeo: what sort of scenes are you working on when you notice slow down? I didn't notice much difference between using CC and opensub, so I don't really know if DS's implementation is meant to bring all the benefits, or if it's still to come. Honestly, I'm not too worried about where DS is going in terms of graphics card selection. I don't really want to sit on my hands for months or years. I know that whatever I get will be above and beyond what I need for this program. If I did get a pro card it wouldn't be for other programs.
@ Matty: I'm well aware that consumer cards generally give you more bang for buck, but like I said, after seeing performance in LightWave, which I use quite a lot it is worth considering.
Sorry for the late reply.
Juste normal scenes but with the latest beta and their new real time preview. The preview lightning is a bit better so it will content some users I guess. As for the future, with opensubdiv, if you have a look at this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFZazwvYc5o I doubt I can do what they do in it with my very old low spec card.
No worries about the reply. I've been on holiday, so only just getting back to the forum now (not that I'd hold it against you anyway). I haven't been keeping up with the beta developments, but have had a good read over since you bought this info to light. I will be endeavoring to give the beta a try. I'm sure my current card will be adequate for most scenes I have created up to this point. It seems the new shader improvements can be turned on and off if the updates get a bit heavy on the hardware.
There is no doubt that opensubdiv is capable of great things, but I'm just wondering how much of this stuff will be implemented into DS, and over what sort of time frame. Might be that DAZ never see fit to fully implement all of the opensubdiv goodies, particularly in terms of GPU acceleration.
DAZ also implemented PTEX but it's not much used yet. I guess it's because it's a bit new and people don't really know how to work with it nor have the tools
I thought about beginning something but didn't have time yet
I tested the beta on my notebook and the result with my Quadro is the same : the UI is a bit slower like with my old X800XL
There is one thing about Pro Softwares and OpenGL to know : not all Softwares have a contract with the GC vendors to get optimized drivers. So even with a Pro card, you may end up with standard consumer card performance. So for DS and Poser I'd rather recommend Gaming Cards as they have more performance since you get better hardware for the same price or less
As for Ptex/Opensubdiv, we shall see in the future how far they go. We can just hope for something great
You won't be able to use Octane with an ATI/AMD card. You absolutely need a Nvidia card because Octane Render relies on CUDA.
On the other hand, you will be able to use Lux Render with an Nvidia card ( at least the GPU rendering part of it since the CPU part doesn't need any video card to work ).
The most important thing is memory AND gpu family for Octane. All your textures/geometry have to be loaded in memory to work so you'll need plenty of it.
All the images I've done were made with a 1.2GB card but it was a real pain to do with such a low amount of memory.
I'm using a 4GB card now and things are a lot easier.
With older Fermi cards ( GTX 400/500 ), you are limited to 64 8bits RGB images and 32 8bits Greyscale images. With diffuse, specular, bump and normal maps, the number of maps used can easily go high. Multiply that by the number of maps needed to cover one figure like Genesis ( at least five for face, body, limbs, eyes and mouth ) and you already have twenty used for a single figure.
You can always use Texture Atlas to reorganize your maps and UVs on a single texture though ( tested and perfectly working ) to allow more room for extra stuff to be added.
Kepler GPUs ( GTX 600/700 ) allow 144 8bits RGB images and at least 64 8bits Greyscale images ( used to load images like bump or specularity maps ).
As far as I am aware, the next update of Studio implements a better 3D display which benefits from stronger video cards.
Hope this helps.
Some Octane render on my gallery here:
http://joelegecko.deviantart.com/
@Takeo: not sure if PTEX will put any greater load on GPU (don't know much about that side of it), but it is a neat feature. You are right on the money when it comes to drivers being optimised for certain programs. I think DAZ has a lot of growing before it attracts that sort of attention.
@joelegecko: not sure who you're writing for there. We've covered the whole CUDA vs OpenCL thing. One thing you might not be aware of is that you will get a lot better OpenCL performance from ATI than NVIDIA. *Edit: covered in the article, not so much in this thread. Updated the original post to clarify.
Very good article, one thing worth of mention is the amount of memory in the card. There is a bug in the OpenCL compiler of the catalyst driver that make the kernels too big (using much more memory than nVidia compiler). The people at AMD is working in a solution, but it's taking some time.
More information (in this case for blender cycles):
http://devgurus.amd.com/thread/160162
As allways, sorry for my poor english...
Thanks agdep. I did stumble across that in my journey but the problem was beyond my understanding. I could probably have mentioned it, but not really knowing what it was it seemed better to leave it alone. You've just made it small enough for me to wrap my mind around :D This thread is interesting and seems to be where most of the action is taking place - well hasn't been updated for about 20 days, but it seems AMD is quite keen to get this resolved http://devgurus.amd.com/message/1285984#1285984
Edit: and don't worry about your English. It is very good.