Looking for advise

sheedee3D

I am planning on purchasing a GeForce card for Iray...but i havent got a clue where to start looking...

I cant afford a very expensive one like a Titan...i just need a card from which i can get reasonably fast renders of simple scenes in Iray...not very complex scenes...just simple.

 

Can any one recommend an affordable card...because like i said my budget is limited...

 

at the moment i use a Radeon card (CPU only)...and my Iray renders take on average about 30 mins te complete noise free...is there a Geforce card with which i can bring these half hour render times to at least maybe 10 min?...

 

In summary...what is the best card that i can get at an affordable price...it definitely has to be way under $US 1000!...

 

Is there still hope for low budget people to get reasonably fast noise free renders in Iray?...

 

 

 

larsmidnatt

how much you trying to spend? 

Sisca

You might want to check out GPU Boss and do some comparisons. I recently upgraded my AMD R9 270 to a GTX 960 mainly for IRay. The GTX is a slight boost performance wise in gaming and a huge boost to my rendering while still being available for under $200.

Based on their current reviews the GTX-970 is the best under $300 while the GTX-960 is the best sub- $200 card. Of course if you can spend it then you might want to look at the GTX 980 Ti which you can find for around $800. Way out of my price range since I'd have to upgrade my power supply to even think about running it.

Keep in mind that those reviews are gaming centric but they'll give you a good idea of how the various cards compare. If you're only after rendering performance then what you're mainly looking for is the most CUDA cores and memory you can get in the price range you can afford. 

sheedee3D

Again..i need to know first which card will give me the desired results that i have mentioned above...

Let me put it this way:

 

which is the cheapest GeForce card that gives reasonably fast noise free renders?...in other words...where does the price range start for a reasonably good card...?

 

i need this info first...only then i can see if i can afford it or not...

BeeMKay

DAZ Spooky recommended this card in one of the early Iray threads: http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-GDDR5-Graphics-04G-P4-3748-KR

It sells for around 120$. If you keep running your monitor with your old card, then you should be able to get most stuff rendered in the card's 4GB.

sheedee3D

Sisca said:

You might want to check out GPU Boss and do some comparisons. I recently upgraded my AMD R9 270 to a GTX 960 mainly for IRay. The GTX is a slight boost performance wise in gaming and a huge boost to my rendering while still being available for under $200.

Based on their current reviews the GTX-970 is the best under $300 while the GTX-960 is the best sub- $200 card. Of course if you can spend it then you might want to look at the GTX 980 Ti which you can find for around $800. Way out of my price range since I'd have to upgrade my power supply to even think about running it.

Keep in mind that those reviews are gaming centric but they'll give you a good idea of how the various cards compare. If you're only after rendering performance then what you're mainly looking for is the most CUDA cores and memory you can get in the price range you can afford. 

 

 

Excactly...i am only looking at rendering performance memory and cuda cores...

 

larsmidnatt

which is the cheapest GeForce card that gives reasonably fast noise free renders?...in other words...where does the price range start for a reasonably good card...?

That's a pretty open ended question. What is fast?  Some think 10 minute renders are slow.

But what Sisca said should get you started. It will depend on how much you want to spend. For some $200 is a lot of money, another may want to spend $500.

I still use my 660ti and GTX760, but they have more cuda cores than the 960, so for my purposes they are gravy. In your case though you would want more VRAM, so a more modern piece would be better.

KA1

What CPU are you using? Depending how simple your scenes are you might get away with a 2GB card if you can find one, that's fine for my simpler scenes even then I'm looking at 10minutes to 2hrs depending on the figures I use and lighting etc in iRay. Any of my scenes that go over my graphics card memory and render with CPU are anything from overnight to 3days!!

larsmidnatt

For simplicity sake, I would get a 4GB VRam card. Unless you can get a really cheapo hand-me-down card from a friend. If you need to spend money, I would do it right.

KA1

 

larsmidnatt said:

For simplicity sake, I would get a 4GB VRam card. Unless you can get a really cheapo hand-me-down card from a friend. If you need to spend money, I would do it right.

Definitely this ^ Unfortunately my upgrading to a 4GB card is a few months off, really feeling not having one now my scenes are getting a bit more ambitious.

larsmidnatt

KA1 said:

 

larsmidnatt said:

For simplicity sake, I would get a 4GB VRam card. Unless you can get a really cheapo hand-me-down card from a friend. If you need to spend money, I would do it right.

Definitely this ^ Unfortunately my upgrading to a 4GB card is a few months off, really feeling not having one now my scenes are getting a bit more ambitious.

I guess I could have been more clear. I meant for the OP. If you have a 2GB card, you learn to make due with it :) I wasnt' suggesting you needed to upgrade.

But I was not encouraging the OP to pay for a 2GB right now.