Video Card Upgrade - Opinions on sale price?
Stryder87
Posts: 899
in The Commons
I'm currently running an eVGA GTX660 (GDDR5-2Gb) and have the opportunity to pick up a ASUS GeForce GTX 980 Ti Strix 6GB (2816 CUDA), regular price $999.99, on sale for $679.99.
Good deal? I'm surprised they haven't droped already with the 10xx cards out. This could help me start shifting into Iray.
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
© 2026 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
If that's USD, it's a terrible price. DOn't pay more than $400 for a 980 ti.You can get this reference model from EVGA for under $350:
http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=06G-P4-3998-K1
Sorry, that's Canadian (I'm in Canada).
Still seems high, but I don't what prices are like in Canada.
Well, here's a comparison (all are eVGA cards-Cdn prices):
1080 - 2560CUDA - 8Gb GDDR5 $896.99 (regular) $849.99 (sale)
1070 - 1920CUDA - 8Gb GDDR5 $650.98 (regular) $589.99 (sale)
GTX 980Ti - 2816CUDA - 6Gb GDDR5 $999.99 (regular), $679.99 (sale)
The 980 has the best cores, but it's only 6Gb RAM. Which one would be more important for Iray, the RAM or CUDA cores? I know they don't have Iray yet for the 10xx series cards, but they eventually will, so that would be a moot point. If RAM is more important, then I would go for the 10xx series, but if cores, then maybe the 980Ti is the way to go. Gah... I just don't know. I just built a new system with 3Delight in mind... but it only would take a video card to make it Iray ready.
Neither are best...because without sufficient memory all the CUDA cores in the world won't matter. Also comparing core numbers between generations isn't very helpful...especially without hard benchmarks.
What you need to look at is whether not your typical render will fit on a 6 GB card.
If you've been able to wait this long without Iray, might as well wait some more until the Pascal cards are sorted out. Maybe take advantage of your system as it for 3DL, and wait and see what happens with Pascal.
I'm really surprised by the core difference between the three cards.
Giving it some thought, I'm kind of leaning towards just letting it slide until the 10xx series get's Iray support and see how the prices look in a few months. Maybe by then they'll have a 1080 with 12Gb!
Hi friend, was in similar situation recently, wheter to purchase 980Ti or 10X series. Going to wait on 10x series, Also awaiting 12 core cpu.
I got a Nvidia 1070 Founders edition for $380 on craigslist. I have seen Titan X go for around $600 on ebay. If you are willing to pay that much for a 980 I would suggest going with a Titan X 12gb of Video ram and more cuda power for Iray the 980 only has 6gb of video ram.
Why? Not all that different from the core changes between 970, 980, 980TI.
Being that the new 10xx series is supposed to be the 'new hottness', it surprises me that the 980Ti has quite a few more cores than the 'Flagship' 1080 series, considering that the 980Ti isn't the top card, but the Titan X is. Seeing the 1070 card having quite a bit less than half the cores of the 980Ti is surprising as well, as it's still supposed to be a better card (newer).
...exactly. This is why for myself only a Titan-X would only do (or if I hit the lotto, a Quadro M6000 that has 24 GB). If I can get at least 90% of my scenes to stay in VRAM then it's worth the price (the M6000 would pretty much ensure a 100% rate). If only 50 - 60% of scenes will render on the GPU than its' a waste of money. Unfortunately it's difficult to find new Maxwell Titan-Xs with the Pascal version having been released and I havn't won the lotto yet.
Oh, and if you can avoid Windows 10 do so, as it "reserves" a portion of VRAM which reduces the amount available for rendering. The more VRAM your card has, the larger the percentage that W10 reserves, for example, A 6 GB card loses about 22%, a 12 GB card, 33%.