Need video card .. budget arena. advice needed
daveso
Posts: 6,440
not sure this is the correct forum for these questions, but it seems people of broad hardware knowledge are here.
I currently have a Dell system which has Intel HD 4600 graphics, 16gig ram, and an Intel i7 4790 quad core 3.60ghz processor.
I want to buy a graphics card to replace the onboard graphics ... anything benchmarks fast than the 4600 ... $$$$ is a severe limiting factor.
Right now I am looking at an MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4Gb GDDR which sells for $140. It has CUDA scores of 768, which are pretty low I think, but for $50-60 more I can get a GTX 1060 3GB with CUDA 1152. If I go for high CUDA scores the cost pbecomes prohibitive.
I'm not sure the price differential is worth it. The 1060 also demands more power, so I would need to buy a power supply as well.
Seconday question, will I see much performance increase using a a 1050ti compared to 4600 when rendering, especially with iray ... if not, there is not much sence even buying the new card.
Also, I run iray now, but i have to assume its all CPU rendering?
What do you guys think?
Are there any graphic benchmarks for Poser, DAZ Studio around?
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Comments
I think having more video RAM is more important, than only slightly more CUDA cores.
I do not know, how complex scenes, you wish to render in iray. I have made a test on my graphic card GTX 1080 with 8 GB of VRAM
and it fits 7 Genesis 3 females with clothes and hair. Adding 8th Genesis 3, cause Daz Studio to switch to CPU only mode.
I have even older processor in my computer (Intel i7-3770K quad core 3.5 GHz) than yours.
Before I have had graphic card with 2 GB of VRAM and iray renders took many hours to complete.
Now I am enjoying iray render times in minutes or slightly over one hour on very complex scenes.
Below is an example iray render with 7 Genesis 3 females, I made.
Rendering Time: 37 minutes 50.3 seconds, 1928 iterations, 256.123s init, 1938.848s render
Also look at the other thread with benchmarks:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/53771/iray-starter-scene-post-your-benchmarks#latest
Just something to think about: 768 Cuda stream processors, is almost like having 12 core CPU (roughly, because most of the recent processors are 64 bits).
1152 Cuda stream processors is equivalent to 18 cores. Of course, these processors on the graphic card are much slower, than Intel i7.
* 1060 3GB is not worth buying. CUDA core doesnt matter if your scene needs 3GB++ VRAM, Iray will switch to CPU rendering.
I think 1050ti 4GB is a better choice.
* I can say that the difference between 1050ti and intel HD 4600 is day and night. You can easily google 1050ti vs intel HD 4600 comparison chart.
And since you use CPU rendering for Iray, I'm pretty sure that intel HD 4600 does no help at all.
Well, If I were you, (1050ti 4GB or 1060 6GB) or saving more. No 1060 3GB!
I've been looking at upgrading on the cheap too, and came across this article, which I thought was well written and timely: http://www.144hzmonitors.com/best-graphics-card/
They list the 1050ti as the best budget card. They can be had brand new for about $150 on Amazon. Other places are slightly more. Open box items at Amazon are about $120. I'm planning on using a gift card from Christmas + some payday $$$ this week to get one, plus a small memory (ram) upgrade to max out my "good enough" motherboard.
I've currently got a 2GB 750Ti that's also "good enough" to do Iray but I'm quickly outgrowing it. I need something to get me through this year till I build a monster computer next year for 3D animation. I've got plenty of learning and other things to do before that happens.
MSI 1050ti for $139 at Newegg
I'm hesitant to buy anything from MSI. I work in IT and over the years have seen quite a few failures with their products. They are probably all made by the same places these days though.
CORRECTION: It's MPC I'm thinking about of, not MSI. Sorry about that, got my letters confused!
Are you opposed to buying a used card? I have bought numerous used cards and never had any issues. If you are open to the idea, that really opens up the possibilities for what you can get with your money. Several manufacturers allow warranties to transfer, too. I know EVGA and MSI honor warranties for second hand owners, others probably do as well. Considering that these cards have 3 year warranties, many cards still have one. Gamers that always want the latest tech are upgrading all the time, so its easy to find almost new cards at decent prices. A used 970 would fit in your price range of $180 and give you more CUDAs and vram than the 1060 you listed. Although it is true that newer cards have more efficient CUDA cores, I doubt that is enough to make up the difference of almost 500 cores between those cards.
You really, really, don't want anything less than 4gb, either. That much is certain. You'll kick yourself HARD if you get a 3gb card, I promise. Even 4 might be pushing it, but it can worked with. So with that in mind, a 1060 with 6gb would be alright, too. One strange thing is that 6gb 1060 has more CUDAs than the 3gb 1060, 1280 to be exact. However, the 6gb version seems to have jacked up prices.
Get a 1070 with paypal bill me later and save money to pay it off in 6 months. You will not regret it and it will completely change your daz studio experience.
Good luck!
+1
The 4600 doesnt provide any acceleration to Iray. So all is done by your CPU
With a 1050 Ti you'd get roughly a 10x increase render speed
With a 1060 (don't get the 3 GB version ) you'd roughly get a 20x increase
As mentionned, buying a used card could be a good idea
Selling things you don't use to buy video cards is something I have never regretted in the past!
I've been looking around this area for used cards..nothing really woth looking at. I dont use ebay .. way too many bad experiences with that. Newegg sells them but still out of my price range for decent ones..>$200 is too much. It appears I will go with the 1050Ti .... at least it will fit in my case and my power supply meets spec for it. 10x faster is better than nothing for sure....
Thanks everyone for suggestions.
If anyone knows of a reliable place to purchase used or refub let me know.
Amazon normally lists additional choices "used from..." under the main listing. I believe those that are being sold by prople through amazon still carry amazon's consumer protections.
You can look at the benchmark thread by sickleyield for some GPU comparisons. http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/53771/iray-starter-scene-post-your-benchmarks/p1
You can test it yourself to see how you stack up. I don't know if anyone has a 1050ti in that thread, but you could compare it to other cards that are close to 768 CUDA cores like the 1050ti. The 1050ti being newer might be a bit faster, but not dramatically so.
Also, I almost forgot, but to use any 1000 series card you must be using the newest release of Daz. The newest release is the only version of Daz that supports them.
I have used ebay for every GPU I have ever bought. Research the sellers. The people I bought mine from were not store fronts, they were occasional sellers with good records. They were legitimately selling their old cards after upgrades. I knew what I was getting when I bought them. I even bought refurbs.
All this GPU talk is making me want to upgrade myself, lol.
Old topic, but you can combine 3 gb vram with your ram in cpu+ Gpu rendering mode. When I need complex scene I use this.
...Octane does what is called Out of Core Rendering where the Geometry remains in VRAM and the excess texture load is handed over to the CPU instead of everything dumping to the CPU. As I understand, it is also pretty quick.
Octane 4 is currently in beta testing and will have a 20$/month subscription channel so you won't have to plunk down nearly 600$ at the outset.
This will be a boon to those who cannot afford a high memory GPU card.
I did the Iray starter scene in 7 minutes 19 seconds with an EVGA 1050ti sc, on a Ryzen 1600 with 16gb of memory,
This should give you something to compare your existing graphics card against.
I wouldn't recommend less than 6GB of RAM for a gfx card (Nvidia); even that is not enough imo. Yes you can manage less, but with w10, it steals some RAM. This presumes you're intending to use IRAY.
Other rendering engines offer alternatives. Octane for instance, Blender's Cycles and the new Evee are others.
Personally, I would wait and see what the new cards are from Nvidia; they are due soon (hopefully not Daz soon). woth June being something of a concensus.
I think the best budget card for iray right now is the Nvidia 1060 6gb edition. Right amount of vram vs price and performance.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487260
When you get a chance upgrade the fan on this with
https://www.amazon.com/ARCTIC-Accelero-Graphics-Efficient-DCACO-V820001-GBA01/dp/B00IEO8H22/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1524711011&sr=8-4&keywords=arctic+cooling+accelero&dpID=41SwAfrrHqL&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch