GTX 1080 Ti first impressions
areg5
Posts: 617
Yesterday I upgraded my system. It had been running GTX 980 Tix2 and 780 Ti, so I swapped out the 780 for a 1080 Ti. Here are some of my impressions.
- This is a very expensive card. I thought that after it had been out for a few months the price would go down, but it’s been going up, so I decided to pull the trigger. I like EVGA cards because they have a 3 year factory warranty regardless of ownership, and they are great quality. It is virtually impossible to get the card directly from EVGA and the reseller markup is in the hundreds of dollars, so I got a 6 month old card on Ebay. It is a 1080 Ti Sc2 Gaming, listed on the EVGA site at $949 and on Newegg at a whopping $1174. I got it on Ebay for $791 plus shipping.
- Don’t buy into the narrative that the newer Cuda technology is vastly superior to that used in the 980 or 780. It isn’t. Rendering speed on scene I could run before using all 3 cards is a little faster, but not ridiculously so. A 980 Ti has 2816 Cuda cores, and a 780 has 2880. 1080 Ti has 3584. So before I was rendering with 8512 cores, and now I’m using 9196. So part of the increased speed is because I am using more cores, and part may be because of improved technology, but the end result isn’t dramatic.
- The card is significantly smaller physically and uses less power than the 980. Under rendering load for hours (I primarily batch render), with aggressive fan control using Precision XOC, the card runs much cooler than a 980. It barely breaks 70 C, whereas the 980 throttles down at 83 C. This means that the card can run a full power without powering down.
- Of course, the biggest advantage to the card in my opinion is its ability to render large scenes due to a much high VRAM. I have gotten used to adjusting the scenes to less than 6 gig so that the 980’s don’t kick off. I was usually only able to use the 980’s, as the 780 only has a 3 gig capacity and is really only useful for simple scenes. The 1080 Ti has an 11 gig capacity, so it can handle very complex scenes …but still doesn’t exactly just plow through scenes with a lot of reflective surfaces. Those are a killer. So, on a very complex scene the 980’s will drop out and the 1080 will do it alone. It is noticeably slower to run only that card rather than all 3, as you would expect.
- 1080 Ti vs. Titan X Maxwell: I don’t have a Titan X, but I would think the rendering times would be very close. The advantage of the Titan X over the 1080 Ti is 1 more gig of Vram. The costs on Ebay are very similar. The disadvantage of the Titan X is that I would expect it to run hotter, like a 980 Ti does, and I would expect it to be physically bigger which could be an issue in a smaller case. The main disadvantage of the Titan is that because it’s older the factory warranty would be shorter. It would have the same 3 year warranty from EVGA as any other card, and it’s been out for a few years.
So those are my impressions in a nutshell.Plans for the future:set up a rendering server that would have 4 1080 T’is.I’m thinking in about a year.
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Comments
Hey!
Looking at Octanebench (while not a perfect measure of Iray.. it's pretty good)
The 1080 ti gets a 185 and Titan X Maxwell gets a 128. I think the only advantage to the TITAN X (m) is the 1 extra GB and they are generally a little cheaper on ebay (etc).
The real answer was Quadro GP100 (joke... mostly)
I know about Octanebench, but I'm really just speaking practically. The difference in rendering time likely doesn't amount to much. They are A LITTLE cheaper, but not by much. Yes, the main advantage is one more gig of VRAM. Can never have too much of that! The Quadro is obviously prohibitively expensive. I've always wondered how many folks around here use one.
I own a Maxwell Titan X and two 1080Ti's. The 1080Ti's (individually) are WAY faster than the Titan X. The Titan X is on par with a 1070.
There's a benchmark thread here and on that scene, this is what I got:
Titan X Maxwell: 3 minutes 3.27 seconds
1080Ti: 2 minutes 8.7 seconds
This is not what I would call close... at all.
With two 1080Ti's, it's 1 minute flat. I find the difference between a 1080Ti and a Maxwell Titan X to be night and day.
Good to know. What mobo and processor do you have?
are you rendering architectural interiors?,
I have a 780Ti too, render times goes 15-30min so far, I stop when grainier is almost zero.
Sure, I do interiors all the time. The 780 ti is a great card, I just wish it had more VRAM or I wouldn't have replaced it.
I own a Titan X Maxwell and I paid under $500 for it. I got this card because of the vram and the price was right. Is a 1080ti faster sure but for my uses paying double what I paid for my Titan is crazy. I'm just glad I got my cards before everyone went nuts over bitcoin mining. When the crazy prices go down I will purchase a titan x pascal. I'm in no rush.
Just bought my second Titan X Maxwell. Under $500 each for both. So I have to wait an extra minute for the extra grand I'll wait.
This might be the absolute dumbest question, but what difference if any is there between starting a render with one GPU as opposed to multiple?
More cuda cores (more video cards) means faster renders. The newer cards render faster. If you are a hobbiest and don't need speed one card is enough. If you have deep pockets or are using this for business then you want multiple cards so you don't have to wait. Time is money in business.
Thanks to all for this information! I have been looking at used 12 GB Tesla cards, but never considered I might be able to get a used Titan X 12GB for a much better price. They appear to be running about $500 and up on Ebay right now, although some people are asking 2-3 times that. If I could get two Titan Xs with 12GB for about the same current price as one 1080ti 11GB, that would be sweet. The Titan Xs had (as I understand it) good thermal management, so harder to abuse. Some listings even state that the units were not used for mining. Off to set up my watch list and maybe place a few low bids.
Those were good buys! Did you get these on EBAY?
Yes, I did but the second card was buy it now and came with a water block so I will have to retrograde it with a air cooler I have lying around. If I had my choice I would install ARCTIC Accelero Xtreme III VGA Cooler. For cooling any card that is going to be used for Iray this setup can not be beat without going to water cooling. On a Titan X Maxwell I would also suggest adding memory coolers to backside of card the backplate is useless for cooling those little copper or aluminum cooling fins are priceless just get some good adhesive thermal paste to install the coolers. If you are lazy like me the 3M thermal double sided tape is ok but the adhesive paste is better. Oh, the thermal grizzly galium metal base paste for the main heatsink cannot be beat for thermal conductivity but it is dangerous to use on alumium surfaces and if you get any on anything else it could fry your video card.
Well, I wouldn't really expect the Titan X to run much cooler than a 980 Ti, as it's pretty much the same guts with more VRAM. I use air cooling, and it seems like the 1080 Ti runs about 20 degrees cooler than my 980's. When it's running alone it stays at around 55 degrees. When all are running, it gets about 10 degrees hotter, mainly I think due to the proximity of the cards. My Mobo has 3 slots, but the 2 lower ones are right next to each other so not much ventilation there. I'm planning a 4 card rig at some point, with a server mobo and a Xeon more likely than not. The Xeon allows all cards to run at full speed (my board forces me to run all cards at 4x), and from the images I've seen the slots seem far enough apart to allow for ventilation. But back to my point: for me, the most impressive things about the 1080 Ti over the Titan is that it runs cooler and is smaller. Of course, 500 for a Titan is a great deal! I usually see those sell on Ebay for closer to 700, but I guess it's all in how you bid.
A bit of checking confirms that used Titan X's are going for about $500 or a little under (a bit over for those with liquid cooling included) on Ebay. Pretty good deal for 12GB. Could get two for the current price of a 1080ti 11GB. A lot of the offers start at more than $700-800, but not sure they are selling at that price.
I have noticed locally on craiglist that there are more highend Nvidia video cards available. I think people are a little dissapointed that video card mining is not netting them much profit so they are selling components>>I even saw a 1080ti for $600, I was tempted but I will wait for a Titan X Pascal when the price goes down. I want the extra 1gb of vram and the price is right for my two Titans. Went ahead and bough the two air coolers from Newegg and will be upgrading the cooling on both video cards. I will probable just run a 1070 for the montors and let the Titans do my renders and 3D work. I will be using Octaine 4 with Lightwave and maybe Daz but setting up shaders is a pain. The free license they mentions is just for Octaine not the plugin and you are limited to 2 video cards but that is not a problem for free.
Newegg has an Asus 1080 (8GB) for $649 this morning, which is the lowest price I have seen since the shortages began.
Personally, I don't see the point to the 1080. I just got a second 1080 Ti on Ebay, supposedly new but not used, for 800. More RAM is better. Also, I like the EVGA products. Asus is a quality manufacturer too, but I like the EVGA warranty and features.
I want the higher memory too, but there were folks looking for 1080s and 1070s with 8GB. At least the availablity of a 1080 for $649 suggests that the shortage might be easing. I picked up a used EVGA Titan X (12GB) on Ebay for $500, so we will see how that works. Should tide me over until sanity returns to pricing.
@areg5 I have a Ryzen 7 1800X w/ MSI x370 Gaming Pro Carbon and 64GB RAM @ 2800.
@Silver Dolphin You can't mine bitcoin with a GPU. They use custom ASICs. It's Ethereum and other coins that are mined with GPU.
The card is worth it, if you add it to your bank of cards, not using it to replace one. Get a bigger PSU and a PCIe slot riser. You only need a 1x connection for the card to run!
It is standard math, when looking for speed gains...
If you had 8512 and you went to 9196... that is only a gain of... 684 cores...
If 8512 was your OLD 100% speed... Adding 684 cores would only be a gain of 8.3% [(100 / 8512) * (684)]
That is not including any potential "speed gains", by the faster clock-rates.
Now... If you originally had 4x 980 Ti's with a total of 11,264 Cuda-cores... and that was you old 100%...
But then you upgraded to 4x 1080 Ti's with a total of 14,336 Cuda-cores... then that would be a gain of 27% more processing power, using the same electricity...
If you want 2x the speed, you need to double-up your cards, every time...
1 card = 100%
2 cards = 2x faster then before (200% total)
4 cards = 2x faster then before (400% total)
8 cards = 2x faster than before (800% total)
People tend to think in a linear way... Like each card added will cut the time in half... When, in reality, you need to double-up what you already have, to cut time in half.
1 card renders a scene in 10 minutes...
2 cards render that same scene in 5 minutes...
3 cards render that same scene in 3.33 minutes (not 2.5, like people tend to think. Also note, time-savings dwindle...)
4 cards render that same scene in 2.50 minutes (Here is what they need, but each new card seems like less of a gain.)
8 cards render that same scene in 1.25 minutes (What! 8x the cards and only a reduction from 10 seconds to 1.25 seconds.)
In the end, what happens, is that you no-longer render those tiny scenes. You still spend 10-min to 2-hours rendering larger scenes, to greater detail... Scenes that normally would have taken you a week or two to render, or a month, each... You also get instant feedback to scene-changes, that would normally take a minute to update, or several seconds, and see almost exactly what it will look like when rendered. (Awesome for setting-up models, without having to constantly hit the render button to see if your "guessing" was right.)
Plus, you can still use your computer for other things, while it renders... No more having to pick, "render something", or, "use the computer to browse the net"... Do it all at once! While watching a movie and typing that long novel or TLDR posts on the web.
The real savings would be going for Titan-V's, when Daz is up to speed with the IRAY version that can use them. (Next Beta-release, actually)
Going back to your other numbers...
If you had 4x 980 Ti's, at 11,264 Cuda-cores... and that was you old 100%...
Going to 4x Titan V's, at 20,480 Cuda-cores... would be a gain of 81%... Plus, the bonus of Volta, with 2.5x faster processing memory and up to 20x faster OptiX AI Denoising.
So, that 20,480 cores is actually more like 51,200 cores, at the low end. Which is a gain of 455% (Total of 555%)
To a maximum, currently, of... 409,600 cuda-power ^ Volta/OptiX-5 (denoised result speeds), which is a gain of 3,636% (Total of 3,736%)
Using the same power, (electric-bill paid every month), rendering almost instant high quality scenes, with larger potential scenes from more available memory.
Waiting a few mins for a render is not an issue for me it is the ability to fit things in a scene. Two Titans is enough, anymore and the price vs performance is a downhill slope. That is where Octaine shines and Iray does not. Need way for system memory to hold textures or if texture or object is not in viewport don't use video memory. Right now everything has to fit in video ram or render goes to CPU<< which equals to >> I stop render and start reducing textues and removing objects from my scenes.