GPU Upgrade
garysdeadraticate
Posts: 0
Four years ago I bought a Radeon card for my render machine, right before switching from 3Delight to Iray... I have been rendering on CPU only for years and am finally about to splurge on a new GPU. From what I understand Daz is on the verge of utilizing RTX technology. Based on my budget, this has me thinking that I should go for an RTX 2070 card. What I'm wondering now is if there's any benefit in springing for a higher end version of this card (Ultra or Founder's Editition) when it comes to renders, or if the identical memory and cuda cores would make it negligible? Seems like the MHz and cooling are the only real differences, and I don't game so I'm wondering if that would translate to any noticebale differences in render times or not. Kinda burnt out on reading about this stuff, what do y'all think?
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Comments
If you're strictly interested in rendering and not competitive gaming then get the cheapest 2070 you can find. Founder's Edition cards aren't high end BTW.
A higher clock speed might mean a very small improvement in render times but it simply wouldn't be worth the extra power those cards draw.
I don't think that to spend 100$ bucks more on a different version is ever a good choice! At that point, you should just go for a 2080.
The main difference is cooling, but new GPUs don't get hot anyway. That's a brand new experience compared to your previous Radeon!
Just don't go too cheap: I wouldn't like to work with too much noise!
For me , It turned out upgrading is cheaper than buying new PC if your system can handle the power requirements of the new tech
I just had Geek Squad upgraded my 5 year old custom built by iBUYpower.com PCIE3 6 CORE intel i7- 3.8 Ghz system with complete cleaning , 2 brand new EVGA 1080ti's 11.5 gigs each, replacing 2 -4 year old 6 gig 980ti's, in a new NZXT external GPU cooling box, a PCI power supported connected USP.3 super hub. with a new 1050 watt EVGA Power supply and replacement cables, a new Asetek 120MM CPU liquid cooling unit with 2 new 120mm push pull Earmax variable fans to replace my 5 year old one, we added another 64gig's of SDDRAM maxing my total CPU memory to 124 gigs, added a new NZXT on board digital system controller/monitor for the whole cooling system to watch and control cooling system and fan speeds. Then Geek guys added a some new server side software to manage the upgrades & lastly I had them replaced the internal 524 gig SSD & the 3TB HHD with a new one's, don't ask me how Geek Squad migrated everything that is why I hired them..lol but after going through all these upgrades it was cheap to replace the internal hard drives with new one for insurance.
I was going to buy a new PC/server system but it turned out cheaper to let Geek Squad upgrade this system at around $2800. than build a new system for around $6700. Geek Guys told me my I7 Processor is still as good as new when they stressed tested it.. so hopefully i'll get a few more years out of this rig before having to replacing it the only reason I was able to do this upgrade was because I was able to buy the 2 GTX 1080tis cheap right from EVGA site during a special they had going for $629 for each 10 series card, when EVGA introduced the new RTX 2080ti cards to market.
I was just at the right place at the right time. But learned a long time ago if you sign up for these tech sites for promo offers, you can usually get great deals for tech, when the new products are released.
I wish you good luck with your upgrade. I hope they went smooth as mine
Get the cheapest one you can get. I have a Founder Edition ( definitely not a high end gpu) 1070 and a EVGA FTW 2 1070 and they do the same amount of work. The EVGA is a fair bit more powerful, with far better cooling and a higher clock speed, but that doesn't matter all that much. Cuda and GBs is where it's at for rendering. If you plan to game on the card, you WILL see a difference FPS wise on a higher powered card, but if you're only rendering then just get the cheaper one, as long as cheap does not equate to lower quality.
.... You paid BestBuy how much money? Are you trying to say that you paid best buy $2800 + EVGA $1258 for you upgrade? So... you paid over $4000 to clean and upgrade an old computer?
OUCH
(Back on topic)
Honestly right now the thing most people complain about with modern Daz Studio Iray renders, is the render dropping to CPU because the scene does not fit into the GPU VRAM.
So, in this case more is better if you render complex scenes, or using high resolution materials. Take this to heart coming from someone who used to have a 6GB GTX 1060 (desktop) and 4GB Quadro K4000M (laptop) as my render cards. You want at least 8GB of VRAM
The overclocked aftermarket cards are not worth the price premium and you may need to upgrade your power supply to even support the factory OC.
The stock RTX 2070 uses 175W
The Founders Edition uses 185W for a 90MHz higher boost speed
Retail OC versions still claim 175W but require an extra power connector and reviews show around an extra 50W power usage under full load (or more if you use an OC utility for some more extra boost)
No silly , you didn't read it right.
I paid total cost of $2864 for upgrading my system that $2864 includes the $629 for each 1 of the EVGA gtx1080ti 11.59gig card and i bought 2 of them totally $1250. plus the NXST external GPU box /w fans was another $145. The 64 gigs of RAM cost $114 for each 1 of the 16 gigs of high end crucial ram chip totally $438 bucks for 4 - 16 gig RA chips, bringing my total max ram to124 gigs in the system I had 64 gigs already, so I was upgrading to the max. The 1050 watt EVGA Power supply upgrade cost $196 on sale normally cost $240, and the NZXST USB3 super hub and 6' PCI3 8 pin power cables was another $90 then the 2 new hard drives cost me another $280 for both thats with a 40% discount for the crucial 524 gig SSD, the server management software was $49 then geek squad labor cost of $220 so lets do the math $1250 + $145+ $438 +196 +90+ $49+ $220 = $2864 bucks & I didn't include in the Tennessee 7.9 sales tax, & The Asetek 120mm cpu cooler which I had already i order a while back before hand so I had it for geek squad to install during upgrading
so there you go all in break down for you,. GTX 1080ti's go for nornally $1200 each. So yes upgrades are not cheap.. Brand new high end Pc/Servers cost way way more. upgrading for $2800 for me was cheaper than $6800 for a new custom build at Ibuypower. to match what have now , & which is where i got this system built 5 years ago.
Actually you grossly overpaid. You got charged for nonsensical fluff because you didn't know any better. Server management software is free and only needed if you run the box headless, no monitor or keyboard, or have a lot of machines to administer at one time. If this is actually a server box, not a desktop you're calling a server, the AIO cooler is gross overkill. Why would you need a 6 foot long power cable extender?
$280 for a 512Gb SSD and a 3Tb HDD? 512Gb SSD's cost around $60 and a 3Tb drive is around $100. The only system monitoring NZXT seems to make is the Cam software, which is free. NZXT also doesn't make a USB 3 hub. It makes a USB 2 hub that retails for $20.
4x16Gb sticks, even if you go with big names like Corsair cost less than $350.
NZXT doesn't make an external GPU enclosure at all.
And on and on.
BTW an i7 as old as that one isn't good as new straight out of retail packaging. One that has been in any sort of serious use over 5 years is degraded, that's just basic solid state electronics. It might still test fine and you might get years more out of it or it might not post the next time you power cycle which is of course true for any CPU at any time but if you've been running the rig enough to be worth that sort of investment then you're likely approaching or past the MTBF of that chip.
In short trusting Best Buy to do right by someone is like trusting a use car dealer. I also have trouble imaging why you think building a new rig would have cost $6700. Based on the components you listed, you replaced everything except the case, CPU and Mobo, You could have gone to a new top of the line i9 for at most another $3k, and most of that would be $2k CPU which if you're mostly using the machine for iray rendering is massive overkill and is a serious waste even if you do a lot of CPU intensive tasks. The only thing the $2k i9 is truly good for is video editing in Premier and the rig as described isn't built to handle 4k or higher resolution video.