Looking for advice on nVidia cards
Widdershins Studio
Posts: 556
Hey all,
I've been away from Daz for a while whilst working with Unity. I've got a taste for modelling and rendering again though.
I see with Daz there is a lot of choice for nVidia based cards, like Octane and Iray. Some of the renders look amazing.
I'm looking at getting a new card in about six months and it will be nVidia due to those reasons. Six months because I need to save up.
I'm thinking about a nVidia GTX 980 Ti, this one in particular as I have seen good benchmarks...
Does anyone have something similar and could say how they get on with it ?
The kind of thing I am into is photo realism because it fascinates me. Usually I just do studio type shots, but I'm going to either buy or design some environments to explore outdoor scenes. Things like wild meadows, forests and a well placed character. As well as close up face shots too.
I'll stop rambling now, thanks for any advice.
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Comments
I'm not sure the superclocking will help that much, but a 6GB GTX 980TI is a great choice. Perhaps 90% of the performance of a Titan and 50% of the cost.
Lot's of Cuda cores and plenty of RAM
Good thanks - yes I looked at the Titans but they are a bit too much for me. I agree the 980Ti still has plenty of power.
I'm hoping to get a computer for Christmas with 3 card slots and get 980Ti x3. And I was very happy to hear about 980Ti being almost as good as a Titan, because as it is the computer is going to have my finances up against the wall.
(I might end up getting only one or two 980Tis and then just work my way up)
Yeah I thought I would start at one and see how it goes. My MB will do three. If I got two or three then I think I might need to invest in a new PSU and some better cooling.
It can be expensive this pastime, but whatever makes us happy :)
I actually don't know if I can wait six months lol - I might have to juggle my finances around.
Just be sure to have a power supply and case to match. Those are 250 watt boards. The case needs some serious ventilation to get up to 750 watts of power dissipation out of it. The PS needs to also have enough power taps (6- and 8-pin) for all the boards.
Yeah I will do thanks. I've got liquid cooling on the CPU so far, keeps it nice and cool while rendering with Iray at the moment.
I would probably only go so far as two really, but I haven't seen what one is like yet.
I've got a Corsair 850W PSU, I might just get away with two.
Small detail. All cooling is air cooling.
Even liquid!
In either case, you are shunting heat energy from the chip to a heatsink, and then using a fan to dissipate the heat (ultimately) into the room. In neither case are you moving "cold to the chip". The main difference between liquid and non-liquid is how you transport the heat. A liquid system uses water (mixed with coolant). A "non-liquid" system usually uses pipes.
Liquid is usually quieter (a LOT quieter in my case and that's why I use it), and I find it to be more consistent (but that's a subjective and fuzzy term). With both systems, you have the risk of a fan failure. With liquid, you do have the added risk of water failure and possible damage caused by that.
Carry on!
EDIT: I would LOVE to add a full-blown water loop to my system for CPU and GPU cooling, but there has been a culling in the industry lately and I'm afraid that there are fewer and fewer viable, well supported solutions.
Yep I only started with liquid cooling a few months back, but it is much better at keeping the CPU cool. My 6 core i7 didn't come with a stock fan like the old Intels so since I had to get something I went for a liquid one.
I was not sure about it at first, to me it just seemed like moving a fan to a different location. But it's not like that at all. I feel warm air leaving the case and on full load running 6 cores/12 threads at 100% over ten minutes say, the CPU heat levels off at about 57C. So instead of that heat being chugged into the case, now it is leaving it directly.
And I agree it's quieter too.
I'm running a cooler that is technically a hybrid - a Noctura cooler that runs heat pipes up from the CPU cap to a fair-size aluminum heat sink with a 120 mm fan on one side and provision for an exhaust fan on the other. With just the one fan (and the other six in the case :-) ) my cpu doesn't exceed 60 degress C on 30-hour renders. And none of the fans get above half speed - very quiet system.
ETA - My cpu is an Intel Core i7-5930K Haswell-E 6-Core 3.5GHz.
I find this useful to calculate PS: http://www.coolermaster.outervision.com/index.jsp
I'm rocking two SuperClocked Titan Xs and the 5960X Haswell-E Octo Core and STILL don't quite hit photo-realism. The reason? Well, it's just not that simple. I've tried everything with Iray and haven't used Octane yet (which, from what I've seen, will probably be my got to renderer when I, finally, jump on board)! Iray's biggest issue, at least for me, is lighting and skin. I can never quite get those two to work well enough for photorealism, though I can still pull of some fantastic results.
Either way, the 980Ti is a fantastic choice! Have fun!
Oops, double post!
I'm using a SuperClocked Titan X, standard air cooled was running 84C at full load iray render, I switched to liquid cooled and now running at 44C full load.
Bah, if only I had the patience for waterblocks on GPUs!
The titan really runs that hot? My water cooled system never goes above 36C on heavy loads. You may want to add an extra cooling and exhaust fan.
IIRC Nvidia designs the cards to run hot intentionally for performance reasons. Everything I've seen indicates the 980 ti and the titans are designed to throttle back at 83 degrees C - and most reports I've seen show them running at 82 degrees C with the fans running at half speed or less. I know my 980 ti runs at 82 degrees and the fan never gets over 47% speed; ther's got to be a reason for this.
Thanks - I found my 850W PSU should be okay for two in crossfire. I'll start with one first though to see how that performs.
Awesome system you have there - are you an artist for a living or an enthusiast ?
I'm liking Iray at the moment, only just discovered it but I'm pleased with some of my renders.
Octane was on my radar too, I'll keep exploring Iray for now though as it's cost me nothing !
And thanks, I will have fun :)
The problem, with humans, is the eyes and hair.
Skin can usually look reasonably realistic. But there's almost always something off in the eyes. And hair can look weird in countless ways.
Sorry Timmins, yes for me the hair is one area that doesn't work as well as others. Look where we were just five years ago though, the best is yet to come :)
I came back to this thread to ask another question about nVidia.
I'm sure it would work, but it's worth checking before I spend a lot.
Currently I have an AMD card and use their Eyefinity to run three screens - the main one is 2560 x 1440 and the sides are 1080p.
So will nVidia do three screens of mixed resolution ?
I'm looking at the 980ti still. I had some problems getting three working on this card, so just wanted to check.
Cheers :)
You could go to www.geforce.com for the tech info.
Yeah, 980Ti is essentially a Titan X with "only" 6GB. I've run my Titan X for well over 30 hours straight on renders several times. It does run at 80C and never had any problems. I do have a well ventilated case though and the CPU is water cooled to avoid even more heat inside the case.
Thanks fastbike, yep I've been checking the specs. The reason I asked was to get end user veiws from people that use the same software. Often that's a more reliable way to find out what works.
AlienRenders, sounds good, I might even settle for a 4GB 970 for half the price and then get a second one later maybe. Dunno.
I bought a GTX 980 Ti a couple of weeks ago (I got the MSI "Gaming" version) and I'm delighted with it both for gaming and rendering (Luxrender in my case). I did choose it to a great extent for gaming as I am a huge fan of RPGs—my old card wouldn't play Witcher 3 even on its lowest settings. The 6Gb of memory means I don't have to worry about fitting my scenes in it and I can have everything at the highest resolution.
I bought it from Scan as it happens—I bought my PC from them and I find their advice and service very good (apparantly the queen does too!). They support both gamers and graphics professionals which makes them knowledgable in both my areas of interest. I had a big scare when installing though, because these cards are huge and I didn't think it would fit in my case. However it was only a matter of removing an unused disk cage. Still, something to bear in mind if you have never had one of these beasts before.
Well, you certainly can't go wrong with a 980Ti with 6GB stock overclocked.
I'm thinking of getting one 970 now and then another one later.
With DX12 games can use all 8GB.
And two 970s will have more cores.
Quesion - you know with SLI if you have the two cards with 4GB each it still only uses 4GB.
Well is it the same with Iray ? Is it still imited to 4GB or does it use all 8GB ?
Cheers :)
For iRay the full scene is copied onto both cards, not shared across them. Having two 970s will give you twice the cores and you should render in around half the time, but the scene is still limited to 4GB total. Having said that, I have a 4GB 970 and so far I have not built a scene that the GPU could not render, and some of my scenes are quite complex.
Being on a rather tight budget, I recently purchased a TitanX - and found a poor-man's solution; instead of adding watercooling and extra fans, I simply installed MSI Afterburner to control the built-in fan. My TitanX is not an MSI one, but I think the software works for all manufacturers.
Went from 80+C to around 55C full load (drawbacks: noise from the fan and having to make sure to clean it more often) :-)
I am not sure many of us would describe a Titan X buyer as "being on a tight budget"