PC Upgrade for Daz Renders - More Titan X or Move On to GTX 1080?
Ivo Shandor
Posts: 74
I am considering a new purchase. Here is my current build: http://pcpartpicker.com/list/crkkQ7.
I bought everything with the anticipation of eventually putting 4 Titan X cards in it. I bought a really big power supply for such an occurence. My assumptiion was that even the new cards would need just as much power, if not more. My goal was to save up enough for an additional video card every 4-6 months. I knew that new nVidia cards were coming, so I waited until they came out. I wondered if anyone here had any advice on what I should buy for a 2nd card now, considering that I already have an nVidia Titan X?
The only disadvantage of the new GTX 1080 card is that is has 8gb of VRAM and I understand that if my scene exceeds that 8gb but is still under 12gb, then it will only use the Titan X even in Daz Studio for rendering. It seems that the specs of the GTX 1080 are just a bit over the the Titan X when it comes to rendering in Daz Studio. The 1080 seems vastly superior in terms of VR rendering which is a factor since I just purchased an Oculus Rift. But my main concern is rendering time in Daz Studio.
So here are my 3 options as I see it:
1. Buy a used Titan X from ebay. People are getting rid of them and manufacturers seem to have discontinued the card. You can pick one up for $600-$800 used. That way I have 2 matching cards and when I render now, I will still have the 12gb limit. If I purchased 2 GTX 1080 later, then I would still have 2 cards that a 12gb scene would render in. The GTX 1080 cards would then only get used for smaller scenes. I measured what I usually render and most are under 8gb.
2. Buy a GTX 1080 now. I don't know if there is an advantage with Daz Studio to have 2 cards of the same type. I could buy a brand new card for the price of a used Titan X. The only drawback is that scenes over 8gb would just be rendered back on the single Titan X that I have now. If I went this route, then I would likely either just fill the remaining 2 slots with 2 more GTX 1080 cards over the next year or wait until Nvidia introduces a 12gb card down the line for those last 2 slots.
3. Wait until Nvidia introduces a 12gb card with the new architecture. I would then buy just one of those and then fill the other 2 slots with the same card. I might even just consider replacing the Titan X at that point.
Overall, this is a 1 year plan for upgrading and I think I have a motherboard, chip, and power supply that can handle any of these options. So any advice is appreciated. Right now I am leaning towards another Titan X because it is the safest choice and I know it will make my renders fasters without question.
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Comments
As a Titan X SLI owner, I'd advise moving on to the 1080. You get the benefit of newer technology and a better card (despite missing 4GB of additional VRAM).
I wouldn't atm.
10 series cards suck for rendering. Drivers don't work.
At least wait until an announcement on a 1080 ti or titan equivalent. By then Iray driver issues should be sorted and you will have the benefit of more vram as well as the new tech. If those won't be on the shelf until next year I'll be getting an 8gb card as soon as the drivers allow it to be used in Iray, and adding another with more vram when I can.
Hopefully someone can elaborate, but as far as I know, you will only be able to use a maximum of 2 pascal cards for rendering in Iray, (and not in SLI?). Buying more may be a waste of money unless you are going to use them for something else.
The 1080/70/60 is a bit pointless at the moment as they don't support Iray. Im in a similar situation to you (Titan x & 970) and i was just about to pull the trigger on another titan x when the 1080 was announced. Now i'm just waiting for iray to be supported. By the time the 10 series is actually supported though, the 16gb Titan P will be out, and it's back to the drawing board once again!
I wasn't aware that the 10 series cards didn't support Iray (not sure what the sense in that is). If that's the case, ignore my intial reply.
The 10 series will support Iray when drivers update. Lots of info here, http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/85416/semi-ot-nvidia-pascal-cards-debut-finished-1080gtx-and-1070gtx-announced#latest
there was a thread a while back that compared the theoretical iray performance of the titan X vs the 1080 - based off hardware specs. I cant remember the exact, but there was a formula explained by someone who showed deep knowledge of this kind of thing, and it put the 1080 only slightly ahead of a titan X on theoretical performance. It was really only about 5% difference. And the titan X has more vram, so personally i would go the Titan X
Obviously this is theoretical, and depending on the drivers and whatnot that may not be 100% accurate, but its still good to know. And until they do fix the drivers to support iray we wont know much more. I was one of the people tossing up between buying two Titan X or waiting for the 1080, and ended up getting the Titan X and i dont regret it.
Nvidia may announce either the 1080Ti or the Titan equivalent of the Pascal before or around the time the drivers are due to be updated for iRay, so it will probably pay to wait until then if you can hold off. No point buying the 1080 now as it wont work with iRay. Titan X or wait
You can still use more than 2 Pascal-based cards for rendering. nVidia is not supporting SLI beyond 2-way (2 cards SLI'd together) with the 1000-series cards. Since SLI is not used for Iray (and in fact, can be detrimental for it), it's not an issue. You can still have 4x 1080 GTX cards (if your motherboard/cpu will support that many) at x16 and Iray should use all of them.
Well, once they update the drivers to support Iray for the 1000 series, anyway......
One other consideration. When multiple unmatching cards are used, iray throttles the faster card(s) to match the slowest, or so I've read. Should be easy to verify w/ gpu-z.
Thank you all for the advice. You definitely talked me out of buying a GTX 1080 right now. I think it would be wise to wait until either iRay is supported or a new 12GB pascal card comes out. In the meantime, I need a card now rather than wait much longer. I am probably just going to keep watching for a good deal on a used Titan X. People are treating it like a rare commodity right now and the prices are just a bit too high. I feel that as people move on to the newer models, then the price on a used Titan X will come down. After that purchase, then I can wait a full year or so for a new 12GB Pascal card for the other 2 slots.
In my research and first-hand experiments between a single GTX 760, a single GTX 780 TI, a single GTX 980, and a Quadro K4000, iRay benefits more from the number of CUDA cores than anything.
Clock speeds and memory bandwidth are also important, but even though the 980 has faster clocks than the 780 TI, the memory interface width and fewer cores holds it back.
I've paired the various cards into one box, and tested with and without SLI, and found SLI increases render time.
I've also read a lot of opinions on "gaming cards aren't good for rendering because of the clock speed", which is largely true. Pro-level workstation cards run at a slower clock speed for greater stability than gaming cards, which require a higher clock speed to process game data. However, brands like EVGA include software that allows you to tweak the card's clock speed up or down. If you're crashing during renders, reduce the clock speed. I've done it. It works.
As well, EVGA's Precision X software allows you to set the fan speed for your cards, which keeps them cool during long renders.
There's nothing wrong with rendering with "gaming" cards. Workstation cards are usually higher-priced because they include pro-level driver support, since they're aimed at pro-level developers and rendering houses who may only need specific functions of a given chipset, or they need custom drivers with custom commands, or a different command priority altogether.
The GTX 780 TI is still your best "gaming" card for rendering in DS/iRay with its 2880 CUDA cores. The more expensive and pro-level K4000 only has 768 cores, and even on a dual hex-core Xeon system with 48 GB of RAM (yes, 48 GB of RAM), the lone 780 TI in an i7-4770 with 32GB RAM, using only the cards, was faster by a few minutes. Using the CPUs (virtual as well) was slightly faster with the Xeon machine, but it's an older unit with 2.5 GHz CPUs vs the single 3.8GHz i7-4770. In a head-to-head render race on the same scene at the same time, the dual-Xeon with the K4000 finished only about 2 minutes ahead of the i7 dual-780 TI machine. When I think of the money I wasted on that Xeon machine......I coulda bought 2 more i7s with dual 780 TIs each.
The short version: I've been running 2 780 TIs in the i7 system, without the CPU helping (CPU sends my UPS into overload), and that's the fastest setup I've found. Once I upgrade my battery backup/UPS system, I'll be able to add the CPU for faster times.
From what I've seen of the 1080's specs, I'm not impressed by the number of CUDA cores alone, so I'm going to say pass on it.
However, I've recently managed to get my egpu setup working (woohoo!) so now I've got the 980 and the 2 780 TIs rendering. I rendered a shot that normally takes 30 minutes or more in about 18-20 minutes. Not a massive improvement, but with another 780 TI instead of the 980, I expect to see an improvement.
...for myself, not having the process exceed GPU memory and drop to much slower CPU based rendering is a speed advantage in and of itself.
If you have a single CPU system (like most of us do) should that occur, you would be going from a couple thousand CUDA cores to only 8 or 12. CPU cores as well as the speed/latency of your physical memory and the pipeline between memory and the CPU. Most scenes I create would be a challenge for even a 1080 to hold the geometry and texture load in memory so for myself a Titan-X is pretty much necessary.
I would be in careful if you are considering purchasing a used card as you could end up throwing away good money on something which may fail a lot earlier than you expected. If you can find them, the fluid cooled Hydro versions would be the best option as these would not have been run at high temps like air cooled ones.
And... A new player has entered the game...
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/10series/titan-x-pascal
Nvidia releases the Pascal version of the Titan X. That was much sooner than I expected. So now, it seems best that I wait until the drivers are updated and Iray is supported by these new cards. Then I have to find out if my old Titan X can run alongside the new Titan X.
From there, I will decide whether or not to sell my old Titan X when I buy the new one. I will also decide if it makes sense to find the old Titan X for cheaper, new or used. With the announcement of this new card, it is bound to drive the prices down on the old Titan X.