Budget GPU recommendation for Iray?
Coffinrocket
Posts: 23
Hi, everyone. I've noticed that I've been rendering in Iray instead of 3Delight for a while now, and am thinking of upgrading my videocard in order to lessen render times. I'm looking to spend less than $350 ($300 if possible), but I know that is not a lot of money in the GPU world.
Current system is:
AMD FX 8320 3.5 GHz
16 GB RAM
Radeon RX 470 8 GB
My scenes tend to be one or two figures tops with a few lighting sources. Backgrounds are simple. I rarely, RARELY play video games, though I do like watching HD movies and the like. I know that the GTX 1050 Ti was the way to go a while back, but I'm not sure if I'll get better perfomance from the 1060 or (eep) the 1070. Any recommendations would be truly appreciated!
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Comments
Make sure your power supply can handle the card you want to add.
Good point. I'm currently running a Corsair 650TX.
The nvidia site has very thorough specs for each card, so you can see if your current power supply can handle it.
Yep. The GTX 1070 requires 500 watts, even less for the 1050 and 1060.
If you look around at websites like Amazon, New Egg, or Tiger Direct you can find 6 Gb GTX 1060's for between $300-$350. If you're willing to wait for a sale, you can come close to $300. I recently bought a 6Gb Geforce GTX 1060 for $329.00 from Amazon. You can find 3 Gb versions for under $300, but for the price, you should consider getting the extra 3Gb's of ram.
I have a 600 W power supply, so your Corsair should be fine.
I have a gtx1080, which has 8gb ram. It is not at all difficult to exceed this with 1 figure and 1 heavy wardrobe set out of the box. Most vendors are not very efficient with their included texture maps. This can be addressed by reducing the size of the maps. I find this product to be indispensible in managing a scene to fit on the card's ram - https://www.daz3d.com/scene-optimizer
For what you state your intended usage is, maybe a 4gb card could work if you use Scene Manager.
Before you decide on a card; think about what you do with, how large the scenes are (multiple characters in a small scene == large scene); do you like using large HRDIs? Because you might find that a budget card will be a lot of work. Whilst a 4GB card is useable. 8GB is the minimum in my opinion, although 6 isn't a bad compromise; this is becase Windows insists on stealing RAM.
No kidding!!! Doesn't help when they use apps like substance painter and include every option it uses for DS which tends to be overkill IMO
People,
The OP has already stated a desired budget. Why are you making recommendations that will cost 2X the desired amount?
As others have pointed out, the GTX 1060, with GB of VRAM seems to fit in your budget. The GTX 1070 has 8 GB of VRAM which would be a bit better, but is normally higher than your specified budget. That being said, there may be a sale or something that might bring it's price within striking distance.
As for used cards on Ebay, that comes with it's own risks... some people have very good luck with these, others have had not so good luck. Remember that you will be pushing the GPU hard, so you want a reliable card. IMHO, something that just came out of a render farm might have a shortened life expectancy... but some retailers also sell on Ebay when they are trying to move some of their stock, so do your homework...
That's kind of where I was leaning. The 1050 Ti seems like it'd be a step down in all ways other than Iray, and the 1070 is just too much for me to justify. (Don't get me wrong, I'd love a 1070, but I also have to buy food this month, lol.)
There is a significant jump from 1050ti to 1060 to 1070. Prices are getting better, but are still not where the should be. The 1070 would have easily fit in your budget and would be an excellent choice...except for crypto mining blowing up the market. If you are really lucky you might find a 1070 at that price now. They have been dipping below $400 on eBay lately. They were over $800 or more. Also, the 1000 series is very power efficient in general, so going from a the AMD 470 to GTX 1070 is not a huge jump in power use.
To understand how much of difference these cards can make for you, I always recommend checking out the Iray Benchmark thread by sickleyield.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/53771/iray-starter-scene-post-your-benchmarks/p1
You can test the scene yourself, and then look at what other people get with their hardware. It scales well, so you can use this to estimate how long other hardware will render your own scenes. So hopefully that will allow you to make the best decision for you. I'd also suggest peaking at used prices, as you can save hundreds right now (and possibly get a 1070 instead of a 1060.) Keep in mind that warranties can transfer, so you can ask a seller how much if any warranty remains.
Thanks for this! There's some really good info here.
Gotcha. 1070 is better, but I'll have to spend a bit more or do some daily sale-searching. Otherwie the 1060 is the easier, cheaper route.
...however beware on eBay as that is usually an auction price and those can run for days. I've watched 1070s there for several weeks and most usually end up around 450$ - 460$ when all is said and done. When there is a Buy it Now price. offered it can be anywhere from around 550$ - 700$ (particularly for the Founders Edition model). Also if you bid on eBay it's good to have a PayPal account because most sellers won't take any other method of payment.
Also keep in mind you are most likely getting a "used" card for that price.
Agreed that a 1080 is most optimal but if you don't do very large scenes, a 1060 should be adequate.
I'd say buy the most VRAM you can get for your price range. The number of Cuda cores is irrelevant if your card can't load the scene. So in your price range, you can get a 1060 6 Gb new. The next higher card would be the 1070 with 8 Gb for almost $200 more.
I can't comment on Ebay, I've never used it. I need to, to get rid of some of my junk vintage hardware, I just haven't taken the plunge. Good luck.
If you're willing to take a risk on Ebay, try looking into maybe a Titan. There are the 6 gb versions going for your price range of 300 all the time, and you can get the 12 gb versions for around 500 sometimes. I would recomend trying to look for cards where the seller takes returns, just to make sure you don't get a bunk card, but paypal and ebay can help sometimes when that happens. Watch out for non working cards too, people tend to off load thier broken cards a lot, read the discription and look at the seller's ratings. I know everyone has to start somewhere, but if someone has like 0 history and is trying to sell something for hundreds of dollars you may what to be careful with them. Not saying they will be a scammer, but if someone has hundreds of transactions and a 100% rating I would go for that seller over someone with a bad rating or no history.
Titans have thousands of cuda cores where the 1050ti is around 700 and the 1060 about 1200. The titans are around 3000-4000 depending on the versions.
But again, that's if you're willing to take the risk of a used card that only the gods know what has been done with it.
I went with a Titan X from Ebay. The 12GB of vram, availablity, and price were appealing. If you are patient, and bid at the last minute, you can pick them up for less than $500. I got one for a little over $400. Birmstoneomega has some good tips posted above. Also be careful of the Titan X hydro copper - that comes with the cool engraved cooling block, but you will generally have to provide your own water cooling system, which is not cheap. The Titan X Hybrid, on the other hand, comes with a sealed cooling system, but you have to be able to mount the radiator and fan somewhere. I wanted the Hydro Copper because I already had parts for a cooling system.
Someone posted in the benchmark thread, I believe, that the Titan X rendered about as fast as a 1070 or 1070 ti, can't find the post.
...indeed and some of the lower cost 1070s might very well have come out of mining rigs, so YMMV greatly based on how heavily the card was (ab)used and who the maker is. For example I read in a couple reviews that the Gigabyte Gaming 1070 tended to have issues with fan durability/reliability.
I remember that benchmark as well, however, considering I tend to create rather large scenes the extra 4 GB of VRAM outweighs the higher efficiency of a newer generation processor/memory set. As mentioned, if the scene can't be held in memory it won't matter how many CUDA cores you have as you are down to the core/thread count of your CPU..
Also I'd totally avoid Craigslist no matter how temping an offer sounds for the very reasons Birmstoneomega mentioned concerning "reputability".
Do note that CUDA cores are not equal across generations. Here is a perfect example. The 680 has exactly double the CUDA cores as a 1050ti, but the 1050ti actually performs on par with it, and maybe even beats it. The 680 is from 2012, the 1050ti is 4 or 5 years newer. So while the older Titans do have thousands of CUDAs, they are slower ones. I recall that the 1070 was pitched by Nvidia as being on par or better than the Titan Maxwell at launch, and I think that holds true for Iray (I could be wrong.) But of course, many Titans have 12 GB of VRAM. General rule of thumb is around 30% gain for new models of the same number.
Just note a Titan is going to be far more power hungry, especially an older one.
...true, 250w Fortunately my PSU can easily handle it. I also now have7 case fans including a large one on the side panel right where the GPU is (where today most cases have that window).
Yeah, I'm definitely hoping that newer models are more efficient/faster in comparison to older technology. We'll see how it goes. Thank you to everybody for their input!
just went to tiger direct..the prices are jaw droppiong. even 1050Ti is well over $300.
Ebay, which i refuse to use..most over $450 for 1070 cards.
Newegg has a bunch of 1050Ti cards in low $200 range.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100007709 601273503
Newegg also has some 1060 6gig pretty cheap compared to most places ...$340 or so
Can you wait 2-3 months? By then Nvidia will release new models probably making older ones cheaper
Newegg's the best retailer I've seen so far. Amazon may have cheaper prices once in a while, but their search engine is crappy. You routinely get cards that don't fit your search. Newegg's way more organized. Plus I'd rather support the small guy.
I'd like to use Ebay one day, but I don't have the time to figure out how their whole system works, which buyers you can trust, bait and switch scams, etc. I guess it's good if you already know that stuff, but I'm a slow learner and it'd probably be an expensive lesson for me. I'll just stick with good old retail.
I'd say a 1060 6Gb is the best card available for $350 or less right now.
Best to wait 2 to 3 months. Not only because Nvidia will come out with new cards, but old cards will drop in price. Cryptomining prices/hype is cooling off a bit.
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
The list price of the NVIDIA reference card is $299 (out of stock), vs. $289 + shipping for this EVGA model in the link. So, this price is not inflated.
Well, if you consider the 1060 is approaching 2 years old it kind of is still high. Normally the bigger cards would be at least $50 to $100 cheaper than launch at this stage of their life. But aside from that, I worry about it only having a single fan. Iray can be harder on GPUs than video games, though it depends on the user. I know the 1060 is much more efficient than most cards (that's why miners love it so much,) but I'd still be paranoid about it.
Anyway, KEEP WAITING if you can. Everybody is expecting the market to plunge, including the board makers.
https://wccftech.com/nvidia-and-amd-graphics-card-aibs-are-expecting-a-plunge-of-up-to-40-in-demand-in-april/
If demand really drops that much, whoa, prices will drop like a stone. Now this could backfire. If the AIBs cut production and there is a sudden spike, we'd all be screwed over yet again. Still, I strongly advise holding out, especially as the 1100 series looms. The Pascal cards are now entering a lame duck phase and should drop.
Just to note, every single GPU I have ever bought has been from ebay. Granted, I'm only one person and I haven't bought a ton of them, but they all have worked. I bought from people who have sold other things besides electronics. Basically they seemed like normal people who were simply upgrading their PCs, which is what they claimed. I didn't do auctions, I just can't stomach that. If you are willing, you can get super deals, but an auction requires fighting for the item and I don't have time for that. A buy it now item doesn't have that, you just click and buy. Done. And again, if the item isn't too old, it may still have a warranty which can transfer. GPUs generally all have 3 year warranties. But the 1000 series is not 3 years old yet. That means most of the 1000s out there should still be under warranty. You can check with each manufacturer to see if they allow the transfer of a warranty on second hand sales. I'm pretty sure most do. The serial number tells them exactly when it was made.
I just bought a used Titan 6GB for $300 on ebay today based on your recommendation. I'll see how it goes. Titans seems better suit for 3D rendering.