graphics card for GPU based rendering?

[manish_mv]

Dear All

 

I hope you are at the best of your health while reading this.

 

As some of you might be aware of GPU based rendering technology is improving and evolving at an exponential rate like Vray GPU, Iray Arion etc. My question is what are the aspects of a Graphic card whether ATI or NVIDIA really determine the performance of GPU based rendering system for example is it the core clock, shader clock, memory interface, video memory, CUDA core (NVIDIA) etc.

 

Any help in this regard is greatly appreciated.

 

Regards

Manish Kumar

[Slinger]

first and foremost the CUDA cores, as they are the workforce. Second I would say would be vram because you have to have sufficient vram to render a model. Thirdly would be shader clock.

[AJLynn]

These Geforce 580 3GB cards are starting to show up in (very limited) stock. That's probably your best bet for the renderers you mentioned.

[mariohansen]

Great information , thanks for sharing,its very cool to hear someone cite another use of this type of setup. i have get some useful data from here.

[Slinger]

These Geforce 580 3GB cards are starting to show up in (very limited) stock. That's probably your best bet for the renderers you mentioned.

As well as the Gainward version: http://www.gainward.com/main/edm/GTX580_Phantom/gw_edm_GTX580_Phantom.html

 

FYI: Gainward and Palit are now the same company but Palit sells in the USA and Gainward in Europe and elsewhere.

Here is a link to see if you can get one: http://www.gainward.com/main/wtb.php?lang=en

 

Personally I want the Gainward version b/c the cooler is nicer

Edited March 4, 2011 by Slinger

[pablo scapi]

I have not purchased Vray 2.0, so hadn´t try the GPU rendering but i wonder if my own card can support it, it´s an ATI HD 5870 1GB.

I read all the time about the CUDA and Nvidia cards, do we need Nvidia for GPU rendering?

 

Also about the ones you mention, wouldn´t this one be a better choice being dual

http://www.pccomponentes.com/gigabyte_geforce_gtx_590_3072mb_gddr5.html

Thank you.

[AJLynn]

So, Vray RT GPU doesn't actually use CUDA, it uses OpenCL, which is cross platform. BUT they had trouble with making it work on ATI cards. That's been a work in progress for a while, so you should consult the Chaosgroup forum and maybe email them because I can't testify to the exact state of the implementation for ATI cards, which cards it runs on and how well it works - which is why I've still been only recommending nVidia to Vray RT GPU users.

 

The card you linked to looks like two 580 cards mounted to one board. Each GPU has access to 1.5GB. While the 580 has its GPU clocked at 772MHz, the 590 has two of the same GPU but downclocked to 607MHz. So it's faster than one 580, but slower than two 580's, and you don't get the benefit of being able to load a scene that takes 3GB of GPU RAM - since each GPU needs to load the full scene separately, you can only load scenes that require 1.5GB (the 1.5GB per CPU is separate - not added to get 3GB).

[pablo scapi]

Thank you for the clarification AJLynn

[Slinger]

Yes Andrew is corrected,the GTX590 is basically a de-tuned GTX580x2 on one PCB.

the 3gb of ram is misleading as it really is 1.5gb per gpu. The GTX590 basically is 2 cards in one.

eVGA has comfiremd though that a 3gb GTX580 will be released shortly here with in the states and should be priced nicely. I plan to pick one up when they are released.

[AJLynn]

EVGA too? That's good - right now, with just one supplier, the 3GB cards don't stay in stock.

[Slinger]

Yep, they confirmed it on their forums which I frequent daily. I think they were waiting to see what kind of demand would be had. The cards will be made for gamers wanting to go 3d surround but we designers will benefit from it. The price has not been set yet, but I would say it will be very comparable to other 3gb cards.

Also, eVGA released their version of the GTX590 2 days ago. Cool thing is, they have watercooled ones and they have dual pack ones, meaning you get 2 in a box, of course the price goes up but it is very cool. Check this out:

 

http://www.evga.com/articles/00621/

 

 

Make sure and watch the video of the unboxing.

[AJLynn]

Wow, one box with 2048 "cores" and a T-shirt The price is high but it's actually less than one Quadro 5000 and there's more than 6x as much CUDA processing power included, so you could actually make the argument that the 2-pack makes sense.

[Superkames]

Anyone tried the Catalyst 11.3 with the HD69xx yet ? One of my friend told me that his 2*HD6950 is a little faster than 2*GTX 570 (Vray RT GPU) with that driver .So if that is true , you should use the 4gbHD6990 instead of that 3gb GTX 590 .

[AJLynn]

The Radeons were faster than the Geforces for Vray RT-GPU use? I want to be sure you're talking about OpenCL rendering on the video cards here. That would be a welcome change, because the last time I saw numbers the ATI boards were lagging behind the nVidia boards at Vray RT-GPU - though whether that was because ATI's driver was not performing well or because Chaosgroup had not yet been able to write a good implementation for ATI wasn't something I could figure out with any certainty, because the disparity in speed was too much to be accounted for by difference in actual processing power. It would be great to have both companies making products that are good for GPU rendering, so there could be some more options for the customers.

 

Now also keep in mind that the 6990 has the same memory limitation as the 590 - both are dual GPU cards, with half the memory assigned to each GPU. So on the 590 you can't load a scene that requires 3GB, you can only load one that requires 1.5GB (because each GPU's memory needs to load the full scene). Same with the 6990 - you can't load a 4GB scene, only a 2GB scene.

 

So neither card can load as large a scene as the 3GB version of the 580, but both the dual GPU scenes can process a scene that they are able to load faster than any of the single GPU cards available.

[Superkames]

Dear AJLynn , the test file from Chaosgroup forum , and tested with Vray RT GPU for 3dsmax .

 

http://vozforums.com/showpost.php?p=28334704&postcount=345

 

He told me that :

 

A

CPU 1090T

RAM 16 GB

2 x 6950

Crosshair IV Extreme

B

I7 980

Ram 12 GB

2 x 570

Rampage III Extreme

 

The test file from Chaosgroup .

 

2 x 6950 1m34s

 

 

2 x 570 1m41s

 

 

6950 + 570 lucid on: crash

 

6950 + 570 lucid off: 2m45

 

Maybe next time , I'll ask him for a clearly screenshot .

[AJLynn]

Well now that's just cool. I'll have to look into it a bit more.