GTX 960 / gtx 970

[niloyarifin]

hi,

this is my second post about this. On the last one a lots of helpful people suggest me, what i need and where should i look for . And on basis of their suggestion i choose this specification....

 

BUDGET- 1200$ (more or less)

 

i7 4790k

asus vii renger

g skill trident x 2400 (8x2)

asus strix 960 2g

thermaltake smart 530M

Thermaltake Core V51 http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/products-model.aspx?id=C_00002402

 

WHAT I WORK WITH-

 

sketch up 2015, v-ray 2.0 (modeling and rendering)

photoshop cs5/cs6

adobe illustrator cs6

autocad 2013

3D Max 2015, v ray (modeling and rendering)

 

sometimes, i work for a urban designer. and then i have to work with a urban scale scenes which have millions of polygons.

and most of the time my (as a 4th year archi student) own projects are in usual scale (u know what i am talking about) with a decent amount of textures.

 

TOP PRIORITIES-

 

minimizing viewport lag

least flickering(flipping back and forth between wire-frame and realistic mode).

smoot performance for CAD, photoshop and illustrator and minimizing the hung ups while working with big file.

Fast preview render. final render is not a big deal, i can do another task after giving the command.

 

LESS PRIORITIES-

 

as much as high final render speed i can get from it by using GPU Accelerated Rendering.

gaming (but i m not a game-freak.so gaming quality is no need to be high)

 

now,

for high core(both single and multi) performance i choose 4790k. i dont choose 5820k bcoz, for that i need costly x99 board with ddr4 ram(which r also expensive). i want to do mid range OC, thats why i choose that asus board. and for smoothing photoshop and illustrator performance i choose 16gb ram.

 

about GTX 9XX series, everywhere i found it is pretty good with this types of work(like 3d max). now in most of them they suggest gtx980 or gtx970(where budget is a matter). but for my budget i choose gtx 960. but i dont find a single benchmark or review about its modeling or rendering performance.

 

now there is a way i can get a gtx 970 instead of gtx960. for that i hav to go for a non K version. i7 4790(which have less core performance than 4790K). and a less expensive mother board with 8gb of ram.

 

NOW TELL ME, DOSE THE PERFORMANCE OF 970 WORTH THIS?

SO, DO I NEED 970 INSTEAD OF 960?

 

OR, i can do another thing i can get a gtx 770(1 year used) at the same price of gtx 960.(though i am not pretty sure about its availability)

 

P.S.-

***suggest me about the cooling of this casing/system.

***at this moment i cant buy a ssd. But in between 2-3 month i'll be able to get one.

***if u have any suggestion please give me.i have a pretty low knowledge about all this.

 

 

THANX IN ADVANCE. if i said something wrong then forgive me.

[niloyarifin]

bump

[RyderSK]

I'll make it simple:

 

If you're on limited budget, I wouldn't bother with GPU rendering. Even if you opted for 970 with 4GB memory, it would limit you far too much in scope and speed (although it depends on your renderer of choice. You can go farther if you opt for tweakable/biased renderer like Redshift, and would have more issue if you went with full pathtracer like Octane).

 

Therefore I would re-allocate your budget against toward hexacore like 5820k and save your budget and buy 750Ti only. It has almost the same performance than 960 would. But definitely buy at least those 16GB ram.

 

If you're extremely keen on GPU rendering, you can stay with 4790 but then definitely allocate your budget towards 970/4GB . I personally don't suggest this route but it's the bare minimum you'll need to be production-ready.

 

 

Now to your components:

 

-Don't spend on (stupidly) expensive enthusiast motherboard if you aren't one. These are luxury products which yield minimal benefit for maximum price increase. This means extreme overclocking (past 4.8+ Ghz), support for extensive GPU arrays (Tri/Quad), and tons of...useless features for workstation. Buy the most basic one. It will serve you equally good, and give you very decent overclock (any board can go past 4.2+ given good chip/ pure luck* )

 

-Don't spend on (stupidly) expensive memory modules. Memory speed affects very little in today's computers, and esp. almost nothing in CGI work like modelling or rendering. Buy basic, low-clocked (1600-1866 DDR3/ 2133-2400 DDR4, only buy the higher if you can buy it for the same price, if not, buy the cheaper), low-profile (so you can use any air cooler tower).

 

-I am ok with 80+Bronze if you're on budget. Thermaltake 530M is budget PSU by ChannelWell, a good OEM manufacturer.

 

-For the money you saved, buy 256GB Samsung 850EVO, you can get it for 120 dollars. It will make night and day difference to your workstation. GPU won't.

[niloyarifin]

Thanks ryder for your suggestion. It helps me a lot. 750ti it is.

 

But , i have another question about the ram. According to your suggestion i choose a g skill value oriented low profile ram. But the latency is 11. Is it gonna matter at all?

[Dimitris Tolios]

No, getting modules with latency 9 or 10 or 11 etc, leads to minuscule differences that are in-perceivable in real life performance.

 

Also all latency timings are relative to the memory clock. Measured in nanoseconds (this is the scale of things these days, and time duration is an absolute number, not relative - at least in our macro world with down-to-earth speeds), DDR3 2133 with CAS 11 has much lower latency than a DDR3 1600 CAS 11 (actually almost as fast as DDR3 1600 CAS 8).

 

And since there are little differences between DDR3 1600 and 2133 in real performance, when both bandwidth and latency is difference, splitting hair about a couple of nanoseconds difference when having the same bandwidth/clock is unrealistic.

[niloyarifin]

Thanx dtolios. U solve my problem

 

But, then in which cases it does matter? Gaming?

Edited April 18, 2015 by niloyarifin

[dmitriyyemelianenko]

I'm completely agree with Juraj, I have 750ti in my current workstation and it absolutely fine. And 5820K for CPU rendering is a much better choice than 960/970 for GPU, if we can compare of course.

[niloyarifin]

Which cpu do u use? 5820? @dimitri

[dmitriyyemelianenko]

I've got 4770K 4,5Ghz with Noctua NH D14 and 16Gb DDR3 1600 and I'm fully satisfied with this rig. I'm thinking about GPU rendering and really wanna try Octane, but I wohn't go there with less than 2x980 or 1 Titan X.

I guess that with 960/970 you just can't see any benefits of GPU rendering, it would be slow and you will always have memory limit problem.

[joelmcwilliam]

Hej Man, can you give a link from where you will be buying your stuff from?

[Dimitris Tolios]

We are carried away slightly but if one would be "ok" with 2x 980s as far as mem goes, would be just as fine with 970s. Both have 4GB VRAM, both can access all 4GB, some speed issues the 970 might have when filling all the VRAM are irrelevant for what GPGPU demands, and you can technically have 3x 970s for less than what 2x 980s cost, working notably faster.

 

Also, either 2x 970s or 2x 980s will be faster than a single Titan X, in case of the 2x 970s that will happen with similar wattage too.

 

IMHO, 980s are not that good of a value for GPGPU, and picking them over 970 makes little sense: performance difference is not justified by the price difference. Should 980s but no 970s become available with 8GB, this would be an incentive to swallow the 980 price-tag-pill, but just as speculation today.

 

Also, before condemning anything with "just 4GB of VRAM", take a look at what people are able to produce since octane & VRay RT / iray came out with just 1 & 2 GB cards.

[niloyarifin]

Actially.... I m not very much concern about gpu rendering.... At least not for 1 year... All i want good viewport performances ....@lianenko

[dmitriyyemelianenko]

Sorry for offtopic

I absolutely agree that 980 is not the best bang for the buck, and 3x970 will be a much better option than 2x980.

 

Maybe I just express my thoughts wrong, it wasn't a recomandation to buy 2x980, it was just thoughts about personal build, I've got matx build and in this case the more power I'll have in single GPU the better. As for the VRAM limitations I just think that it is better to avoid it, if there is such opportunity. There was also similar theme on Octane forum some time ago, but with 2x970 and almost everyone recommends to go for one titan x.

 

If GPU rendering is not in future plans than I don't see any points in spending money on 970.

[niloyarifin]

Yeah man.... Thanx...