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nvidia or amd cards?


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hi all!

 

i was wondering if someone can explain the difference of using amd cards (r9 290...and the new one generation) versus nvidia cards (gtx 960,970,980)...

 

i'm using sketchup for main modeling tool,and vray as render engine.sometimes i use 3ds max only for converting some models (creating proxyies,exporting models in different format - simlab converter)...since 5y ago started using sketchup with plenty of plugins and i already have everything i need... recently i bought an asus strix 960 oc, and tryied using some gpu rendering engines when i realize that for small house i made, memory almost eat all of those 2gb of ddr5...so.. anyone have experience with amd / nv cards with memory over 4gb? with this card in modeling i have really nice viewport performance (sketchup) ,but have to ask myself what if buy one with more memory...mainly i want to experiment with gpu engines,and in latest time i start to explore lumion...you all know what i'm pointing at...so i would appreciate suggestion,thanks

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Some simple facts first (others will add more specific clues).

 

Viewport performance mainly depends on the API each program uses and on how well each gpu corresponds to it. 3ds max uses Direct3D and this means that all mid/mid-high end consumer gpus with at least 2gb of Vram would suffice. Other programs use OpenGL (Archicad, Catia etc.) and favor proffecional cards that have better driver optimization for this kind of use.

 

Now, gpu rendering is a totally different story. All known (to me) gpu rendering machines like iray, Vray RT-gpu, Octane, Furry Ball, Redshift etc. are CUDA based, so, Nvidia is a one-way street in this case. I recently learned about Indigo that's said to support both CUDA and OpenCL, so AMD cards should work with it, but I don't really know much more on that.

 

GPU rendering is much more demanding when we are talking about Vram use, so 2 or 3gb are an absolute minimum and only for simple models (I tested iray with a car model I am working on lately, and memory use reached 2gb in no time). 4gb are still not quite enough. I would say that for serious gpu rendering only cards with 6gb of Vram or more are an option. The upper limit at this moment is 12gb and only two cards have it: Titan X and the two top quadros, K6000 and M6000. TitanX is the most affordable option right now. Gpu rendering uses single-precision floating points, so th e quadros are not a necessity.

Edited by nikolaosm
ATI=API
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