Which One? GTX 970, 980, 980Ti, Titan X For Vray RT and Viewport

kothu · December 17, 2015

Hi friends, i am planing to buy one of these card (970,980,980 TI or Titan X) for Rendering with Vray RT GPU and Viewport Performance. (for a lot of a lot of millions of polygon ). I don't know which one to buy. My current GPU is old now (GTX 560). Can i get significant viewport performance if i change to 970? or even Vray RT GPU? Is 980 Ti worth to buy over 980? Pls give me ur advice and experiment about one of these card. pls don't mention about " Quadro the Pro" cards Coz i only use 3ds max, PS, and Unreal4.

Nikolaos M · December 17, 2015

If you have the cash, go for the Titan X. In gpu rendering, the more cuda, the better and 12gb of Vram is the biggest amount your money could buy today. In viewport performance these cards should perform relatively close to each other, but I guess that the 980Ti and the Titan X would have a slight lead hear too.

kothu · December 24, 2015

Thanks Nikolaos!. For Viewport Only, Will 970 be enough? Is there any significant viewport performance between 970 vs 980 and 980Ti? bcoz i can't decide which rendering system to invest (CPU or GPU). I also want to make animation walkthrough rendering too.

Nikolaos M · December 24, 2015

The 970 would be decent in viewports. Many CG artists use this gpu and the feedback so far is good.

If you have the cash, spend it on either a 970, or go for the top cards, like the 980Ti and the Titan X. The 980 has 4gb of vram and wouldn't be a huge upgrade from a 970. But the other two are much better in several fields, especially if you make up your mind about gpu rendering.

kothu · December 25, 2015

Thanks a lot for helping me out! I haven't decided complete to jump into GPU rendering. But I want to do GPU rendering for Interior and Interior walkthrough animation bcoz a lot of user said GPU rendering is way faster than CPU. I also want reasonable faster view port frame rate. My Current project will be over 20 million poly (large housing aerial view). My old graphic card GTX 560 can't handle that much. But some say viewport performance is also concern with CPU single core performance. Is that right? my current CPU is i7 2600 (i will definitely change to i7 5960x or dual xeon in newyear! ). Happy X'mas Nikolaos!

joelmcwilliam · December 25, 2015

Yes, the cpu single core performance is important for most pro software. That is because for modelling only the program is written in such a way that it only use one cpu core. So a cpu with a high single core clock/speed will be preferable. For modelling only for example an overclocked pentium g3258 to 4,2 ghz will be faster than your i7 2600 clocked at 3,8 ghz.

So if you want your models to be build up fast, you have to look at the single core speed/clock of the cpu. In the example i mentioned 4,2 ghz is higher than 3,8 ghz.

For rendering pro software is written to use all of the cores/threads of a cpu.

kothu · December 25, 2015

WEW..... that make me more difficult to decide between and i7 and xeon. BTW thanks for ur help!

I am currently trying to upgrade my system with the budget between 2500 - 3000 USD for just Motherboard, CPU(s), Ram and GPU. I can't go higher than 3000 bcoz i need to save around 500 USD to buy some plug in i like.

What i want to do is handling large aerial scene with good viewport framerate for moving houses from here to there (i model the house in separate file) and want to do some high quality interior walkthrough animation (1080P). What i currently considering is -

Motherboard - ASUS Z10PE D16

CPU - two xeon (may be "USED")

RAM - 64GB ECC

GPU - GTX 970 (if this card handle over 20 million poly) or go to 980Ti

But if the viewport performance is calculate with single core performance of CPU will i7 5960x be faster than Two Xeons? such as 2x e5 2630 v3. BTW will two xeon outperform 5960x in Realflow simulation? Coz i am planing to learn that

Nikolaos M · December 26, 2015

Merry Christmas, Ko Thu!

With a 2,5-3K$ the dual Xeon solution is not a good option, I think. First of all, it would be difficult to find s2011 Xeons in used parts, and if you did, their price wouldn't be a bargain anyway.

Buy a 5960X and try to oc as high as you can. A 4.4GHz oc is a realistic target with a good cooling solution. This would be better in single-threaded performance than any Xeon you could find out there.

Check this list:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X 3.0GHz 8-Core Processor ($999.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Motherboard: Asus X99-DELUXE/U3.1 ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard ($388.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws 4 series 64GB (8 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($329.99 @ Newegg)

Video Card: Asus GeForce GTX Titan X 12GB Video Card ($993.99 @ SuperBiiz)

Total: $2712.96

If you don't have a good chassis and a high-end cpu cooler, it's a good time to upgrade with this system.

kothu · December 26, 2015

Thanks again Nikolaos! So system with 5960x + GTX970 will provide better viewport performance than system with two xeon 2630v3 + GTX970? for example.

The problem with Titan X is that ,it is overpriced in singapore (around $1200).

Nikolaos M · December 26, 2015

I think that viewport performance is mainly a gpu thing, and the cpu comes in when calculations have to be done while altering the design, i.e. while adding parts, filleting, applying modifiers etc.

The Titan X is the best solution if you can afford it, mostly because of the 12gb vram. If 6gb are enough for your needs then the 980Ti is the next option.