Graphics Card technical specs

#7

That’s fundamentally incorrect.
There are currently more available CUDA or double OCL + CUDA implementations than there are OCL engines.
VRay RT in example offers both.
And while nVIDIA isn’t putting much stock in OCL and optimizing accordingly (unsurprisingly), it can and will run both unless there are hardware targeted optimizations.
AMD will lock you with OCL only for now.
That precludes you a lot of products such as Octane (CUDA only), RedShift (CUDA only) and some pretty decent CUDA extensions for other softwares.
At this point in time CUDA is quite simply more adopted, more mature, better documented, and much better served. Giving it up for some mythical apps that benefit from OCL is not reasonable. Not unless you are putting together a folding rig, or a bitcoin miner and so on. In DCC OCL is largely not of the relevance we’d all hope for yet.

I guess you’re correct in saying that CUDA is used a lot more in software, but the most used renderers are not limited to CUDA. AMD, even though limited to OpenCl, excels more than Nvidia in OpenCl. And benchmarks have shown that Nvidia CUDA speeds are almost, if not equivalent to their OpenCL speeds. Which means that i can conclude that if AMD were to support CUDA, Nvidia’s gonna get their ass whipped. Its a pity that all these renderers only support CUDA, I guess its SDK is more user friendly. But as for Vray-RT, OpenCL and CUDA are on par, AMD beats Nvidia, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THE TITAN.

Incorrect at best.
FLOPs are floating point operations per second, NOT double precision ops. Big difference. DP FlOps aren’t an atomic operation, you don’t meausre by them.
Double precision involves a lot more to be taken into consideraiton, not last that many videocards are artificially crippled in their DP for market phasing (IE: GTX 6 and 7 cards, but not the 5s, quadros or Titans).

I wasnt going into depth, thats just more or less an introductory explanation.

I’m not entirely sure where you are going with this.
It’s a 386 to Pentium set of notions. Modern CPUs are not that simple.
There is a lot more differentiating the two than that, and CPU architecture these days is ridiculously complex. A number of other factors will also come into play (IE: whether the compiler was set to, or even able, to take advantage of some features).

But I cannot be proved wrong. Indeed CPUs are increasingly complex nowadays, but can you explain why the intel i7-2600K is capable of about 125GFLOPS, meanwhile the Radeon HD7970 does about 4.2TFLOPS

You keep mentioning OCL as if it’s the premiere, or even the only, GPU rendering platform. That is a million miles off the truth.
nVIDIA has such an overwhelming dominance in the DCC market that nobody in their right mind would make an OCL only commercial product. It’s easier to find something CUDA only than it is to find something OCL only between products of any relevance.

Crossfire will do absolutely nothing for your viewport, and is generally regarded as a waste of money outside of gaming.
On top of that the 79xx has considerable syncronicity issues when it really gets taxed (IE: offline rendering on a GPU).

You’re wrong there, Crossfire and SLI increase viewport speeds, most notably when handling very large scenes.

I still do not think a GPU upgrade is necessary. Invest in Xeons

#8

Thanks all for continued help! I don’t think i’ve ever considered so many options for a hardware purchase - attempting to bridge the gap between gaming and workstation is a first for me (normally ive just got by with gaming tech, but now as i’ve pretty much qualified as architect - its becoming a bit more necessary to have a bit of professional oomph.

I did eventually get the 780… It almost became a K4000 for a moment, but I decided i’d like to go with a gaming card for now and see how my visualisation freelance things take off. Whilst I hear the advice here about my 570 being ok, it isnt coping well (viewport fps) with the scenes from my student projects, and as I become more proficient its just going to be a more annoying problem. I’ve also realised that rendering isnt really an issue for me as my cpu seems to belt through vray scenes with little or no problems, so ok there for now. It turned out my main concern was limited to viewport, which I think the 780 will help with for now!

Cheers for all the help - all been great at steering through a difficult purchase! :slight_smile:

-Kev

#9

Absolutely not. Max and Revit (and all other DCC apps afaik) just dont support it for viewport operations. Only gpu renderers will, but even then SLI is not required nor beneficial.

Oh, and I wouldnt “invest” in Xeons either…

#10

AMD can’t support CUDA, it’s nVIDIA’s property.
Besides, what “most used renderers” are not limited to CUDA?w VRay RT is the only relevant one I can think of with double support.
Octane, RedShift, iRay are all CUDA only.

I wasnt going into depth, thats just more or less an introductory explanation.

Sorry, but it was a WRONG expalanation, not an introductory one.

But I cannot be proved wrong. Indeed CPUs are increasingly complex nowadays, but can you explain why the intel i7-2600K is capable of about 125GFLOPS, meanwhile the Radeon HD7970 does about 4.2TFLOPS

Huh?
I wasn’t saying the FLOPs are not like that, I was saying your explanation of CPUs was poor at best, and overly dated for sure.

You’re wrong there, Crossfire and SLI increase viewport speeds, most notably when handling very large scenes.

Neither XFire or SLI accelerate any major DCC app viewport. That’s known, confirmed by employees of the various software houses and so on.
People in these forums ask these questions because they are about to spend their hard earned money, unless you know something for certain hold the advice, especially when it’s bad advice.

I still do not think a GPU upgrade is necessary. Invest in Xeons

And why should one “invest” in Xeons? It’s got absolutely nothing to do with the topic.
Oh well…

#11

You’re wrong there, Crossfire and SLI increase viewport speeds, most notably when handling very large scenes.

No, they don’t.

#12

I said he should invest in Xeons because it would help his rendering, as it is the final render that matters, nobody except himself cares about the viewport. And the xeons will really benefit his rendering. Far more than CUDA or OpenCL. CPU rendering is still dominant in VFX for films, so forget about the quadros, keplers, and tahitis. Get a good server with a couple of SandyBridge EXes and start yourself a render farm/supercomputer.

But I read on a forum that SLI/Crossfire benefit to Max’s viewport.
Heres the link

#13

OK, so you have a single post on a viz forum from a few years back VS the software developers themselves stating SLI is not supported by their software…

I guess you havent been in CG for very long :wink:

#14

Actually, i havent been in CG for long cos i havent been in life for long. I’m just 14, I have school to keep up with, I barely have time to work, but when i do, the results come out pretty good. I’ve been working with max since 2009 But im far from expertise. Im at the limit of what my time allows me to do. You can’t blame me.

I didnt check the date on that, but since its the only post i saw, i thought so. Thats why im saving up to get another 7970 to make crossfire.

#15

:banghead:

#16

why hit your head against the wall?

#17

Last I heard Chaos Group was planning on dropping OCL support in V-Ray. So I guess that leaves what, Indigo?

#18

I can’t stand watching AMD being segregated like this. It simply isn’t fair. Wicked Nvidia and Renderer developers

#19

Aiming a gun squarely at your own feet and then pulling the trigger isn’t ‘being segregated’…

#20

It’s not segregation at all.
nVIDIA got there first, provided GPGPU focused resources for farming (Tesla) early on and is therefore ahead of the curve. As a brand it’s much more widely adopted in the DCC market, and CUDA is simply a more mature, served and docuemented platform than OCL for many applications, not to mention that nVIDIA has broad support of technology and a clearer and more responsive driver dev map and bugfix rate, and has had linux and scientific community support for much longer than ATI’s pre and post-acquisition.

It’s simply a much stronger candidate and an easier platform to work with. AMD is way behind in all those regards, and while OCL is an open standard, which is good, it’s far from being enough to push people into adoption. especially when the CPU partners don’t care much for it.
We’ll see if HSA will blow anybody’s socks off, which won’t be for a few years anyway, and if they ever will get anywhere close to the farm market, but for now you can’t blame developers or call foul play if they decide not to support OCL yet. They have practically no incentive to.

So, what happened to all these amazing OCL products you mentioned as dominating the market before and would advise buying an OCL focused card for? Thought of any yet? :slight_smile:

#21

Let’s not rip his heart out just yet, folks.

Lanre, you’re young and while your intentions are good, butting heads against long-standing and very experienced techs and CG artists here will not win you any points, son. Relax. Do your own thing, but listen to what people here are saying. It will help you, nobody is telling you these things to hurt you. But if you come in here and misinform people about topics you’re merely speculating on, you’re not going to get good reactions. The original poster here was asking for advice on how to spend his money - and you gave him bad advice. Don’t do that. Better to know nothing than to know something wrong.

If you blow your own money on dual-GPU Radeon or Crossfire setup only to find, just as everyone else in the universe (including the people who developed the software you’re using in the first place) has told you, that it has no effect on the Viewport itself, you’ll feel pretty bad! And we don’t want you to feel bad.

Relax. Absorb all this information, and it’s entirely okay to be wrong. To be wrong is to be a scientist! Being right is easy. :slight_smile:

#22

I’d just like to add that I did eventually get the 780 (MSI twin frozr for £499). I have been blown away by its gaming performance, but as Imashination suggested early on… it hasn’t actually improved my 3DS max / Revit / Sketchup /Rhino viewport experience much. My scenes take roughly about the same time to load (I’m going to see how a ssd remedies this in coming weeks), and about the same time to respond to a command (say orbit)… however once orbiting… the card is much smoother and runs at what I would estimate to be a fair improvement in fps. (Sadly i didn’t fraps my old card so I cant compare sorry). In conclusion: I am glad I didn’t spend extra on a Titan that probably wouldn’t have helped much more.

What I am doing next is trying to improve my CPU by OCing (running at stock speed of 3.4 - which I hope to get up to 4.5 or higher), and I’ve bought a fancy watercooler (h100i) to help with this (I know there are cheaper alternatives - but my system was running hot and this one had good reviews).

Finally… In the hopefully not to distant future, I hope to get a quaddro card. I am hoping this will have a significant increase in fps for viewport, and will probably (nearer the time) run a new post asking for advice on how best to do this (and which one to go for). Thanks all very much for the help - and its been interesting reading the follow on conversation :thumbsup:

#23

That has nothing to do with the videocard (if you assumed it would), and it might or might not be affected by a new drive.
If the long load time is due to data transfer (large files), then it will improve considerably. But long load times can be just as commonly be a complex graph or preflight check, which are CPU bound.

and about the same time to respond to a command (say orbit)…

Also, usually, not videocard dependent.

however once orbiting… the card is much smoother and runs at what I would estimate to be a fair improvement in fps. (Sadly i didn’t fraps my old card so I cant compare sorry).

That’s the only thing of what you mentioned somewhat videocard related, hence why it’s the only place where you saw an improvement :slight_smile:

In conclusion: I am glad I didn’t spend extra on a Titan that probably wouldn’t have helped much more.

In terms of what you’ve described not at all. It would have made an enormous difference if you needed DP or if you were capping the RAM of your 780 though, but you don’t sound like you’re doing either.

What I am doing next is trying to improve my CPU by OCing (running at stock speed of 3.4 - which I hope to get up to 4.5 or higher), and I’ve bought a fancy watercooler (h100i) to help with this (I know there are cheaper alternatives - but my system was running hot and this one had good reviews).

If you haven’t unboxed it and can return it you could as well get an H50. It’s unlikely to be the cooler that will make the difference between 4.3 (practically guaranteed) and 4.7 (about one third of the CPUs make it there, only a small fraction past that). It will be down to how lucky your roll of the dice with that particular CPU will have been.
Cooling only makes a difference when you are truly and aggressively pushing the voltage to stabilize a big boost, and Haswell CPUs will normally pocket up heat internally and stay relatively high in temperature regardless of the small difference in dispersion capability between an H50 and an H100.

Finally… In the hopefully not to distant future, I hope to get a quaddro card. I am hoping this will have a significant increase in fps for viewport, and will probably (nearer the time) run a new post asking for advice on how best to do this (and which one to go for). Thanks all very much for the help - and its been interesting reading the follow on conversation :thumbsup:

In what situation? Because chances are it won’t :slight_smile:

#24

Thanks Jaco - hope you dont mind me asking for a little more clarification then? :slight_smile:

Can I ask then: The major 3D modelling packages - 3DS max, Rhino, Sketchup and Revit (for an architect - I’m only discounting autocad as i don’t use it for 3d)… What actually helps improve viewport performance?
(I’m hoping it isn’t something different for each one - although as I’m typing this I suspect it probably is!)

Well iI’ve unboxed and started using it - and am very pleased with the results. Its pretty much cut my heat output by 50% (now no higher than 45° at load). For future reference (in your opinion) how is the h50 better? I was torn between the h80i and the h100i - I chose the latter based on results saying it was one of the best closed loop water coolers… :slight_smile:

Finally - I suppose I may get some idea of this from my first question, but if the Quadro wouldnt help viewport, what actually does it do? In a situation where a CPU render engine (Vray) is used… how does a Quadro improve the software if not viewport?

Sorry for any confusion - its just interesting to get specific answers, read a bit around this subject and things are usually vague or contested…
Thanks for any light you can shed on the matter :slight_smile:
(PS: And sorry if this is going off topic - feel we’re still on same ish subject!)

#25

I can’t comment on Revit or Sketchup, but even for Max and Rhino, which I have a better understanding of, people often mention “viewport performance” but truly mean their interaction with the application in general.
A videocard is going to be uniquely responsible for a few things where other components make little to no difference.
Transforming shaded vertices, shading pixels for more complex shaders, drawing textures, handling all that data once it’s in the video ram and so on.

But, in example, moving a trim curve around has very little to do with the videocard as the actual most expensive part of it is all the high order surface work that’s usually CPU bound.
Same for subdivision surface modelling, by the time the videocard actually comes into play to draw the triangles (and a modern videocard can draw and transform an unholy amount of triangles) the CPU calculating the SDS will have taken a much bigger chunk of time and the videocard only plays a small part in your latency.

The videocard basically comes into play once the “mesh” feed is ready to be passed to the GPU. Before then (deforming, modelling, tweaking, the scene graph and so on) you’re heavily CPU bound.
Of course since there’s a lot of data transfer back and forth a strong videocard will cut that considerably, but when those operations on the CPU become complex enough the CPU time takes more and more while the actual transfer, shading and rendering usually takes a constant amount of time, making less and less difference.

Things change when, in example, you have a massive textured environment with complex shaders (DX ubershader) and a simple character moving in it, in that case the static environment coming into camera and all the shading work will be almost exclusively GPU bound and remain videocard side, and amount to a lot more work than deforming a simple character, therefore making the GPU shine.
Camera navigation of a complex, heavily textured and shaded environment is videocard dependent in example, “viewport performance” is a word with too many shades of gray. Well, two words.
Interaction and viewport performance are too often confused and mixed up, your interaction with the software depends on a number of factors, and whiere on the hardware the load lands is highly variant depending on what you’re doing.

Well iI’ve unboxed and started using it - and am very pleased with the results. Its pretty much cut my heat output by 50% (now no higher than 45° at load). For future reference (in your opinion) how is the h50 better? I was torn between the h80i and the h100i - I chose the latter based on results saying it was one of the best closed loop water coolers… :slight_smile:

I was suggesting it to save a few bucks.

The H100i is an excellent piece of kit and in every way superior to the H50 if you have the space in the case for it. Just the difference at normal overclock isn’t that sensitive.

IE: I run a 4770k at 4.7+ Ghz with very aggressive settings, a slight overvolting, and even a base bump with an h50 and if I really crank it with HT off and no rest/frequency drop settings it just doesn’t make it to 60, and under normal but constant load (games, working with apps topping it but not quite the same sustained effort of a simulation or rendering) it normally stays between 40 and 55…

Finally - I suppose I may get some idea of this from my first question, but if the Quadro wouldnt help viewport, what actually does it do?

It has features the gtx don’t have, such as per buffer 12bit per channel colour, support for hardware stereo and so on, it has uncrippled double precision performance in the 1/4th realm (the 7xx and 6xx are crippled to 1/24th, the Titan to 1/8th but is ahead of the k5k in sheer specs so doesn’t fall too behind) and so on.
The drivers also tend to implement features and settings that tend to bump DCC apps by a small margin.
If you don’t need those features, and the apps you listed don’t use them AFAIK, and you nail a solid driver and set of settings for the GTX cards, unless you go for the retardedly expensive quadros (k6k) GTX cards are better bang for buck.

In a situation where a CPU render engine (Vray) is used… how does a Quadro improve the software if not viewport?

Unless you are using a CUDA enabled rendering engine, VRay RT or one of the many GPU engines out there these days, it won’t matter one iota.

(PS: And sorry if this is going off topic - feel we’re still on same ish subject!)

We’re still on. The thread is titled cards technical specs, so I think it’s fair game to discuss this stuff :wink:

#26

I see… (thanks btw - a very detailed and comprehensive post).

So sadly this makes things more complicated… whereas I’d been thinking a gfx card will sort out my viewport, memory allows bigger scenes etc… it seems its more complex.

So. I’m already going to oc my cpu (I’ll see what I can get out of it, but if 4.3 is all but guaranteed then that should should be a substantial gain). A memory upgrade (I’m currently on 16GB) is a little out of reach at moment. I think I’ll try to test a quadro if I can find one at any of the offices I have contacts in. But If I’m reading your advice correctly it may be wiser to put the money towards a new motherboard / cpu memory upgrade maybe next year?

Heres the thing though… my scenes are complicated, but not massively so. I have a building and surrounding context file for a small suburb in istanbul (3DS max file). The building is complex but the context is just simple mass. In total about 500 000 polys… I’ve heard of much more complex models made (just at amateur level - not going into Hollywood visualisation complexity), and in the comments on forums etc no one really comments on “god my pc slowed to a halt” etc - In my case there is often a several second delay in general responsiveness. I suppose what I’m asking is: Is this normal? Does everyone just put up with it?

I’m looking for a PC that can run my professional applications smoothly without any frustrating lagging, and at the same time allow me to play top end games in between jobs :wink: (I’ve now got the later thanks to the 780).

Its possible I am modelling in some inefficient way I suppose, I’m largely self taught.
Its also possible I haven’s configured my system correctly?

I’m asking loads and I apologise, but you’ve been helpful and I’m trying to get as much info as possible! Hope you don’t mind?!