3x GTX 980 or 2x GTX1080 for octane Tweet

[Tecflower]

Heya,

just starting with octane and need a new rig, as my Nvidia GT 750M does "not quite" do the job. I have to choose between

Intel Core i7 4790K overcl. @4x 4.8GHz with 3x GTX980 and 32GB Ram

- or -

Intel Core i7 6800K @6x 3.4 GHz with 2x GTX 1080 and 32GB Ram

I read somewhere GTX1080 is not supported yet? Or at least "not well (as in beta stage)"? But i've seen a video showing 2 x GTX 1080: https://youtu.be/rU-Bf1J8NuE

sooo..I'm a bit confused how to best invest the money, as it's quite a lot.

Cheers

[glimpse]

Hello, Tecflowe,

simple answer would be: always take least amount of cards & as powerfull as You can - this way You will have some room for expansion in the future.

3x 980s would give You 300 in terms of OctaneBench while 2x 1080 ~ 280 =) so differece is not that big. What You gain choosing 2x 1080s is extra 4GB of vram that will get handy on the long run & You would still be left with extra PCIe slot for future expansion (just take slightly bigger PSU to be able to feed more cards if You plan for such expansion).

As for CPU it very much depends on Your needs. OctaneRender can not use more than 4 thread for now (as far as I know), meaning if You're not using computer while rendering there's no need to go with more. However if You choose to have PC built not only for Octane, weight Your needs & make a choise whether extra cores would be beneficial for You.

Overall faster runing quad core, maybe with good AIO cooler, would end up cheaper & might overall be slightly faster for everyday tasks. Also if You do not need insane multi threaded performance from CPU, better save Your money & add something like faster SSD to speed up everday tasks - this You would feel much more & save a lot of time with simple tasks.