Just bought Octane and buying a GTX 470, some Qs!

[Rhodesy]

Hi folks. Ive just bought Octane as it looks a very promising renderer, and the quality of light especially with some of the film stocks looks very good and quite stylised at times judging by some of the great works in the gallery. Im an architectural visualiser and currently render with Vray via C4D which is a great renderer and very happy with it but its always good to try out new tech. I have a license of Fryrender I bought early on in its beta dev with the hope that it would deliver the realtime exploration features it promised at the start but that hasnt really materialised the way I thought it would and Fry has always been too slow for me to use comercially so doesnt really get used. Arion is promising but Octane offers pretty much the same (perhaps more) and a much more accessible price point.

So here I am with a new copy of Octane and about to upgrade my GPU as mine is currently too embarrasing to mention! I think ill get a GTX 470 as that seems to currently offer best bang for buck. I was wondering how far I should be able to push it in terms of output size/number of polys/number of mats and map sizes with the standard 1280mb Ram? Can anyone point me to some examples of big scenes or comment on their experiences with arch viz scenes. Im thinking i'll probably have to stick with Vray for most of my commercial work but I think there will definately be a use for Octane in the pipeline somewhere, and who knows i might be surprised.

Many thanks for any pointers on this,
Rob

[radiance]

I would recommend a GTX480, for a slight difference you get 1,5GB of video RAM, which is plenty for complex scenes.

Radiance

[yzaroui]

If it's just a question of RAM, there are cheap gtx 285 cards with 2 GB of Ram. You can get two of them (4 GB) for almost the same price of a single gtx 480.

[SurfingAlien]

If it's just a question of RAM, there are cheap gtx 285 cards with 2 GB of Ram. You can get two of them (4 GB) for almost the same price of a single gtx 480.

2 cards with 2Gb each is 2Gb available for Octane, correct me if i'm wrong (the whole scene has to be loaded in each card to be processed).
CUDA cores are 2x instead (which is nice of course)

[Amplitude]

you're right, memory doesn't add up.
So you get 2GB of memory and speed wise it's around 3.5 mpx/s on the trench benchmark scene.
I think it's a good deal if you can get them really cheap like ebay or such (but they are quite rare).
But otherwise I would go for the 470 or 480gtx

[Rhodesy]

Right. Just trying to weigh it up, I can get a 470 for £284 or a 480 for £410 which is a fair bit more expensive for that extra 250mb or so but i guess also more power, also needing to upgrade my PSU regardless. My thoughts have been that it is unlikely i'll be able to render out high res images (say 4000 x 2600) with a 4-5million poly model with 80-100mats, many of which having a few textures without getting a 4GB card. But i may be wrong, do you think something of this magnitude might be possible with 1.5gb? Its always possible to optimise the scene more so I could get that down and instances will help when theyre introduced. Trouble is if you lower the texture res they wont look as good close up on a high res image. So my thinking was I might be best seing how I get on with a 470 and wait for a 2GB+ 480 further down the track. But who knows how long that will take and if it will ever happen, and then my 470 will be redundant as it will always be limited by its RAM when used with another GPU so maybe the 480 will be more futureproof.

Is anybody having any success with large scenes like this on a 1.5gb card?

Thanks

** sorry tried to post this earlier but it didnt post for some reason - probably me!

Just had a very quick scan for some 2GB 280s but no luck. Cheers

[CGicore]

That is certainly a good question. I use Zbrush (character / creature still images) and my maps are 4k size.
I'm not a tech savy, so the same question goes here, how much polys render can a gtx 480 handle or Octane can handle? Am I even asking the right question?
Sorry, but an answer from an expert/exprience user is appreciated.
The second generation of Nvidia cards will come out in the Q4 this year, with full fermi feature technology implemented. For the moment, as the news mention, the gtx 480 is not running full fermi features. So, wait for another 6 months or get fermi now? I'm running an ATI FireGL v.5600 (time to have him retired) at home and a Quadro 4800 at work. I need it more at home as I never have the time to do any 3D at work.
Buy it now or wait, that's the question...

I wouldn't go with gtx 470, since the price range is not big (US$120 more). In long run, the gtx 480 is better than 470 in terms of price.

P.S. Interesting read..... Geforce GTX 485?: http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?p=1896096

[Rhodesy]

Ive gone with the 480, and pleased I made that choice. If I can reduce frustration levels with RAM limitations then its going to be worth while. And like I said before im hoping it might last me longer before I need to upgrade, so better value there. Not to mention the extra speed boost. Sitting on my hands for a week or so now! Thanks for your help.

It would be nice to see some more stress/speed tests though on various hardware.........

[CGicore]

it.s hard to decide as octane doesn't support displacement maps. so can't really say much about how much ram needs to render.

Radiance? Any thoughts on this? Thanks.

[radiance]

it.s hard to decide as octane doesn't support displacement maps. so can't really say much about how much ram needs to render.

Radiance? Any thoughts on this? Thanks.

Hi,

It depends on your model, it's difficult to say.
with a GTX480 you can render at high res with say 5-6 million polies and still stick 10 or so textures on it.

Radiance