Graphics Card - GTX 980ti

[tomhamilton37]

Hello,

I'm ordering a new graphics card, hopefully for a future of rendering with Octane. It seems the 980ti seems to be at a sweet spot for performance vs cost at the moment. I've been looking at the OC'ed Asus Strix GTX980ti as the benchmarks seem to show it perming 20-25% better than it's rivals. However, i'm making the purchase based on gaming benchmarks, when it'll only really be using it for rendering! Other than the card's memory, is there anything else i should be taking into consideration for use in octane? I should also mention that i may like to buy 3 more identical cards in the future to quadruple the rendering power.

Am i making a good decision? Any advice is very welcome!

Cheers

Tom

[mib2berlin]

Hi, the problem with clocked cards is they produce also more heat.
During gaming you have fluctuating power usage, with Octane you have nearly 100% during render process.
If you use a standard mainboard I would go for the Nvidia reference design, hover air from inside the case to the back of the card.



Cheers, mib

[glimpse]

Much more problem than the heat itself (also more power used) is how it gets that heat emited..

so, if You buy 4 of them (what I would really advice not to do..if You're looking to use them on standard motherboard) they will not perform any faster than reference design =) why?

The answer is heat.. all of it is going to be dumped inside Your case as nonReference coolers do not push it out =) Your case will heat up and as cards are going to sip air back cooling efficiency will be way lower & cards will down clock because of thermal throttling (part of boost2 technology implemented/introduced with Kepler cards).

if You want to use those STRIX/Windforce cards & get the most out of them, You need to space them out, let's say by using x99 motherboard with 3 slot spacing between PCIe connectors, using ribbon cables or some custom mounting (jump into my site - You'll find Polders build using 5x Windforce custom mounted & long article with Smicha a bout cooling, well, water-cooling, but You can find some useful ideas there).

pluss, STRIX has backplate & that minimise the gap between cards even more =) in the end, honestly, it's a recipe for disaster & You would pay more..- with 3-4way even ASUS recommends reference coolers, so stick with them or go under water..

[tomhamilton37]

Wow, great advice, thank you both! (Glad i asked!)

Looks like my best option for now then would be to get a reference card, at least then it's future proof if i want to SLI in the future.

Cheers!