Need Nvidia Advice

[tarek moty]

hi everyone,

im trying to understand gpu rendering to determin where to put my money in ,and i got lost regarding the cuda cores vs memory issue.

although the nvidia quadro 6000 or the quadro fx5800 are the most expensive ones, the gtx580 which is much cheaper has more cuda cores!! does this mean its faster although cheaper???

what are the differences between these 3 models and which ones should i go for in a new machine that will be rendering mostly in 2k for film produciton, and quiet heavy 3d scenes with 2k texture maps and hdri`s....etc

thanks alot.

[tehfailsafe]

I'm no expert and just learning myself, but here's what I've come to understand so far:

Yes, the GTX series have more cores and should render in octane faster than quadro series, BUT that's only for octane specifically and I don't believe holds true when you're doing something that would require the quadro in the first place like advanced simulations. I don't know the specific difference between quadro and quadro fx.

For memory it's the amount your scene has in it with all textures hdri etc combined. So if like you say you have large texture maps and hdri, more is going to be better regardless of speed, since if you have too much in your scene you wont be able to render at all.


Based on what you've said maybe best bet is to go with 2x GTX 460 2GBs, should give the memory you need and good speed.
Or wait until to see if the rumored GTX 580 3GB comes out...

[PhilBo]

The tip is to purchase the video card(s) that have the most ram for your budget according to your profession. If you are a hobbyist, then a 2 gb GTX 460 might be great for you. If you are a pro and need the larger ram for more complex scenes, then the larger ram that comes on the Quadro cards might be worth it.

The currently recommended sweet spot is to use two GTX 460 2GB cards.

[tarek moty]

thank you guys very much, i will definetly do that , since both of them combined are much cheaper than the quadro, but what about the 6000 series, its the most expensive one, around 4000 dollars, would it be any more beneficial for pro work?? it has 6 gigs of ram but still less cuda cores than gtx!! very confusing.. isnt it?

[ROUBAL]

My advice would be to use a good but not too much expensive card for display and purchase a Quadro FX only if it supports some specifications actually absolutely required by a software that you use frequently.

For rendering, If you need both memory amount and Cuda cores to use Octane at best and if you have the budget for quadro FX, I would advice you to put this money rather in Tesla/Fermi cards like C5050 (3GB - 448 cores - 2338 Euros) or C5070 (6GB - 448cores - 3743 Euros ).

For my own, It would be my choice if I had the budget for...
Currently I use a cheap card for display and two GTX480 for rendering. I'm a bit limited by the 1.5GB, but GTX460 2GB were not available when I ordered my cards.

Specifications and prices are available on this Nvidia partner site :

http://www.carri.fr/html/nvidia/tesla_c2050.php

[Rogue]

If you want Cuda rendering and good opengl viewport support in Max, Blender and Maya, only Quadro's apply at the moment. Or use an inexpensive Quadro as the display card, and two 480's (currently very good deals can be found online) for rendering in Octane. That will give you a good performance <--> price ratio.