is GTX 980 a good graphic card for octane ?

[clement]

Hi All ,
I was planning to buy a gtx 980 and I've just seen that it doesn't really work well with Octane .. Could someone from Otoy team, and users confirm that please? so I'll choose another GCard (maybe gtx 780ti is the best way to go ? 2ways ? 3 ways ?)

Thanks for any input

Clément

[glimpse]

hi, Clement,

Check this out: http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=42497

[clement]

yes thanks Glimpse , I saw that and started to be afraid with me 980 choice . some seems to say that maybe a driver fix could help ? but on blender forums I've seen some guys explaining that 980 won't never be better 780 ti because of different technologies .. where is the truth ?

[kavorka]

the driver talk is really just a hope. I wouldnt put much faith in that though. I would do the 780Ti. We have 4 of them.

[glimpse]

I'm not an expert on those "code things"..but if nvidia promises 5 tflops of SP performance then it could be delivered, the question how programers are going to optimise the code to run on that architecture. Even with the speed the card has for now it's not bad as it is beating 680 - the card that it technically should be after =)

for now I would say gram any 6giger (780) & stay happy till the code will be (or not) optimised or till we see way faster cards based on Maxwells 110..

[RightDeve]

What is so fishy about this card's release is the very few (even some nonexistent at all!) CUDA specific benchmarks done on it. I mean, they've been clamoring about "fewer but 40% more powerful per CUDA core", but all we see on popular benchmark sites like Anandtech or Tom's is mostly OpenCL based compute benchmarks.

There is only one site I can find doing this CUDA benchmark (Arion Bench):

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/19 ... 0-review/3

See there? They didn't even include GTX 7 series card or Titan at all! Only an ole GTX 680, what?!
GTX 980 scores 1730 while GTX 680 scores 1173, that's about 40% increase considering that GTX 680 has about 500 fewer cores. Maybe all this statement about more powerful CUDA cores is valid only when compared to GTX 6 series card?!

And let's take a look at GTX 780 Ti Arion Benchmark scores around the web, we get this:

http://www.randomcontrol.com/arionbench

and this:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showth ... t=18597039

Note that seemingly score varies from version to version. But even in all those scores, GTX 780 Ti never gets below 2300 (some as high as 2700), a hard blow to a much vaunted GTX 980!

AND THAT'S NOT ALL! We've been hearing about how Maxwell sips electricity so little? Well, that's indeed true.......until you do GPGPU compute. That 160 watt goes out of the window. Look here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvi ... 41-13.html

Surpriiiiseee!!! GTX 980 "sips" a whopping 285 watts compared to the 249 watts on GTX 780 Ti!
I mean, for LESS cuda performance it has to consume MORE power??!

All said, I think I will wait for the true successor to the 7 series cards. Maybe 1 or 1.5 year later

[glimpse]

thanks for all the info in one place, RightDeve.

the problem is there was no shring, only architectural changes & that means nVidia can not take any speed bumps from technological innovation..-they have to do their best while optimising what they have..reordering, rethinking etc..

As GTX line is designed and targeted for game use, I would not be surprised if nVidia would be trying to use all the data from performance to reinforce that usage scenario. keep this in mind.

[glimpse]

"When it comes down to it, our most taxing workloads take Maxwell all the way back to Kepler-class consumption levels. In fact, the GeForce GTX 980 actually draws more power than the GeForce GTX Titan Black without really offering more performance in return."

this sums things up =) nothing more to add..

[RightDeve]

Thanks for that screenshot on Tom's Hardware, Glimpse. I retrieved the website two days ago (September 23rd 11 AM Japan time). Turns out Tom's has also altered its GPGPU power consumption benchmark for reference GTX 980, maybe per NVidia's request too?

This is the screenshot two days ago:

I think we must always be wary of Tom's data because of errors such as this. Previously, they also mis-benchmarked a 780 Ti in Blender Cycles (proven incorrect render settings by Blender community).

Regardless, non-reference GTX 980 proves to be the same if not more power hungry card than its GTX 7 series and Titan sibling when it comes to GPGPU computing.

[glimpse]

we have to remember one thing: the way we perceive information depends on the way it is laid out! all those benchmarks reviews & such are written in order to drive traffic & earn income from adds =) the problem with that is big companies could bend this (influence as they want), threading companies with NDA's, future sample delivery etc..- so simply try to read about the same stuff in different channels (jop, it takes time, but..).