OTOY Forums

Hey everyone,

As the title says, I want to know whats possible with 3GB of VRAM. I'm still learning 3D designing and hard body animations (with the objective of product showcasing for advertising) and I wanted to know if a 3GB card can be used for high res print ad rendering and the complexity it would be able to deal with in terms of content in the layout. I have access to the following GPUS in my country.

GTX 770 4GB ~ $400
GTX 780 3GB ~ $430
GTX 780 6gb ~ $700
GTX TITAN ~ $1200
GTX 970 ~ $430

I currently have a Radeon 290 so I cannot try out octane to test the memory usage of different scenes. I had my eyes set on the 970 for learning purposes and some basic freelance work (eventually) but since Maxwell turned out to be a dud, I'm evaluating options from the 7XX series.

My concern with the 780 is its 3GB of VRAM and I'm not sure if I would be able to use that for some fun experiments with renders and animation. I know that the 780 6GB is a great card for octane but I also have to buy a license for octane and get a cooling solution for the GPU and VRAMs (It's kinda hot here).

So guyz help me out, which GPU will be good enough for what I need.

hi,

if You're trying to learn things out, You probably don't need top of the line card, but if You want to start working with objectives You've just mentioned (hi res & & bit more complex products), I'd be looking for 6Gigers.. (780/Titans). Now I try to explain:

If You want to render hi resolution (in one go) You need to reserve certain amount of vRAM in Your card: for the sake of reference, if I go 8000x8000 pix, that would eat up 2GB.. (don't know exact math, but this might serve as a point of reference).

now if You power up the screen with the same card, it eats up like 300MB - it's actually advisable to have separate card in order to have fluid ui & ability to work with other software while You're rendering (& not eat up precious vRAM)

Then to render 26 million triangles you need around 4GB of VRAM (though with last versions I think 19mln is the max limit You can render..)

Pluss there's textures.. they use to calculate like this 4000x4000 pix texture would require 4x4x 3.85 -. the nYou get the amount in MB if I remember good =) of course if You are using just b7w images for like bump and so, that requires half of what it would with otherwise colour image.

You can always use some proxies, to help fighting polly count, but if You have like dense mesh of product : let's say a car..proxies would not help too much =DDD

so when You take all this into consideration, for Your case 6Gb cards would be something to look for, I think =)

hope that helps!

Thnx for the help, I'm gonna get the 780 6G before they run out.