OTOY Forums

HI everyone. I´m building a system for use with octane and other 3d work. I bought an Nvidia Geforce 980ti for my main card and so far works great for Octane (demo), and I´m planning to buy a second card and a license to start working seriously with it. All the time I thought of two 980ti´s, but, what I´ve found out the hard way is that geforce cards are horrible for viewport acceleration. I´m an animator so this is important for me, for example inside Maya I was expecting great fps with some characters and the reality is awful. I´m getting the same performance as in my old system, which had a very old Quadro (Fx580).
I´ve read that the geforce drivers limit their funcionality in work applications, which really sucks since I know this is a powerful card.
So, I don´t really know what to do. My budget for the second 980Ti would allow me to get a Quadro K4200. But its benchmarks in Octane are really bad, and also it has 4GB of memory, whereas the 980Ti has 6, and from what I´ve read on the subject, Octane would be limited by the Quadro´s 4GB, and not use the 980ti´s full 6GB, right?
Well, let me know any advice or ideas you guys have. Many thanks!

Buy another 980ti.
I´m using just 1 980 GTX and am very happy with viewport AND octane performance.

Gaming cards are faster for rendering (more cuda cores) and a lot slower in 3D app/CAD viewport (driver thing probably).
https://youtu.be/iJ3oEZEP0bs?t=617

What Maya version do you have?
There is a new GPU accelerated character rig playback in Maya 2016. You may want to enable it for your GTX 980 and see if it makes any difference ( i think it was off by default).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKiYY9YsDVc

Suv

I don't get why the Guy on the video compares to cards from the same Kepler architecture but using different chips, refering that Quadro use less power? (780 is Gk110 while that quadro is GK104??? or smth, what ever some facts there are.."slighly"..biased..) cards based on the same chip don't differ so much on power usage..

You problem with slow viewport migh be driver issue, as some CAD/cam softtware (maya, MAX, etc..) has optimised drivers for PROfessional grade cards..but that's not the only thing that matters.

If You are using same card for rendering & screen use...something like Octane Render might put too much load on the card (99-100%) & system might starve as there is not so much resources left for it..

Since Octane Render 1.2 or 1.55 whatever there a priority button in settings > cuda devices..- what it does as I understant is leaving a bit more resources for screen - try that, maybe it's going to solve Your issues =)

However..if You're used to work with heavy scenes You can't beat pro cards with optimsied drivers..- but the value for rendering will be way less (as those cards are clocked lower to emit less heat & stay more stable in expence of lost brute performance)..

If You don't render on quadro + GTX, just on GTX, while powering Your screen(s) from Quadro/FirePro, You'll be able to use all vRAM of Your render card, but if You enable both - You'll be limitted but card that has has least amount of vRAM - & again, Your viewport migh get laggy for before mentioned reason.

Thanks everyone for the replies. My viewport tests have been using all of the GPU power. When trying out the 980ti in Maya I´m not using it for anything else, or even octane. I have Octane demo installed in C4D only. My work in Maya is character animation so I don´t render anything there.
But I wanna start doing some different things which is why I´ve decided to build a new system with Octane in mind.
Althought Maya 2016 with parallel evaluation on gives a slightly better viewport performance, it´s still horrible (4 fps with two characters), and as one of the posted videos shows, it´s not much a matter of GPU power as it is of the actual drivers and optimizations Quadro cards give in the viewport.

Since I have a couple of PCI slots left, I guess, for now I´ll complete my octane rig by getting the second 980ti I had in mind (reference, following Tom´s advice on FB) and I suppose later on I´ll get a Quadro one and settle with those three cards, hoping that prices come down a bit.
Having said that, can you tell the computer (windows) to use a specific card on a specific app? From what I understand, Maya uses 1 card regardless of how many are installed.

Another question. I understand you can use slave computers for Octane. Does that require an additional license?

Many thanks for all the replies. When using the card in Maya I´m not using Octane or anything else. I have the Octane demo installed only in C4D, so my viewport nightmare happens even when using all the GPU power for viweport performance.
Anyway, I know it has to do more with drivers and the way the quadro ones are geared for pro apps and the geforce ones for games, so I guess there´s not much I can do about it, right?
Maya 2016 gives a slightly better performance, but still very bad.... 4 fps with a 2 character scene.

So, I guess what I´m going to do is buy the second 980ti for now, the reference one as Tom Glimps recommended in FB, to complete my octane build, and in the future, if prices come down a bit, add a mid level quadro as a third card, which I would not use for octane rendering as not to limit the memory usage.

Is it possible to tell the system to use a specific card on a specific app? Because from what I´ve read, Maya uses only one card regardless of there being more installed.