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Best graphics card for budget Maya/3DS Max and Blender build

CAT-THE-FIFTH

CAT-THE-FIFTH

CAT-THE-FIFTH

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Budget is not too high -at most £200 to £250 for the card for now(its just a starter until there is a budget) and it will be paired with a Xeon E3 1230 V3(Core i7 4770 basically).

I had a look through a few reviews of the professional cards,and it appears AMD has a lead for Maya and 3DS Max on the budget end,but loses to Nvidia for Blender:

http://www.cgchannel.com/2013/11/group-test-amd-and-nvidia-professional-gpus-2013/
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/firepro-w8100-workstation-graphics-card,3868.html
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/best-workstation-graphics-card,review-32728-19.html

I assume that the AMD W4100 should be better than the Quadro K620,unless they are some other suggestions.

What about the W5100 which is around £270?

OF course the other path is to use a consumer grade card - now would a GTX780 or R9 290 be better??

Would an R9 280 for under £150 be a good budget alternative??
 
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CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Budget is not too high -at most £200 to £250 for the card for now(its just a starter until there is a budget) and it will be paired with a Xeon E3 1230 V3(Core i7 4770 basically).

I had a look through a few reviews of the professional cards,and it appears AMD has a lead for Maya and 3DS Max on the budget end,but loses to Nvidia for Blender:

http://www.cgchannel.com/2013/11/group-test-amd-and-nvidia-professional-gpus-2013/
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/firepro-w8100-workstation-graphics-card,3868.html
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/best-workstation-graphics-card,review-32728-19.html

I assume that the AMD W4100 should be better than the Quadro K620,unless they are some other suggestions.

What about the W5100 which is around £270?

OF course the other path is to use a consumer grade card - now would a GTX780 or R9 290 be better??

Would an R9 280 for under £150 be a good budget alternative??
Click to expand...

What do you want to do 3D rendering for?

I use it for Cry-engine EaaS Props and Geo Entities, 3DSMax seems ok though i'm still learning it, Personally i don't like Blender. I do like Scetchup but it does not support .cgf (Cryengine) without 3'rd party plugins like Playup with Image Magic which is a buggy frustrating mess, it will support .fbx (Unity) but i don't like that Engine.... :rolleyes: so i'm kinda stuck. I like Scetchup and Cryengine, the two don't agree amongst each-other.

I'm rambling, i use my 290, it seems to do the job well but there are issues with rendering because its not a FirePro Work Station Card, complex refractions and the like are a no go, however, often you can use the recipient engine to implement some of it.
 
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I have tinkered with blender and it ran ok on the 670 that I had at the time, but my knowledge on the subject is somewhat lacking, hopefully others will come to be more helpful.
 
They thing is blender uses cuda but the other sw might run better on an and card so not sure what to do ATM.

I was asking about the consumer cards since they are cheaper and I know people use them.
I heard the gtx580 does quite well against a gtx780 but it lacks vram so might be a problem.
BTW I forgot to mention this rig is not for me but for a mate - will ask them exactly what kind of design work they will do.

However that is the sw they want to run.
 
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CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
They thing is blender uses cuda but the other sw might run better on an and card so not sure what to do ATM.

I was asking about the consumer cards since they are cheaper and I know people use them.
I heard the gtx580 does quite well against a gtx780 but it lacks vram so might be a problem.
BTW I forgot to mention this rig is not for me but for a mate - will ask them exactly what kind of design work they will do.

However that is the sw they want to run.
Click to expand...

3D software is very particular to user likes, stating the obvious Blender is best suited to Nvidia so if thats what he uses then AMD are out. 3DSMax is a little better suited to AMD but Nvidia runs it well enough, certainly better than AMD run's Blender which for AMD runs OpenGL.

This as well as what he intends to do with it as exporting to Game Engines (for example) is a mine field, Blender uses an plugin called CryBlend for Cryengine, which is hit and miss.
 
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Its mostly for design work with some rendering being done,so I assume viewpoint acceleration is more important. Will need to ask what software is being used first or most.

Nothing game related AFAIK.

I know that VRAM is more important hence why I was looking at some of the cheaper AMD cards like the R9 280 for example.
 
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I ran a test for you, the image posted below is a render that has been used for benchmarking, you can see the data output on the bottom right of a GTX 570 running CUDA and OpenCL, the GTX 570 does it in half the time of Hawaii. Blender just isn't optimised for AMD at all.

Its not even properly complied for AMD, to get it to Render in OpenCL on AMD GPU's you need to run a CMD script.



I also ran that Tirpitz / Bismark Battleship, the view port gave me 8 FPS.
Now, i don't know how CG tested it, there are ways of improving View-port performance, OR it could be that Catalyst Driver are not optimised for Blender, the 290 is after-all not a work station card, FPS in the view port is not important, and TBH that Model has 5.7m Triangles, its huge, its like a Crysis 2 level map.
The chances are Design work will never get that big so his view port performance should never get that low.

In any case I think if Blender is what he uses he should go Nvidia.

Rendering the Ship Sequence;

 
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BTW,was asking around and one of my mates said Blender can use Luxrender too. I assume you are using the Octane renderer?? Can you please try the Luxrender path too?

Edit!!

I think I will need to clarify what renderers my mate is using and what percentage of their workflow is rendering and what is designing models. Also the split of the software used.
 
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Blender is Open Source, so its created by a group of guys, then modified by another group, then again by another group, by this time its had any number of pepole messing about with it, its full of errors and Twinkie code.

Its been stitched together with a bunch of other Open Source dependencies and then hashed-up to work on windows.

Its why i don't like it, if i'm to use a product i want to use it for what its intended for, i don't want to have to spend more time fixing it or undoing bad code written by others.

Lux Render is one of those things that you have to stitch into it, for whatever reason its never worked for me, and i'm far from alone. i cannot be bothered to problem solve it because i know exactly what will happen, 400 hours fixing and finishing Mom's Basement Twinkie Boys Code.

Sorry, no. :)


 
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It sounds like it's a case of, if you need blender just use an Nvidia GPU as humbug has said the AMD usage in it isn't good or is unreliable with the different addons.
 
Thx - I have asked her to clarify what the mix of software she is going to be using now and more importantly what renderers she will be using. Something like octane will only use cuda,luxrender opencl and v-ray has both paths I believe.

Going back to some of the other software you are seeing £250 W5000/W5100 cards matching £500+ Quadros in 3DS Max and Maya(or getting much closer than you expect) which is another consideration.

Lets say Nvidia is chosen - another question is whether to get a K620(based on the GM108 GPU with 384 shaders) or something like a GTX780? Maya is meant to run like crap on consumer cards although 3DS Max seems to have so much issues.
 
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HI GUYS
How do i get SLI working in Daz 3D, i've looked everywhere but i could be missing something..........right now it's only the top card that's working

thanks
 
It took a while but they got back to me. Blender and Daz3D will be used first.

So what Nvidia card??

One of the following is what I am thinking about:
1.)GTX760
2.)GTX960
3.)Secondhand GTX580 3GB
4.)GTX770??
5.)Quadro card for some sort??

Any other suggestions??
 
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