[repost] Need advice about GPU choice.

[bahamut]

Hello.
There is Tesla c1060 for 420$.
I need an advice. Do you think that this GPU is worth buying?
I usually work in 3ds max 2011 with various render engines (Vray, indigo, trying to manage octane), Adobe CS6 photoshop, indesign, premiere and after effects.

Thanks in advance
Mateusz

[Polinalkrimizei]

Hey bahamut,

no GPU expert here but: The price seems really good, but isn't the C1060 a little outdated already? I know Tesla has some stuff that consumer products don't, but plain performance-wise my gtx 560ti, which costs a little more than half, outperforms it with double and single precision (not even sure which one counts for CUDA/Indigo ).
also for using it with indigo your GPU performance heavily depends on your processing power: I render with an overclocked i7 2600k @ 4.4GHz, and my GPU is rarely used at 100% by indigo. So if you have a considerably higher processing power or plan to have it in the future, a more powerful GPU really makes sense. Otherwise you could save some bucks or better spent some money on a slave with an i7 and a nowadays GTX.

Just my 2 cents...

[bahamut]

I have I5 2500k OCed to 4,5Ghz.
For me indigo takes all the CPU and GPU while rendering.
Right now i have GF 460 1,5 GB and it's ok.
I thought this Tesla willbe faster than this.

But if there is a cheaper and faster choice i'll consider it.

[lycium]

I'd suggest something like a GeForce GTX 560 Ti, that seems to still be the optimal performance/price GPU to get for heavy compute applications (the newer 600 series is more games-oriented).

As Polinalkrimizei pointed out however, upgrading the CPU to an i7 would probably be the first priority.

[bahamut]

Does it really metter if you have HT option in your CPU since you are using it's full power anyway?

[lycium]

HyperThreading is indeed a great feature, you get a lot more performance for just a little extra power usage.

[bahamut]

Thanks for advices.
I think i'll buy 560 Ti if there will be one in decent price.

As for CPU. I think haswell will have something interesting

[Pipperox]

While on this topic: is there any specific advantage in using NVidia GPUs?
Like Indigo for CUDA being more optimized than OpenCL?

Otherwise I was thinking to get a good AMD card like a Radeon HD 7970, since several tests have shown them to be faster than NVidia's direct competitors, in OpenCL based computational tasks.

[Pipperox]

I'm also going to buy a new graphic card specifically for Indigo.

So I have a question: is there any specific advantage in the CUDA implementation and optimization over OpenCL?

Basically, are high end AMD/ATI graphics cards a viable option, or do we need NVidia because of CUDA?
Thanks,

[Zom-B]

CUDA on NVIDIA cards is just a tiny little faster the OpenCL on NVIDIA cards... not realy a benefit!
But ATIs 7xxx cards are way faster in GPU computing then NVIDAs 6xx line, so I'll go for a 7950 soon too
(GIGABYTE GV-R795WF3-3GD WindForce 3X)

[vasco]

I have radeon hd 5850 (1gb) at home and a geforce gtx 560 ti (1gb) at work.
Also had different cards here at home for testing like gtx 275 (1gb), gtx 570 (2.56 gb) and Radeon 6970 (2gb).
I realised it is nearly no difference for rendering in indigo between the cards that I tested.
(My CPU is Xeon E3 1230v2 with 3,3 Ghz and 8 threads.)

What I found is that the viewport performance in openGl mode is much faster in Blender with a my AMD Card and VOBs enabled than with any Geforce Card.
Nevertheless I ordered a Geforce 660 ti with 3gb vram for my workstation at home. I plan to use my hd 5850 for the viewport and the 660 ti for rendering and for my experience the performace in Indigo will not change much.

But when I want use an other GPU accelerated render engine like Octane or Blender cycles there is no way around a nvidia card because this engines only support CUDA. So that is the best solution for me.

When I have tested the gtx 660Ti will post my impression here.
I think it would be a good thing if indigo offers a benchmark like luxmark for luxrender or benchwell for maxwell render. It could be named IndiMark, Benchigo, IndiBench or something like that.

[vasco]

Now I did some tests with my GPUs:

I rendered the caterpillar testscene for 3min:

Radeon HD 5850

SPP : 268,18
GPU Load: ~60%

Geforce GTX 560Ti

SPP : 299
GPU Load: ~40%

Geforce GTX 660 Ti

SPP : 316
GPU Load: ~30%

I would like to see the result of a Radeon HD 7950 or 7970.

[Polinalkrimizei]

Nice, thanks for this tests vasco!!

To me it proves that the GTX 560 Ti still kicks ass price/performance-wise! Now I can sleep better, knowing I don't really need a new GPU.

[vasco]

Yes the 560Ti is still a good GPU, but I made the experience that 1GB vram is not very much when you want to render a big scene.
Also the 560Ti with 2GB has nearly the same price than the 660Ti with 2GB. For this reason I bought a 660Ti with 3GB. I will not get out of memory so fast.

[JuanPabloCuervo]

Now I did some tests with my GPUs:

I rendered the caterpillar testscene for 3min:

Radeon HD 5850

SPP : 268,18
GPU Load: ~60%

Geforce GTX 560Ti

SPP : 299
GPU Load: ~40%

Geforce GTX 660 Ti

SPP : 316
GPU Load: ~30%

I would like to see the result of a Radeon HD 7950 or 7970.

i have both in the same board,
caterpilar 3m gtx680 cuda - 419.38spp - drivers 306.97.
caterpilar 3m hd7970 opencl1.2 - 421.33spp - drivers 12.10.

no overclock.

compared to a t8200 cpu, this are rockets.