Best graphics for the forthcoming GPU rendering

[davide445]

What you say is good for mine 3GB HD7950...
Obviously Nvidia didn't have (still) any willingness to push for OpenCL, being this a competitor of CUDA in the 3D animation high margin market.
The whole OpenCL (lack) of support with missing 1.2 and 2.0 support after 4 years from the spec publication speaks from himself.
Did read many thread on Nvidia user and dev forum to search for news about 1.2 or 2.0 support but no announcement nor response from Nvidia is made. Clear sign.
Good there are alternatives.

Also any plan to develop a branch on 1.2 or 2.0 for AMD cards?
Can be much faster and easier (maybe not so easy considering the complexity of the whole project, but) than with 1.1, a good way to push for newer release adoption, familiarizing with OpenCL features and an effort that can be leveraged as soon Nvidia updates his drivers.
Sure AMD will be interested to support.

[fourzeronine]

Also any plan to develop a branch on 1.2 or 2.0 for AMD cards?
Sure AMD will be interested to support.

nVidia is going to have to cave at some point... Right?

[davide445]

nVidia is going to have to cave at some point... Right?

Maybe can be a way.
Differentiating the development on more advanced OpenCL version can be good both for Indigo and users (more performance, easy maintenance, future proof development) and for GPU market (pushing for standardization).
Problem obviously is available development effort, that's why I was suggesting to ask partnership with AMD.
Not my work anyway, just logical considerations.

[Oscar J]

Hey developers, I need your help really quick - I am just about to buy one of those black shiny Mac Pro's, but what I want to know is - is it able to use both GPU's for rendering in Mac OS X?

Thanks in advance.

[OnoSendai]

Hey developers, I need your help really quick - I am just about to buy one of those black shiny Mac Pro's, but what I want to know is - is it able to use both GPU's for rendering in Mac OS X?

Thanks in advance.

Indigo *will* be able to use both GPUs. (e.g. the pure GPU mode will be able to when we release it)

[davide445]

@lycium
About RAM usage, your posted data was on still image or animation?

[karklinskarlis1993]

so looks like even with big driver updates, gtx 980 will lost against 780ti in every single cuda aspect.
have anybody tried CUDA 6.5 version on gtx980? any improvements??

[lycium]

We haven't done extensive comparisons, but Maxwell seems to perform extremely well with our rendering kernels. I've heard via kklors that for eg. Octane Render the 780 Ti can be twice as fast as 980, which seems crazy to me, but then I haven't done a direct comparison with Indigo. However, Maxwell seems to be doing way better than Kepler (extra cache and registers helping a lot) so I'd be inclined to think 980 would win - and would have a hard time believing the 780 Ti would be twice as fast as the insane speen on 980.

A major point for me is the difference in maximum usable memory, where AMD have a huge advantage, and I'm sure the 8GB R9 290x is insanely fast too. This is the card I'd most like to test with

[karklinskarlis1993]

We haven't done extensive comparisons, but Maxwell seems to perform extremely well with our rendering kernels. I've heard via kklors that for eg. Octane Render the 780 Ti can be twice as fast as 980, which seems crazy to me, but then I haven't done a direct comparison with Indigo. However, Maxwell seems to be doing way better than Kepler (extra cache and registers helping a lot) so I'd be inclined to think 980 would win - and would have a hard time believing the 780 Ti would be twice as fast as the insane speen on 980.

A major point for me is the difference in maximum usable memory, where AMD have a huge advantage, and I'm sure the 8GB R9 290x is insanely fast too. This is the card I'd most like to test with

sadly, there is a thread made in octane website, and even with latest octane version, gtx 780ti is 2x faster than gtx 980. gtx 980 even loose for 5th generation cards like 580, 590 etc. the thing is, i own NO gpu at the moment, and i cant decide which one to grab - both 780ti and 980 (500euros costs both and it is max i can pay) are in the same range. this desicion has to be made soon, but still i want to be future proof for gpu rendering, so i am really hoping for someone who could help me made the best descision...

[Zom-B]

this desicion has to be made soon, but still i want to be future proof for gpu rendering, so i am really hoping for someone who could help me made the best descision...

A classic situation on purchasing hardware, the longer you wait the better you get, but this game can be payed for ever...

Something I did back in the day when my GPU died from out of nowhere, was to grab some cheap GPU for display purposes so I have no lag in C4D viewport (What do I need a powerful GPU anyway atm with my workflow?!).

With that card I could "survived" some months until a new GPU generation arrived with nice specs that pleased me,
then I sold that only a few months old GPU via eBay getting around 75% of the originally payed price!

if you invest 100€ in a lower end GPU you actually pay only 25€ having it for lets say 4 months running!

Since AMD announced that they will focus on GPU compute even more with the next generation of cards I would suggest to wait until that generation hits the market and wait for some benchmarks, then decide if to buy your previous favorite (for even less money!), or go for the next gen.

You also may end up with a further development status of Indigo 4 so some more precise Benchmarks maybe available for it too.

[karklinskarlis1993]

this desicion has to be made soon, but still i want to be future proof for gpu rendering, so i am really hoping for someone who could help me made the best descision...

A classic situation on purchasing hardware, the longer you wait the better you get, but this game can be payed for ever...

Something I did back in the day when my GPU died from out of nowhere, was to grab some cheap GPU for display purposes so I have no lag in C4D viewport (What do I need a powerful GPU anyway atm with my workflow?!).

With that card I could "survived" some months until a new GPU generation arrived with nice specs that pleased me,
then I sold that only a few months old GPU via eBay getting around 75% of the originally payed price!

if you invest 100€ in a lower end GPU you actually pay only 25€ having it for lets say 4 months running!

Since AMD announced that they will focus on GPU compute even more with the next generation of cards I would suggest to wait until that generation hits the market and wait for some benchmarks, then decide if to buy your previous favorite (for even less money!), or go for the next gen.

You also may end up with a further development status of Indigo 4 so some more precise Benchmarks maybe available for it too.

i have done it till now. i got r9 280x which i have to give back for user i borrowed from.
if the descision could have to be made right now- which of gtx 980 or 780ti would you get? i know i am taking my risks, but still there could be a massive driver update which could lead to kill 780ti, i am dreaming. i would be really glad if someone would share their thoughts !

[lycium]

If you want to render with Octane, get the 780 Ti. If it must be NVIDIA, and you don't care about Octane, get the 980. If you're willing to go with AMD, go with the R9 290x with 8GB ram - having lots of (usable!) memory is important, and I bet it's insanely fast.

[fourzeronine]

If you want to render with Octane, get the 780 Ti. If it must be NVIDIA, and you don't care about Octane, get the 980. If you're willing to go with AMD, go with the R9 290x with 8GB ram - having lots of (usable!) memory is important, and I bet it's insanely fast.

I second this.

[karklinskarlis1993]

If you want to render with Octane, get the 780 Ti. If it must be NVIDIA, and you don't care about Octane, get the 980. If you're willing to go with AMD, go with the R9 290x with 8GB ram - having lots of (usable!) memory is important, and I bet it's insanely fast.

I second this.

tthanks mates a lot.. 780ti it is.. i am going to buy gtx 780ti 3gb gigabyte windforce oc (is that ok?)
i will trust you as it seems, you would know better what will provide me the best expierance with money i got

[Oscar J]

I'd recommend you get the 6GB 780 card if you want to do any somewhat large renders in Indigo. 3 GB will give you 768 MB in Indigo, which you don't get very far with.