How important is the GPU for viewport performance? (3Ds Max)

[ThomasMiller]

This is more of a question about 3Ds Max than V-Ray, but...

It's been a few months since I had to downgrade from a 980ti to a 1050ti and hadn't noticed a difference in viewport performance until today when I was working on a project that hit >40million polys, at which point I started getting a few hiccups. Which made me wonder how much the best GPUs out there might help or not when it comes to viewport performace, what's the point of diminishing returns, etc. So for someone like me who uses primarily the CPU renderer, it might be a good idea to skip buying the latest and greatest GPU next time I'm building a workstation.

People who have the Titans and 2080ti out there, what has your experience been like when it comes to viewport performance?

[Muhammed_Hamed]

The GPU has a big part in your viewport performance, but it is not the only piece that determines your hardware performance. Having a CPU with higher frequency is very useful
Talking about your case specifically, a 1050ti is the bottleneck in your setup. Your 980ti probably could have been twice as fast
That being said, if you get a Titan RTX you won't get 10 times better viewport performance, this is not a linear scaling. At some point, the GPU would be fast enough, and actually the CPU frequency is going to be the bottleneck
Long story short, a 2060/2060 super is the perfect fit for 3Ds Max viewport. a 2070, 2080 or 2080ti will have the same viewport performance (because of the CPU frequnecy like what I explained)
I cannot stress enough how important having a newer CPU with a good single-threaded performance here, if you have an old Xeon that barely gets to 3 GHz you are missing out on life honestly. This really impacts everything, even your GPU's Raw performance
I have an i9 Overclocked to 4.8 GHz, I used to have 3x 1080Tis, then swapped 2 with Nvlinked 2080s
And now running one 2080 and 2x Titan RTXs.. The titan cards has the exact same viewport performance as the 1080tis or the 2080s

And something to note, is that on your 1050ti you only have 4 GB of VRAM.. which is very tiny for such big scenes. If you run out of VRAM, you will experience even worse performance. Lets say a 2060 Super with 8 GB of VRAM is a good deal. Should be very affordable as well

Best,
Muhammed

[dean_dmoo]

Muhammed_Hamed

Does the speed of the Xeon's also impact the loading speed of scenes? We have a gigabit network with gigabit switch and ssd server (synology) but still heavy scenes take an age to open. At the moment we have a 3.5GB landscape scene, takes about 6-7 min to open in max. (We don't have max file compression turned on to protect from file corruptions). The pc uses older dual Xeon E5-2680v2's with 128GB ram. Currently thinking about upgrading to a 3970x setup but wondering where the bottleneck is for this issue. Generally I find the speed when working OK-ish, but the loading of the files near the end of a project when they balloon in size is annoying.

Another question that actually matches the OT, is it better to have 1 powerfull GPU or 2 lesser ones for viewport performance when using multiple screens? I have a GTX1080 and have 3 monitors hooked up to them (Dell's at 3x 2560x1440, DPI port). But even when not doing anything I get playback stutters on something like the BBC iPlayer. Just get the impression that the 3 monitors is pushing the GPU too far.

thanks!

[Karol.Osinski]

I am not that knowledgeable as Muhammed_Hamed in this topic but I think the scene opening time almost only depends on your CPU u if you take the viewport loading time out of equation . What I mean is (being Maya user) once the scene is open it's gotta load all the viewport into GPU and in Maya you can clearly notice this process. With low-end gpu you might run into issues of the viewport loading slowly or / and your textures not fitting into your gpu memory. In Maya you can tackle it by changing max resolution of textures displayed in the viewport (I am sure Max also has this option). I would give it a try!

ah btw if you think the server connection might be an issue you can simply copy the scene to your desktop and test the opening time from there


For the 3 monitors setup. I remember when I switched from 1080p to 4k monitor for my gtx 1080 / i9 7900X workstation, the viewport performance dropped almost a double. I assume in this case it was gpu what caused it as i9 7900 has fairly fast one core speed.

[Muhammed_Hamed]

[/USER]
Does the speed of the Xeon's also impact the loading speed of scenes?

Yes it does, and/or could be a 3Ds Max issue on top. it could be helpful to check on a different 3Ds max version and to download the file and open it offline like what Karol said.. Just to make sure this is just about your CPUs
the 3970x could boost up to 4.5 GHz and it is has better architecture than your Xeons.. so there will be a significant improvement.

1 powerfull GPU or 2 lesser ones for viewport performance when using multiple screens?

1 beafy GPU for all monitors.. I'm using an RTX 2080 with 3x 4k monitors, and the performance is nearly the same as running a single monitor
This will help you avoid bunch of issues as well compared to connecting the monitors to 2 different cards
You could try to disconnect 2 monitors and benchmark the GPU with Vray benchmark, to see if there is difference or if the problem is solved
I honestly think a 1080 could handle those 3 monitors without issues..
Let me know how this goes

[dean_dmoo]

Thanks for the input Karol, Muhammed! Will do some tests to find where the bottleneck is.