Video card advice/opinions

[terry_reeves]

Not sure where to ask this what info I need to include. I will list my current system specs below. I do mostly Revit modeling, but also do renderings and animations using 3ds Max and Vray/Vantage. In the past I have had problems with using Vantage because my current video card is an RTX card with only 8GB of VRAM. I cant afford to spend thousands of dollars on a video card. But I need to be able to bring scenes in from 3ds Max into vantage. The number one problem I have is I dont know how to determine how much Vram I would actually need. I would hate to spend $1,000 on a 16GB card only to realize that wont be enough. So I am trying to research this to figure out what route to go. Looks like maybe I could go with a 4000 series RTX (maybe even do 2 hooked together) or a quadro. The quadro cards look like they get horribly expensive really fast. The RTX cards (even if I purchased 2 and used the SLI link) are more affordable. Im just looking for advice and opinions at this point. I would like to purchase something sooner rather than later. Thank you in advance for any insight people are willing to share. If any additional info is needed please let me know.

Current specs:

• Mainboard: X570 Aorus Ultra
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 - 16 core
• Memory: 64GB DDR4
• Video Card: Nvidia Ge-Force RTX 2080-Super 8GB
• Windows 11
• 3ds Max 2025
• V-Ray 6 update 2.1

[glorybound]

Vantage doesn't utilize an SLI link. It is best to have two cards, one for MAX and your monitor and one for Vantage. If you optimize for GPU, a 24-GB card should be enough.

[terry_reeves]

Thank you for your reply. Do any of the RTX cards even come with 24GB? The only ones that I saw go up to 16GB. Its possible I just didn't see any. Or would I need to go with a quadro card? I wouldn't be against going with 2 cards. I could afford 1k - 2k I just dont want to get into 5k or higher. Some of those get super spendy. But the firm I am working for now wants me to start doing some fairly high end vis for marketing etc.I stand corrected. If I bought one RTX 4090 would it be possible to run MAX and monitors on my current 2080 super (which works just fine) and vantage on the 4090 24GB?

[glorybound]

The recommended card is the RTX 4090; I am running two of them.

[glorybound]

If I bought one RTX 4090 would it be possible to run MAX and monitors on my current 2080 super (which works just fine) and vantage on the 4090 24GB?

Yes, that would work.

[Muhammed_Hamed]

Bobby's advice is spot on.
You can use your current GPU for your monitors and 3Ds Max, and buy a second 24 GB card dedicated to GPU rendering. You will have plenty of VRAM to work with
See the setup for multi-GPUs here

Currently with one 8 GB GPU, Max will take nearly half of that to run the viewport and Windows, leaving you only 4 GB for your GPU rendering.
If you don't want to pay for an expensive 4090, there are cheaper 16 GB cards available. No need for the expensive Quadro cards

Best,
Muhammed

[terry_reeves]

Yes, that would work

Bobby's advice is spot on.
You can use your current GPU for your monitors and 3Ds Max, and buy a second 24 GB card dedicated to GPU rendering. You will have plenty of VRAM to work with
See the setup for multi-GPUs here

Currently with one 8 GB GPU, Max will take nearly half of that to run the viewport and Windows, leaving you only 4 GB for your GPU rendering.
If you don't want to pay for an expensive 4090, there are cheaper 16 GB cards available. No need for the expensive Quadro cards

Thank you to you both for your prompt response and the information, appreciate it. I ordered an RTX 4090 and it will be here Saturday. Yeah my current card doesn't cut it. I have set up GPU and also hybrid renders inside just MAX and it seems to do ok. But Vantage wouldn't even begin to bring my scenes in with my current hardware. I'm glad I don't have to go to the quadro cards. Thanks again for your insight, much appreciated.

[terry_reeves]

So I did get the 4090 card, it is a monster lol. I also ordered a bigger power supply and a support rod to help support this heavy thing. I am hoping to install it this weekend. My question now is Im not sure which slot would be the best for which card. There isnt a lot of room in between them either, am hoping I dont end up needing a different board. The top most slot is a PCIEX16, middle one is PCIEX8 (not sure I could get a card in middle one with out running into card that is mounted in top). Bottom one is PCIEX4. My current 8gb card is in the top one right now. I do understand some about data lanes. Seems the x8 slot and the x16 would be ideal, but I doubt that is physically possible. I also dont want to create a bottleneck.

[Muhammed_Hamed]

Old card stays in the topmost slot, this is where you connect your monitors
New card should physically fit in the second PCIE slot, don't worry if the cards are too close. The 4090 doesn't produce a lot of heat during rendering
Your motherboard is on PCIE Gen 4.0 both cards will run in x8 bandwidth which is more than enough

Second configuration, if the 4090 doesn't physically fit in the second slot
4090 in first slot, not connected to monitors
old card is in the third slot, this bandwidth comes from the X570 chipset and should work just fine. You will not use this card in rendering anyway

let us know how this goes, you will need to enable Above 4G Decoding in the bios settings

For the power supply, you need 800 Watts or more. As long as your power supply have enough PCIE connectors for both GPUs
I guess you need 4x 8pins for the 4090 and 2x 8pin for the 2080 Super..

Best,
Muhammed

[terry_reeves]

Thank you for your response. I was short 2 8 pin connectors on my current power supply. It was a 850 watt. I oversized it when I built this system with the thought of upgrading later, guess that plan didn't quite work out. I ordered a 1,000 watt so I should be covered plenty. It has plenty of connectors on it as well. I haven't tried to physically install the card yet. It looks like it might be close but will try this weekend. I will post a reply after this weekend and let you know how it went. Thanks again.

[Muhammed_Hamed]

You are welcome!
If you have questions or run into something on the weekend you could message me on my Email. I will reply faster than the forums

muhammed.hamed.ext@chaos.com

I have one X570 board, with a very similar setup to what you have. I got it to work and I still use it until now

Best,
Muhammed

[glorybound]

I noticed one of my cards hasn't been spinning at all. I checked, and my system only lists one card. I unplugged and plugged everything back in, and both powered up, but only one at a time. I ordered a new 4X8 RTX cord, but until then, is there anything else I can check? I don't see anything in the BIOS about video or graphics. Everything worked fine for a while, so something happened!

[glorybound]

I am narrowing it down to a cable. I have some cables ordered, so we'll see. From what I read, cables can be an issue.

[Muhammed_Hamed]

Yeah, seems like a bad cable. Let us know how this goes!

Best,

Muhammed

[terry_reeves]

Old card stays in the topmost slot, this is where you connect your monitors
New card should physically fit in the second PCIE slot, don't worry if the cards are too close. The 4090 doesn't produce a lot of heat during rendering
Your motherboard is on PCIE Gen 4.0 both cards will run in x8 bandwidth which is more than enough

Second configuration, if the 4090 doesn't physically fit in the second slot
4090 in first slot, not connected to monitors
old card is in the third slot, this bandwidth comes from the X570 chipset and should work just fine. You will not use this card in rendering anyway

let us know how this goes, you will need to enable Above 4G Decoding in the bios settings

For the power supply, you need 800 Watts or more. As long as your power supply have enough PCIE connectors for both GPUs
I guess you need 4x 8pins for the 4090 and 2x 8pin for the 2080 Super..

Best,
Muhammed

The installation went fairly well. Had some other issues. I think the first power supply I plugged in was somehow bad (luckily I didn't have the 4090 installed yet) I think it took out my liquid cooler pump. Long story short I ended up buying yet another power supply and a newer and maybe better liquid cooler from Corsair. Now its running good I think. I followed your advice on settings etc. One thing I am confused about though. I am still learning Vantage, although it doesn't seem nearly as complex as v-ray or max. I had it installed several days before I got the card in and I was just using the pre-installed scenes that it comes with. I originally had a DLSS quality slider on the top toolbar, and since I put this other card in it is no longer there. I did go into the Render Devices and set it to the 4090, which I assume is what I want. I know the first time I launched vantage with both cards a dialog did come up about dual graphic cards and now cant remember what it said. But I think it is all set up fine. I didn't uninstall my previous nvidia software (control panel and geforce experience) because I figured I still had the other card. I did install the graphic driver package for the new card though. Thanks for your help, was much appreciated. I'm excited to see what Vantage will do for me, since I have had a lot of issues using cpu rendering inside of max with V-ray.