Best GPU Upgrade for around £400 ish

[askhamdesign]

Hi

I am looking at a GPU upgrade from my very old Ge Force 9600 GT, which from the below would anyone recommend for around the £400 mark?

I am thinking of something such as this? http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-e...dl-dvi-i-evbot

How much does the amount of memory effect render speeds, I guess you need a lot of memory to cope with scene textures?

http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-...28/939/520/532


By the way my Ge Force 9600 GT rendered the Benchmark scene in 48 mins!
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...ighlight=chart

Thanks for your help.

Also how can I move this to the hardware section?

[RobPhoboS]

Just ensure whatever card you choose that it's going to work properly on your motherboard, unless you're updating that as well ?

[askhamdesign]

Thanks Rob I will make sure it is compatable, any thoughts on the amount of memory?

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

As much as u can u never know if u would or would not start using GPU rendering at some point.

As to GPU go only with Nvidia. And DONT buy any GPU now. The GTX680 is bad as far as I hear so just hoold on b4 spending money...

[askhamdesign]

Ive read up some stuff regarding the 680 so would you say hold out even on a 580 until the next batch of 680s are out?

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Giving the fact that u still roll on 9600 GT I guess u dont upgrade ur GPU on year basis so I'd say if u can just wait for more tests,new drivers or new GTX before buying new graphic card...

[askhamdesign]

Thanks Dadal I might sit and wait on it thanks for the info.

[Alan Iglesias]

I am thinking of something such as this? http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-e...dl-dvi-i-evbot

The 3GB GTX580 is your best bet for GPU rendering if you must buy right away.

How much does the amount of memory effect render speeds, I guess you need a lot of memory to cope with scene textures?

For GPU rendering, the amount of memory does not affect the rendering speed in any way. You do need to fit the entire scene in memory so the amount of RAM is important here. You can limit the overall resolution of textures which can help get larger scenes with larger textures into the available memory, but it might not be appropriate if you are trying to get finished production work out of your GPU.

By the way my Ge Force 9600 GT rendered the Benchmark scene in 48 mins!

That's right, and the 580 will do it in ~3 minutes and a few seconds so that is quite an improvement.

As others have mentioned, a new class of nVidia GPU chip is just being released to the market in the GTX 680. So far, the only board available with it is very game-oriented, and doesn't give us the per-core upgrade in GPU rendering speed that we were used to seeing. However, it is said that more computing-oriented boards are on the way and they very well may be worth waiting for at this point.

-Alan

[askhamdesign]

Thanks Alan helped to confirm my thoughts and convince me to hang fire for now.