What's the best GPU card under $1000 for Vray RT?

[jwatson]

Putting together a new system and have been researching GPU cards. I want to start using RT since my system is about 6 years old, I really need to upgrade bad! I've seen good stuff with people using the GTX series cards and was wondering the what the best card for the money was at around 1000 bucks. It will be a dual Xeon quad core based system.

If I decide to take the plunge, I am also considering a Tesla card. How much improvement would I see with a Tesla over a consumer GTX type card? Of course we're looking at double the price for the Tesla (around $2000) Is it even worth the extra $ or can a GTX give similar results?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Jon

[3DMK]

You say you want to start using RT but you may want to check that RT can even do what you want it to.
RT still has heaps of limitations compared to the production renderer., such as many materials & plugins still not supported, as well as lack of memory issues if using GPU.

I would fully test RT and it's ability to do what you need BEFOR bying a new GPU setup. I would love to use RT GPU but it just doesn't support all the things I need.

Hope this helps

[jwatson]

Well, for right now, I want it for fast lighting and reflection feedback, not for final production render. I have 8 other machines I use as a render farm. What usually takes the most time when doing illustration, is tuning the reflections/tweaking the HDRI map. As it is now, I only have 2 CPU cores and doing test renders every time I move the HDRI map takes forever. I could easily spend an hour adjusting an HDRI map to make a reflective object look good, especially for product renders. I just need fast feedback when tweaking lighting and environments. I Don't use any other plugins (well, Afterburn, but rarely). I could save hours on a particular job by just having RT's fast feedback. So which materials are not supported yet? I was thinking maybe a single GTX 580 or above card would be enough to get me some fast feedback.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

GTX 680 EVGA 4gb Classified.

[3DMK]

Well, for right now, I want it for fast lighting and reflection feedback, not for final production render. I have 8 other machines I use as a render farm. What usually takes the most time when doing illustration, is tuning the reflections/tweaking the HDRI map. As it is now, I only have 2 CPU cores and doing test renders every time I move the HDRI map takes forever. I could easily spend an hour adjusting an HDRI map to make a reflective object look good, especially for product renders. I just need fast feedback when tweaking lighting and environments. I Don't use any other plugins (well, Afterburn, but rarely). I could save hours on a particular job by just having RT's fast feedback. So which materials are not supported yet? I was thinking maybe a single GTX 580 or above card would be enough to get me some fast feedback.

I know the CPU version is slower than the GPU version [RT] but it is fine for doing things like you mentioned. You can even use RT CPU with distributed rendering so with your 8 machines it should be rendering pretty quickly
What I am saying is that GPU RT is great but you can always use CPU RT & still get really fast results for what you are doing...without worrying about buying a new card. Especially if you like AMD cards which are not working well with GPU, but shit all over Nvidia Game style cards when it comes to line drawing [wireframe viewport]
Using region render in RT also helps speed things up heaps.

Hope this helps

[3DMK]

Post got duplicated...sorry

[simmsimaging]

I know the CPU version is slower than the GPU version [RT] but it is fine for doing things like you mentioned. You can even use RT CPU with distributed rendering so with your 8 machines it should be rendering pretty quickly
What I am saying is that GPU RT is great but you can always use CPU RT & still get really fast results for what you are doing...without worrying about buying a new card. Especially if you like AMD cards which are not working well with GPU, but shit all over Nvidia Game style cards when it comes to line drawing [wireframe viewport]
Using region render in RT also helps speed things up heaps.

Hope this helps

+1 I still cannot use either GPU option much at all. Even CPU has a lot of limitations still. My suggestion is to save your money unless you really want the card for other stuff too.

Be a nice gaming card. For example.

[jwatson]

Especially if you like AMD cards which are not working well with GPU, but shit all over Nvidia Game style cards when it comes to line drawing [wireframe viewport]
Using region render in RT also helps speed things up heaps.

Hope this helps

Thanks 3DMK. I'm sure a dual 4 core or dual 6 core Xeon machine will do great with RT then. I'd rather spend the money on a couple 6 core chips and get a GPU later when there's more implementation. I'm not real familiar with AMD cards, I've always used Nvidia. So are you saying that AMD cards are better for wireframe redraw speeds? That is also something to consider then. Any suggestions for AMD cards that kick butt with viewport speeds? Is this also the case for shaded views? Appreciate it.