Next best thing to 6GB Titan

[Morne]

So I can't afford the titan 6gb right now. What's the next best thing at the moment? Vlado mentioned recently that the GTX 580 is still king, but doesnt look they're available anymore. So it looks like it will be the 6xx series. What about the GTX 670, is that a good all rounder?

[Pixelcon]

I have the 670 and it's pretty sweet. Better than my quadro 2000 at work (but that's no surprise really). Haven't tried it with 2013 but am happy to do an RT benchmark scene and viewport turntable test for you this week if you can set up a scene for me.

[Morne]

Yes I'm leaning towards the 670 at the moment...

[alexyork]

It seems to be all down to VRAM, really. Most of the recent GPUs will be very speedy for CUDA-based RT but for me it's all about whether or not I can fit a scene in the VRAM in the first place, and without a Titan the answer is usually "no way!". Even 6GB is quite limiting, when you're talking about very complex scenes with tonnes of trees and planting for example. Baby steps...

[devin]

I'm using Max and I have a Quadro 6000 but am looking at the Titan, I know GPU rendering will be better but what about navigation performance?

[Donald2B]

As I have mentioned in many other threads. If you typically work with very large data sets, nothing can compare to Quadro K5000 I am using now. My 680 does a fine job as long as the file stays pretty simple. But load up a couple of engineering models into 2013 and watch the 680 just limp along, while the Quadro K5000 moves right along with 4-5 times the performance. I am sure the the drivers have a LOT to do with the performance differences with these huge files. But that is basically all I work on any more, so it is definitely worth the price for the productivity I can maintain. YMMV.

[devin]

That's what I've been hearing, the only problem I have is the Titan is 4-5 times more powerful than the 6000 and is 1/4 the cost.

[Donald2B]

Technically my 680 and K5000 are the "same" card and the performance difference is night and day. I'm sure that there are some hardware tweaks and drivers that make the most difference.

I haven't gotten my hands on a Titan yet, but it is definitely interesting! It's still geared towards gaming so that makes me question the performance I would expect to get. With it's high cost, it's over half way to a K5000 and if it doesn't perform well during navigation, then I have to pass.

VRayRT stuff is great for some simple things, but I just don't have enough VRam to use it with most of my scenes. At least not yet!

[flipside]

So I can't afford the titan 6gb right now. What's the next best thing at the moment? Vlado mentioned recently that the GTX 580 is still king, but doesnt look they're available anymore. So it looks like it will be the 6xx series. What about the GTX 670, is that a good all rounder?

Strange, I have a GTX 580, and viewports in max are always very slow here. With every max upgrade it gets worse. Yes it is very good in shaded mode, but when I turn on the wireframes everything gets very very very slow... In max 2013 I tried nitrous and direct 3D, not much difference, both slow with wireframes. Also on max 2013, when I simply open max, I can hear the fan on my card speed up, even on an empty scene. This wasn't the case in max 2010.

[fraggle]

Strange, I have a GTX 580, and viewports in max are always very slow here. With every max upgrade it gets worse. Yes it is very good in shaded mode, but when I turn on the wireframes everything gets very very very slow... In max 2013 I tried nitrous and direct 3D, not much difference, both slow with wireframes. Also on max 2013, when I simply open max, I can hear the fan on my card speed up, even on an empty scene. This wasn't the case in max 2010.

The GTX are optimized for games, that's why it performed better in shaded view and why it is so poor in wireframe mode. Optimized = driver limitation. Long time ago, there was a way to turn a Geforce into a quadro (softmode), but Nvidia can't let the Pro market goes with the lower segment market, so they close the softmode tricks.

[Donald2B]

@Fraggle, there are also hardware differences too.
So it's more than just simply using a different driver to "unlock" hidden potential for the DCC crowd.

@flipside, I want my video card to be running in "wide open" mode when running max. That guarantees that I will get the best performance out of that card, no matter what. If you are concerned about it, just get a monitoring app to watch the video card temps to make sure that it's not overheating.

Having moved on to Max 2014, the viewport performance is just simple in another league! Makes it difficult to go back and work on old projects in Max 2013. (Nitrous or DirectX).

[flipside]

What's also strange, is that in other 3D apps I have no problem at all with wireframes and edged faces. For example in rhino I can easily load a 500Mb file, use shading with visible wireframes in X-ray mode (semi transparant) and spin the model with ease. If I load such a file in max, well, I don't even want to try that

[Donald2B]

Is Rhino still using OpenGL as the viewport driver instead of DirectX?

[jpmartin]

I have a Boxx 4920 and took a gamble on a Titan for the GPU. Before that I had a dual xeon 5650 with a Quadro 4000 (and have always been a quadro guy).

As far as viewport performance, the Titan seems at least as good as the Quadro, if not better. (I don't have the data to prove it, but I deal with some pretty heavy architectural scenes and have never had a significant lag on the Titan, where I would notice them from time to time on the Quadro).

As far as RT performance goes, Titan wins hands down.

I took a gamble on the Titan and so far I love it. I've had it for 7 months, so definitely enough time to put it through it's paces.