Cheapest acceptable card for viewport performance

[nick_martin]

Hey guys, just wondering what would be the cheapest card that would still work quite well for 3ds max viewport? The GTX 1050?

I have compared GTX 1070 and GTX 970 and can barely notice any difference in viewport performance at all. So just wondering what the cheapest card you could get away with might be....

What specs are important for good viewport performance? Does vram affect the viewport?

ps.... I am using a 1080ti for gpu rendering. Second card would be for viewport only.

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

Would be interested too
trying to cram as many cards in my pc as possible and am looking for the cheapest smallerst card possible for viewport

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

Almost one year has passed l and no answers ol
anyway, just got a new pc with two 2080 tis and a gtx 1050 for display and interior scenes show sometimes heavy lagging
.
What did you end up with? I have the feeling the 1050wasnt a good choice .

[piotrus3333]

vram is probably quite limiting for 1050. 2GB? 1060 with 6GB would be starting point i guess. fast cpu is big help with viewport. today I encountered nvidia denoiser failing on 1050 becouse of insuficient vram.
2080 in the office and passive radeon 460 with 4GB at home (but only light stuff at home so do not really know the limits. should be close to 1050 speed wise)

[piotrus3333]

what I would like to test is radeon VII with 16GB vs 2080.

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

Until now I was working with quadro k4000 and it wasn't a Problem at all. I was told that mixing old quadros with new gtxg and rtx cards isn't a good idea though...
the new pc has a threadripper 2950x, so cpu is covered .
I'm a little shocked that performance is so bad and that it would so much depend on a good GPU and its ram..

[piotrus3333]

no experience with quadros.
instal GPU-Z and check one of your haevier scenes on 1050 and 2080Ti in terms of vram usage.

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

I checked and Vram is full with an interior scene. 2gb is nothing for 3dsmax...

[piotrus3333]

you can try to display geo without textures but probably will not take you far enough.
the same scene on 2080 would take 4+ GB.
the difference goes to system ram I guess and slows down viewport.
3ds max has proxy system for textures (makes 512x512 pixels copies for example) but that used to make vray slower.

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

I didnt have textures on display. Clay Mode is a bit heavier than normal shading I guess...
I swapped the 1050 for a my "old" 1070 and the same scene is using 3521mb now...Dont have anything special open except 3ds max. Is there a way to find out what exactly is eating vram except the task manager? gpu z is only showing total memory consumed...

Does anybody else experience a lag when zooming in or rotating in scene? It takes maybe half a second or even second until I can zoom in.... even with the GTX 1070 now..
EDIT: viewport performance didnt really improve with the 1070...I still have serious lags. So I am thinking it wasnt the GPU at all. But what else can it be? On my old PC it wasnt as bad. Where should I look?
EDIT2: I think I found the culprit. I recently bought a 3dconnexion spacemouse. Uninstalling the driver brough everything back to normal performance... Which makes the spacemouse useless... anybody knows how to solve this?