GeForce 710 - enough for Vray and Sketchup?

[antonio_silva]

Hi guys,

I’ve been using Vray and Sketchup for the past few years, and despite my computer being quite old it works quite well (I’m using a ATI 6670, and I’m running Windows 7), but I’m now building a new PC with Windows 10.

Initially I was thinking about reusing the ATI 6670 (it's 10 years old) on this new computer, but I don't know if it'd work with Vray in Windows 10.

If it isn't, would the GeForce 710 2GB be fully compatible with Vray?
I'd like to buy a more powerful graphics card, but currently there isn't any available. So I'm considering the 710.

Thanks in advance for all comments and suggestions.

[ValeroStudio]

I am having lots of issues trying to render to GPU with a 750 Ti (2GB) and I have more success rendering to my 1080 which has more memory. The struggle is real trying to find graphics cards. In the 30 years I have been computing, I have never seen anything like this shortage.

[antonio_silva]

Thanks, ValeroStudio. I was hoping the 710 would be enough, but it's a lot slower than yours, I think I'd risk having a compatible GPU, but too slow.

Do you (or anyone reading) know if there's a way to find out if my ATI 6670 graphics card is fully compatible with Vray, using Windows 10?
I've been using it for years with Vray, with Windows 7, and it works perfectly.

Without properly powerful graphics cards available anywhere, I think my only hope is to keep using the 6670 for another 6 or 12 months, but for that to work I must/should make sure it'll work with Windows 10.

[konstantin_chaos]

Hi antonio_silva,

First of all I have to point out that V-Ray can be used almost to its full potential in CPU mode (the default one).
If you get hold of a powerful NVIDIA GPU (one with sufficient memory and many cores) you can consider using V-Ray GPU (CUDA or RTX).
Keep in mind that when it comes to ray-tracing on the GPU you'll need a high end card for optimal performance.
Most of the NVIDIA GTX 10, RTX 20 and RTX 30 series cards fit in that category.

With an NVIDIA card you'll also be able to take advantage of the NVIDIA AI denoising capabilities in V-Ray - quite useful during interactive rendering.
As an alternative we have 2 more denoising engines that run on CPU - The V-Ray Denoiser and the Intel Open Image IO Denoise.

Another feature introduced in V-Ray 5 worth mentioning here is Vision.
This is a real-time (game engine-like) viewer that lets you explore your projects and even render preview images or animations.
You can think of it as a more powerful viewport.
Vison requires a GPU to work but this time you are not restricted to NVIDIA only - AMD cards also work great.

I hope the information here will help you make the right choice.

Konstantin

[antonio_silva]

Thank you very much Konstantin,

Your post was very useful. My current PC is 13 years old, and I don't upgrade often (obviously, lol), I think it's much better to buy something powerful even if it isn't absolutely essential at the moment, than constantly upgrading components, so your post helped to decide to buy a good graphics card.

It wasn't easy, but I managed to find a 3060 for a relatively good price, and bought it yesterday. My projects are very small, compared to most persons, but this way I'll almost surely have good performance for many years.

Thanks again.