Datahopa

Since this has popped up in a separate topic I thought I would start a new thread.

Starting with the AMD R9 390X and my current choice of MSI.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/msi_radeon_r9_390x_gaming_8g_oc_review,1.html (http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/msi_radeon_r9_390x_gaming_8g_oc_review,1.html)

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-radeon-r9-390x-review (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-radeon-r9-390x-review)

That is a nice card but I'm thinking that AMD haven't really moved forward with their GPU's as much as I would have liked them too, they have been tweaking older GPU's haven't they.

Then what about Direct x 12, these older DX11 tweaked chips will work with DX 12 but maybe the smart money will be on the next gen GPU's.

Gut feeling, lets give it 6 months and see what has happened.

I admit that I haven't been looking at NVidia cards much, not sure where they are right now. 

:sign-nice-thread:

Found this video, explains some basics.

Why have an 8 GIG card these days ?

Simple answer, you don't want to run out of VRAM and get in to them stutter moments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Utv144XeHag (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Utv144XeHag)

Good video  :thumbsup:

Yes I also get the impression that not much has changed with these ones, but they are still decent enough cards. I'm reading that nVidia have the edge over AMD but cost more in a nut shell.

There's this from AMD, but only 4GB. Not really for this topic, but just to show what they have done that is more new.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9390/the-amd-radeon-r9-fury-x-review/27 (http://www.anandtech.com/show/9390/the-amd-radeon-r9-fury-x-review/27)

I have not researched much lately on gpu's whether amd or NVidia, but I can say I had no problems ever with NVidia where I constantly had driver issues with amd. but please note I have not used amd for many many years.

when I bought my card there was much fuss on many forums saying you will never use that much, 2 is all that was needed boy where they all wrong and I am glad I got the 4GB model. note that was only around year ago. so I believe if 8 or 12 is out now we may be needing 16 to 24 by this time next year  :o

It could be that 8GIG cards might be the sweet spot for games for a few years now or at least until the next, next gen consoles get released. The consoles now are 8GIG, game makers can be lazy when importing to the PC.  ;)

PC only games could set the limit higher and make an ultra ultra ultra setting.  :D

There probably are other reason apart from games and running game engines that would need a lot more VRAM but I can't think of any right now.

Well my target is about £300 to be saved up for around Christmas or the New Year - maybe there will be some offers and price drops by then.

I can't see me stretching to more than 8GB at the moment though. nVidia may be worth a better look - I have had fine nVidia cards in the past, there's no real reason why I couldn't consider using one of theirs this time around.

Data VR is coming and I believe they are going to be vram hungry

Freddy no matter what card you choose be sure to keep us posted  ;)

   I learned daz would like 4 gb mem on the video card, I just checked my card which has 1 gb, well daz is working.
Carl2

Yes Daz will work fine for the most part. A lot depends on how much you put in a scene. Some of the environments you can buy are pretty big.

For animating individual characters with a few props should be fine with what you have.

I came across this Vram test of Middle-earth: Shadow Of Mordor

The game is released and requires a minimum of a 6 GIG card to max out, top right of the video shows Vram usage @ around 5.5GIG.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOJwy2bjzHg (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOJwy2bjzHg)

  I just checked the HP computer, this is the older Gateway I'm using, the newer Hp has the 6 Gb buss speed  and seems a hair faster.  I just checked the video card that was put in, it has a 4 gb mem.  I should put Daz in that computer and take it out of tis one. 
  I'm not into gaming much,  I don't like wars and I don't like blood and guts, grew up in the country and you didn't want to shoot a person when hunting. 
Carl2

A 4 GIG card will be fine for you Carl2, as you are not much of a gamer, fully understandable.

I really posted the video to poo poo any thoughts that anything over a 4 GIG card is a waste of money for games because it isn't, there are game engines out now that can utilise them extra GIG's.

Actually that game is on my wish list and I nearly bought it the other day - never thought to look at the recommended system.

Thanks  :thumbsup:

Didn't know it was on your wish list Freddy, well there you go  :D

Another one that will need plenty of Vram to max out is GTA5, still silly money to buy on Steam but one day  ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUnO0c1GEc8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUnO0c1GEc8)

Been looking at Nvidia cards, but it's annoying because for their nice cards they don't have 8GB versions.

Like this, which is one of the best cards in terms of value and performance :

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Nvidia-GTX-970/Rating/2577 (http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Nvidia-GTX-970/Rating/2577)

About £270.00 now.

There are some 12GB floating around but the prices are astronomical and probably overkill anyway.

I've been playing with Daz Studio and a good new development is GPU rendering. Good yes, but only for nVidia cards, although you can do the same thing using the CPU - my CPU was on full whack doing that render I posted in the gallery.

I thought this was an interesting comparison for the best nVidia vs the newer AMD :

http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-970-vs-AMD-R9-390/2577vs3481 (http://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-970-vs-AMD-R9-390/2577vs3481)

Not much in it, but the AMD has more VRAM.

This comment I found interesting too...

QuoteThe increased VRAM will rarely help even at ultra high resolutions and in any case, most 4K gamers are likely to seek more GPU power than the R9 390 has to offer.

I like that quote  :LOL:

No one will ever need more than a 1 GIG card, they said 3 years ago.

I don't know mate, it's going to come down to what you want to do with the card, that will determine how much VRAM you will need.

AC unity already goes over 4 GIG in places, so when they say you will not need it, I disagree 100% but ... I am a bit of a part time gamer, you are not :) I know this, if you run out of VRAM you really notice it in games.

I don't think it's a good time to buy a card, unless you really have to, DX12 is going to have a large impacted on game engines, saying that an Nvidia card might be good for your rendering in Daz Studio, it's a shame Daz Studio doesn't support AMD card GPU's, maybe they will in the future ?

I agree, not really the prime time to get a card, I'm still aimed at the new year to see what happens.

I've been playing more games lately, still mainly LOTRO though - I'm going to look for a newer RPG MMO though because it's getting a little repetitive now, but it's still fun to game with the gang.

I have a lot of uses for GPUs aside from playing games. Yes there is the rendering with DAZ etc but also Unity - it means I can push that more. Also for programming. A while back I was playing around with parallel processing on a GPU but did not get very far. I want to get back to that too at some point.

There is an alternative renderer for DAZ that qyou can buy for about $30 - I think I will pick that up later and give it a try. It's supposed to use the GPU too, the renders do look very nice that I have seen.

So yes, $30 for a software solution versus up to £300 for a hardware solution is the thing. Anyway the new (Nvidia slanted) renderer can work on my CPU as I said, so what's a couple of minutes...

After looking at all the goodies for Daz now I have come to the conclusion that I would be better off with nVidia. It's pretty clear that's the way Daz is heading. Some of the renders I have seen using nVidia are outstanding, far better than I have come up with so far.

It seems the rendering programs target nVidia a lot - there's another renderer I am interested in too and that's for nVidia only.

I don't play games as much as you Data, I'm more about making things on my PC. Gaming for me comes in fits and starts.

I was looking on Scan and they have four figure cards on there. Amazing but beyond my means. I've upped my budget to £500 and am looking at something like the GTX 980 Ti now. I reckon I can save that by the new year. I do like my modelling and rendering and with a beast like that I would be set for a while.

I'll ask over on Daz if they think that's a good card to aim for and get some ideas hopefully.

It's a 6GB card and apparently plays 4K fine, so I should have no problem with games anyway as a nice side effect.

I understand your decision Freddy, will be good for your Daz quest  8)

But I have to say ...
I too make things on my PC and only game part time, but my problem is when I start a game I normally have to finish it, at least once  :LOL:

I don't want to see any benchmark scores from that card, it will only annoy me   :no-no:  :LOL:

Oh yes, I didn't mean to take anything away from you, I know you make music and do graphics work too. And all the web design as well. You are a creative person. I'm just rationalising my thoughts for what I spend my time doing.

My trouble with games is I start them and never finish :LOL:

When I get into something I become a bit obsessed with it, then games fall to the wayside  :o ;D

OK no benchmarks then.

Time for bed !

Go for it, if it renders as good as it sounds like then it's going to make your work stand out even more than it does already  :)

I know I'm off topic but it is sort of linked.

May be a couple of naughty words. Though it is spelt FAQ.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9t6dFS0HMw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9t6dFS0HMw)

 :D

I actually asked for people with experience with nVidia cards over on the Daz art forum to share their experience. Whilst some people did contribute it ended up with people just listing their specs, so I did not bother further.

This video makes me think of that experience - I mean I thought I was getting an awesome nVidia Ti, but then other people chime in with dual Titans and the like - which costs a couple of grand. Some of these guys and girls have three or four cards  :o

To be fair some of these people might be modelling and rendering for a living, so it makes more sense that they would need the speed.

I still think I will like my Ti  ;D

Doesn't this really boil down to having a PC that does what you need it to do and do it fast enough to keep you happy ?

I've built i3's with on-board graphics on nice little motherboards with SSD's - they are easily fast enough to run most day to day tasks, they feel very quick to use and boot super quick too. The best bit is that the entire PC would cost less than an i7 CPU and I honestly don't think you would even notice it when browsing the web, sending e-mails etc.

Anyway things have changed with windows 10, I have noticed that games are taking quite a lot less Vram in the new OS, F1 2013 has almost halved the amount of Vram needed, so yeah an 8 GIG card might actually be over kill in 10.

Yes it's horses for courses.

My Ti will speed things up, it just remains to be seen how much.

When I render currently all of my CPU is used, this makes it difficult for other things to run - it's very slow on the net for example. So by going to GPU rendering, I can have use of my PC again for things like that. It's not a problem at the moment as I am doing small renders. But it's a problem when it renders for 40 minutes and I'm stuck waiting.

Interesting observation on the VRAM. I think 6GB will do for me for now.

I think I may pick up the nVidia soon rather than wait till the new year.

Sounds like you need a stonking GPU for your renders then, it has to be quicker than the CPU could do it too, you would certainly think so.

Just a couple of things that spring to mind that I thought I would mention. 

You could set the affinity of your render program to use some of the CPU cores and leave some for other tasks.

All these multicore CPU's and stonking GPU's start to increase power consumption by quite a considerable amount. You know me, do it with as little power as you can.  ;D

Saying that, if your heart is set on a Ti then who am I to disagree  :)

Yep I just asked on the Daz forum and they also told me about the affinity, so I stopped it from using one core for now  :thumbsup:

I'm not too worried about the power really - it's not going full whack all day as yet ;)

Just done a quick comparison of VRAM usage in win7 and win10 with F1 2013 which is a DirectX 11 game. The game isn't exactly taxing on VRAM usage either. Same quality settings and all I did was start the game and go sit in one of the cars. Kept them as identical as I could, once you start driving round a track the VRAM usage moves all over the place, this should be quite an accurate result but not exactly scientific.

Results:
Windows 7   962MB usage

Windows 10 759MB usage

Windows 10 is using less VRAM than 7 on older DirectX 11 games, interestingly the GPU usage is identical between 7 and 10.

[attachment deleted by admin]

Interesting, thanks  :thumbsup:

So presumably DX12 shifts something back to the CPU without an impact on FPS. Nice.

Are we still of the mind that we should go for a lot of memory ?

I'm just looking at the prices of these GTX 970's and the price is not bad. For my rendering it's the cores that are more important. These have quite a few cores and are half the price of a GTX 980 ti.

I think the 970 is a nice mid point for a lot of people from what I have read.

http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/gpu-nvidia/nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-graphics-card (http://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/all/gpu-nvidia/nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-graphics-card)

All 4GB.

Here's a good article : http://techreport.com/blog/28800/how-much-video-memory-is-enough (http://techreport.com/blog/28800/how-much-video-memory-is-enough)

Seems like in normal use, for very demanding games like Mordor, that the 970 4GB will do the job.

I'm not convinced about 4 GIG to be honest, when I played AC Unity the Vram usage was very high even at 1080 but go over 1080 and the usage goes way over 4 GIG.

This video shows that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1dSp1y8Kjw (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1dSp1y8Kjw)

Then what about modding games and adding your own super hi res textures.

For me the jury is still out and I'm going to sit back and watch what happens for a bit longer. 

How much RAM does your card have again mate ?

I'm only running 2 GIG, which is now a bottleneck in new games. I couldn't run AC unity close to maxxed out  :(

My gut feeling says that a 4 GIG card will be ok for 1080 on a single monitor for a good few years but have multiple monitors, jack up the AA and you might well hit the Vram bottleneck.

I watched that video and to be honest I have to chuckle. I'm sure he's right but he's talking about an extreme beast of a machine.

I mean are either of us going to buy a couple of Titans for two grand and a 4K monitor ? I know I am not. ;)

The other thing is, on my monitor you don't need any kind of AA on at all - you just can't see the difference. The pixels on this main one are so small. So okay that game blipped out, but I'd never run AA on it anyway. And it seemed that this was the major factor towards it using more VRAM. So for me that is not part of the equation.

So at the end of the day it depends on what you want to use it for and how deep your wallet is.

I can just about manage a 980ti, but any more for me is just overkill. For me it's a lot about the cores like I said for rendering. I reckon the 980ti with 6GB will last a good few years - even the 970 might well do it for me.

We need to win the lottery mate  ;D

BTW Black Friday is next Friday so I'll be looking out for some deals.

I'm holding fire for HBM2, we said a while ago that it wouldn't be long until AMD make these cards, they are on the horizon. HBM2 will bring 8GIG to HBM VRAM. 

http://wccftech.com/amd-greenland-gpus-feature-hbm2-14nm-coming-2016/ (http://wccftech.com/amd-greenland-gpus-feature-hbm2-14nm-coming-2016/)

If nothing else I might be able to grab an R9 Fury Nano (4GIG) (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sapphire-Graphics-Express-4096-Bit-Mini-ITX/dp/B014SVZL14/ref=pd_sim_sbs_147_2?ie=UTF8&dpID=41SMD56BVAL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR152%2C160_&refRID=15QJB19X5CJV5ZP0X8TA) at a bargain price when the new cards get released.

That sounds good. It's nVidia for me now though, only because that's what Daz use, otherwise I would probably go for it too. Looks like they may still cost a fair whack though.

I've got another plan brewing  ;D

Buy one gtx 970 now which will handle current games. Then once DX12 gets going and can use more VRAM from a second card, then get a second 970 for SLI.

This gives me 8GB VRAM in the future which should be plenty - with DX12 as I said.

Then for my rendering I get 3,328 (1664 x2) cuda cores instead of 2816 cores on a single 980Ti - which is possible because Daz Iray renderer can use whatever GPUs you have hooked up.

Does that sounds like a plan Batman ?

Followed this up and found this : http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_970_sli_review,23.html (http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_970_sli_review,23.html)

Seems they work well together.

I found some benchmarks at the Daz forum and the 970 is pretty quick on it's own. I think it's viable, tempted to put an order in for one tonight, but will probably wait until Friday to see what all the companies will tempt us with.

Sounds like a plan, I did a bit of looking into the performance of the 970 vs a 280x, there is a quite a nice performance gain with the 970.

Should be good for Daz and gaming  8)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvj1QwF-1wQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fvj1QwF-1wQ)

Nice, I think I will go for the two 970s then, seems like a good option and means I can spread the cost.

This is the one I think :

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-evga-gtx-970-ssc-gaming-acx-20plus-pcie30-7010mhz-gddr5-gpu-1190mhz-boost-1342mhz-cores-1664-plu (http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-evga-gtx-970-ssc-gaming-acx-20plus-pcie30-7010mhz-gddr5-gpu-1190mhz-boost-1342mhz-cores-1664-plu)

I'd get Assassin Creed Syndicate which is £50 on Steam.

Well I think your heart is set on it so I'm not going to argue with you.  ;D

Wouldn't be my choice to be honest, I am a bit concerned about NVidia and DX12 atm, the way that AMD cards habdel DX12 is better. I'm saying this as a last chance to change your mind and hold fire a while.

Did you watch the DX12 videos I posted ? really you should, Nvidia getting HBM soon and AMD taking the lead in DX12.

Yeah I did, but AMD is no good to me unfortunately.

It's early days with DX12, I'm sure nVidia will sort it out.

As for HBM, that's fine but it will still cost a lot of wedge.

Then go for it mate, hopefully NVidia can sort out their problem with DX 12   :fingers-crossed:

Thanks for the concern :)

For current games and a while yet just one of them is going to be enough for me.

From what I just read the nVidia Pascal cards won't be around till mid 2016 - it's a bit sketchy and based on rumours though. I think we would have read something from nVidia by now if they were going to be early 2016. Seems AMD have first dibs and this has put nVidia back a bit. Dunno though, it's all hearsay.

I read that nVidia price by performance, not so much on generation, but I have seen them chop the price of older cards. If the rumours are true about the performance of things like Pascal, then surely they will be priced more than the 980Ti. That card is pretty much as good as a Titan for half the price. So my guess is the new nVidias with HBM are at least going to cost somewhere between a 980Ti and a Titan - it's a bit prohibitive.

I can always sell the 970s and upgrade to the Pascals if it's a no brainer.

Just trying to help, I know it's more like a hinder sometimes  ;D

I have the feeling you won't bother with a second card, by the time you need one HBM will be the norm and a new card would probably be the better option.

A bit jealous of you getting Assassin Creed Syndicate, had my eye on that one for a little while, way too much money atm though  :(

And then there's Fallout 4, that game is really calling me in  :drooling:

You're helping more than hindering :)

I hope the game is like before and it's a Steam code. I prefer to use Steam for all my games now.

I was asking again over on the Daz forums and the 970 is used by a few people and it's quick, much quicker than just the CPU on it's own which is what I use at the moment.

Now I got accepted as a vendor over there I will be doing a lot of graphics work, so now is the best time for me to take the plunge really.