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Thread: 3D Rendering & SLI

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    3D Rendering & SLI

    Hi there,

    I'm looking to buy a new system in the next couple of weeks which will primarilly be used for my business which is mainly 3D rendering on the likes of 3DMax. I have a rough idea as to whats needed for this type of work but one i'm a bit unsure about is SLI. Does anyone know themselves or can maybe point me in the right direction in terms of finding out how much it would benefit the program. I know the gpu is mainly to do with the viewport speed, but just wondering if the cost of an extra card would be worth the extra boost.

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    Re: 3D Rendering & SLI

    As far as I'm aware it should mean that the workload is balanced between the cards so that each individual frame can be rendered by a different card thus speeding up the process.

    What card(s) are you considering?
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    Re: 3D Rendering & SLI

    The system i'm looking at at the moment has:

    2GB EVGA GTX 680 SC

    Though to be honest its still early days so still got a fair it of looking around to do.

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    Re: 3D Rendering & SLI

    Give me a day and I'll have a look into it for you so that I can give you some more specific advice.
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    Re: 3D Rendering & SLI

    Thaks very much for the help.

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    Re: 3D Rendering & SLI

    Hi - 3D guy here that deals with this kinda thing for a living (Although I'm not a modeller by nature)

    You can use more than one GPU for Max, but not really in SLI. You can for example, use one for the viewports and one for rendering. SLI though is mostly a gaming thing and is optimised as such.

    Loads of info in this thread: http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/.../t-965429.html
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    Re: 3D Rendering & SLI

    Interesting.

    Definitely not my area.
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    Re: 3D Rendering & SLI

    Quote Originally Posted by Jockbh0y View Post
    The system i'm looking at at the moment has:

    2GB EVGA GTX 680 SC

    Though to be honest its still early days so still got a fair it of looking around to do.
    Avoid gaming cards if you need this for your business. Go for a workstation card from the Quadro or FirePro lines. The kepler architecture cards are a bit too gaming orientated and lose out on rendering/compute performance so I'd recommend a Tahiti based FirePro from AMD if you can afford it (W9000 or W8000). Even the Pitcairn based cards show good compute performance vs Keplar (eg FirePro W7000) thanks to GCN architecture, so that would probably be my choice.

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    Re: 3D Rendering & SLI

    SLI's probably off the cards then because although I have VrayRT which utilises the graphics card for rendering I dont use it tbh, so it would only really be of use for the viewport performance.

    With regards the Quadros and FirePro's versus Gaming Cards I seem to hear a lot of mixed reviews. The gist of what i'm told is you either get a quadro and have it do you fo a good 5 years, or you get a top end gaming card and upgrade every couple of years. But in terms of performance, bang for buck, people seem to be telling me to go down the gaming route.

    I'm not overly clued up on whats what to be honest so i'm letting other guide me in most choices.

    Appreciate the help guys.

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    Re: 3D Rendering & SLI

    Quote Originally Posted by Jockbh0y View Post
    With regards the Quadros and FirePro's versus Gaming Cards I seem to hear a lot of mixed reviews. The gist of what i'm told is you either get a quadro and have it do you fo a good 5 years, or you get a top end gaming card and upgrade every couple of years. But in terms of performance, bang for buck, people seem to be telling me to go down the gaming route.
    This is what we mostly do now. Kalniel is right in what he's saying, but the cost difference can be so huge, it's not cost effective sometimes.

    One thing the Quadro does come with though is excellent driver support - nVidia take driver bugs in the Quadro range seriously.

    You just need to check the cost effectiveness for your uses and decide based on that.

    We are exclusively nVidia though for reasons I won't get into, so I'm a little out of date with AMDs professional offerings.
    Quote Originally Posted by Saracen View Post
    And by trying to force me to like small pants, they've alienated me.

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    Re: 3D Rendering & SLI

    Oh there's no contest on the performance side - gaming cards are great value for money in that respect. It's the cost for downtime/driver bugs/instabilities that you have to weigh up in a professional environment.

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    Re: 3D Rendering & SLI

    Quote Originally Posted by kalniel View Post
    Oh there's no contest on the performance side - gaming cards are great value for money in that respect. It's the cost for downtime/driver bugs/instabilities that you have to weigh up in a professional environment.
    Kepler is very gimped for compute performance even vs GTX 580, let alone AMD 7950+ which can be up to 3x faster. if you want to save cash look at the AMD cards or older Nvidia ones. Or the cheaper pro cards for 3dsmax-maya etc etc tec. GTX 680 is aweful for pro work (great for games though). The most cost effective solutions right now is the 7950 with 3GB (that 3GB is killer for a pro 64 bit 3d apps!) so for £250+ you can have 3GB Vram stuff that full of textures for real time preview and get half decent compute gains in many 3d apps (Open CL anything go AMD right now) . You can find more crash-bug-issues on gamer cards vs pro cards depending on app and what plugins you run etc so there is a balance. So if this is work that you get paid for and is mission critical pro cards can be a life saver. If this is to do stuff at home and learn apps and play and create buy game cards
    Last edited by DLUK; 22-08-2012 at 12:33 AM.

    3XS i7 2600k 4.9 Ghz, P67, FT02 SE, MSi GTX 680, 4GB DDR3, OCZ Revo 2 x2 PCIE SSD 240 GB, G930 7.1.

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    Re: 3D Rendering & SLI

    It's my actual full time business and has been for the last year, before that worked in Architectural practices doing the same. But at the same time for the last year I've used a HD5870 which has served me well with no issues but i've got nothing to compare it to.

    You guys obviously know more than I do, so how do you know that the 680 is terrible for pro work, is it something in the spec I should be picking up on?

    Thing is business is going fairly well so I have some money to spend and dont need to particularly save but at the same time i dont want to spend money for the sheer sake of it. I do a fair bit of gaming on the same rig as i work from home and the same computer gets used for both if that changes things, but obviously work takes priority.

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    Re: 3D Rendering & SLI

    Quote Originally Posted by Jockbh0y View Post
    Thing is business is going fairly well so I have some money to spend and dont need to particularly save but at the same time i dont want to spend money for the sheer sake of it. I do a fair bit of gaming on the same rig as i work from home and the same computer gets used for both if that changes things, but obviously work takes priority.
    Well that might change things up a bit, because you can't really game on the workstation cards. If you are happy relying on the same machine for both gaming and business then it can't be that mission critical so just get a gamer card like the 7950. Then again if the business is doing well I'd consider getting a dedicated business machine and a dedicated gaming machine.

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    Re: 3D Rendering & SLI

    To be honest what you've mentioned is something i've been thinking about for some time. The problem is space. At the moment were ina fairly new house so as you can imagine there aint many rooms and the ones we do have are small so theres simply not the space for another computer so i've not got a great deal of choice unless i decide to jack in gaming altogether. It is still extremely important, but just a casualty of circumstance.

    But having said all that the house is going on the market next week and were looking to move somewhere bigger, on top of that theres also talk of maybe renting an office. In both situations there would be a dedicated work machine.

    I also do have my current rig, which i wont be selling though its a few years old now, so cant imagine its that great a spec.

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