Holy Cuda Cores, Renderman! My GPU has tripled in price!
StratDragon
Posts: 3,251
in The Commons
I knew prices had gone up, I bought a $279 1660Ti in 2019, it's almost $1,000.00 US now
Apparently this is not the time to buy a GPU.
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Comments
thats crazy.
It is not the time to buy a GPU. That is true.
It's time to buy NFTs! ;)
On the bright side, the Quadro cards are still selling for the correct prices. The inflated consumer card prices are making the extra VRAM on the Quadros look more appetizing.
For example: Both cards will render Iray at about the same speed, but the Quadro has 16GB of VRAM (all prices are based on used ebay items)
GTX 1080 8GB = $550
Quadro P5000 16GB = $1200
RTX 2080 8GB = $950
Quadro RTX 5000 16GB = $1800
Or if you only need the card for rendering... You can look at Nvidia Tesla cards.
Tesla P40 24GB = $1700 (This card is equivilent to a Nvidia Titan XP or Quadro P6000)
I know it's still alot of money, but it puts the double VRAM on the Quadro cards to about double the price of ithe simmilar performance Geforce.
Even better NFTs of GPUs
Is there a reference somewhere to tell which Quadro and Tesla cards work with current DS Iray?
Renderman rocks
!
But can those cards play today's AAA titles that require RTX tech?
That's my question, too. I think there is a limit to backward compatibility.
If you're mostly using 3Delight, you can spend on a current Threadripper and a pile of RAM. Then, if you have any halfway-decent 4GB graphics card, it should be ok.
Quadro and Tesla cards that start with "K" are Kepler GPUs (Geforce 600 and 700 based)
Quadro and Tesla cards that start with "M" are Maxwell GPUs (Geforce 800 and 900 based)
Quadro and Tesla cards that start with "P" are Pascal GPUs (Geforce 1000 based)
Quadro GV100 and Tesla V100 are the same GPU as the Titan V (Volta)
The Quadro T series are the same as the GTX 15XX and 16XX GPUs (Turing without RT cores)
The Quadro RTX and Tesla T4 are the same as the Geforce RTX 20 series (Turing)
The new Quadro A series are the same architecture as the Geforce RTX 30 sereis (Ampere)
All of these cards support the same feature sets as their Geforce counterparts, except for the Tesla cards as they have no Video outputs. Any Quadro card that has RTX in the name will play any game with RTX features just fine. With the Quadro and Tesla cards you will not get "Game Ready" drivers, but that doesn't seem to matter much in real world performance. My wife and I both run Workstation Laptops with Quadro GPUs as our daily driver/gaming laptops (Quadro P4000 8GB and P5000 16GB). One thing I will point out is how much I love not worying about "Will the scene fit into my GPU RAM?"...
Thank you @JamesJAB
I did a search for Quadro RTX on Newegg and for that price I might as well just pay a scalper for the card I want, which is the 24GB 3090 FTW 3...it's less money and more VRAM.
lol, even my RTX2070 almost doubled in price.
No, I'm definitely not selling. A replacement would cost me even more and take months to arrive.
As has been mentioned before, an alternate strategy is to order a ready-made machine with the GPU already installed. You can usually get the machine in a couple weeks. But even there, the price is only a bargain compared to what's going on with GPUs alone. And you may not be able to get the very specific version of 3090 that @melissastjames seeks.
Yes, thanks @JamesJAB for the detailed info on the Quadro cards. I will have to consider a Quadro A-series vs RTX 30-series for my next GPU. Do the Quadro cards use a nVidia Studio Driver similar to what a GTX and RTX card can use for iRay rendering with Daz?
...RTX A5000.: Double slot, 24 GB VRAM (GDDR6 ECC), Cores: 8192 CUDA 256 3rd gen Tensor, 64 2nd gen RT. and NVLink compatible, peak power consumption: 230w (less than my Titan-X).
Price (est.) 2,250 USD.
In looking at current prices for a 3090, finding them going for between 2,500 - 3,200 USD Given the specs of the A5000, (and it's lower power consumption) a slightly better deal than a 3090. particularly as I could actually get one. Then again I'm not into gaming, just 3D art so the RTX A series is a pretty good fit.
Need to up the system memory first though.
Yes, you can configure a base Alienware R10 (AMD) or R12 (Intel) with a RTX 3090 for about $3000.... You know the same price that the card alone is going for on ebay.
I tried a few different build configs online (CyberPowerPC, OriginPC, etc) and I couldn't get the card I want, or the exact combination of case/ram/mobo that I want...and by the time I had something even comparable to the build list I put together on my own, the price was pretty much the same...including the current scalper price that PC PartPicker is showing for the GPU. So no savings there.
That's how I got my RTX3090 early this year. Kick butt video card in a kick butt computer! It is my fourth AWESOME Alienware desktop in ten years. Three still get used every day. (I just don't have room for the fourth to be operational, and it is a bit dated now anyway). I have second guessed myself many times since this last purchase, but I am glad I did it when I did - things have only gotten worse.
tell me about it... I've been waiting for my graphics card to arrive for several months but they keep either getting the wrong one or not being in stock. the computer shop actually loaned me an older graphics card to apologize since their supplier said they had it in stock when they ordered my computer and didn't. and now the computer shop is in a hard spot because we paid for a card and they didn't get it, and the prices keep climbing...
But what model 3090 did you get? All the configurators I priced out didn't even specify, which means you get whatever they have in stock. I specifically want the EVGA RTX 3090 FTW 3 Ultra and I haven't seen any OEM build houses offereing EVGA cards at all, let alone that specific one.
...I just configured an R12 and the total came to 4,285 USD which includes 64 GB of memory (Ideally system RAM should be twice the VRAM as it still comes into play while rendering), W10 Pro, the 1TB M.2 SSD + 2 TB 7200 RPM HDD (wish they had more drive options as I would rather have a 2 TB SSD for my Daz content library), with the basic black enclosure and no keyboard/mouse (saving 40$).
My system is overdue for replacement. I'm sticking with it because it's sticking with me. But replacement day is coming. I'm thinking, go with a more modest 3060 12GB card and stuff in a threadripper with a lot of RAM. It's still expensive when it's all put together. But I need one of everything; and GPU is only one component on the list.
...yeah, trying to extend the life of my current build as long as possible as it's been running so well all these years (even after it was accidentally dumped on its side while running). Would need to double the memory to 48 GB (been researching and it is possible on an X58 MB with a Xeon CPU). The one downside is the MB still has PCIe 2.0 expansion slots and the new RTX cards are PCIe 4.0 so that would be a bottleneck. If I were to swap out the MB for at least PCIe 3.0, it would require a new CPU and a new W7 Pro install as my current one is an OEM. Most likely i'd also have to go to 64 GB of DDR4 for system memory as tne newer boards have 4 - 8 DIMM slots.
I've heard the same price jump is about to happen with ram and processors too.
...yeah, thanks to another crypto currency.
Need to make sure that my x58 MB can support an M.2 SSD. Still researching that. I have an empty x16 slot.
Hopefully it won't affect DDR3 memory as that is what my system needs.
That's horrifying and already in progress, I think.
More we can thank crypto for.
That's the thing, order it up base model with the RTX 3090 and 1000W PSU, then buy whatever extra RAM and HDDs that you want at retail. This will cost alot less money.
I would do the R10 because the AMD Ryzen 5000 series has much better multithreadded performance and better support and performance on faster RAM speeds.
Alienware R10 @ $2783.20
Geforce RTX 3090 24GB
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
8GB RAM (Who cares)
1TB HDD (Who cares)
1000W PSU with Dark Theme Chasis
Wireless AC
No Keyboard
No Mouse
Basic Support 1 year (Switch it off of the subscription support)
Then you can go shop around for RAM and SSDs (Looks like the motherboard only has a single m.2 slot, but you can always add a m.2 PCIe card)
64GB DDR4 (2x32GB) Newegg $279
1TB NVME SSD Newegg $109 Western Digital
And you may be able to purchase legit activatable Windows 10 Pro keys on a certain popular auction site for around $5 each... (wink wink nudge nudge)