Graphics card question for those in the know - Quadra P-6000
AllenArt
Posts: 7,172
How well would a Quadro P-6000 24 gig work with Daz Studio? I'm assuming it would be ok since it's a Pascal card. Anyone know for sure? Thanks a bunch :)
Laurie
Post edited by AllenArt on
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I believe Pascal is right on the verge of being deprecated, but don't quote me on that.
But it would still work fine in Daz Studio I would think for awhile tho, correct? I have a 980Ti, which is Maxwell that still works fine in the newest version of DS. The P-6000 is a generation newer than that.
Depends on which version of DS you're using. If you're still using a version that supports whatever card you're currently using, then you're good for as long as that version serves your needs. I should add that I don't keep up with Iray hardware requirements, and a brief attempt didn't reveal an easy way to know which cards are currently supported, so I might have been misremembering, and it's Maxwell that's not long for Iray.
My 980Ti still works fine with the newest version of DS. It's Maxwell. The Quadro P-6000 is Pascal and would be equivalent to a 1050?/1060/1070/1080 card.
...Maxwell was already moved to depreciated status late last year (2020). Also in newer versions of Daz (4.12 and on) Iray was optimised for the RTX series of GPUs. To compensate for the lack of RT cores some adjustments were made which take up more VRAM (on MSI Afterburner the total VRAM indicated for my Titan-X is 8,192 MB rather than the full 12,228. While rendering in 4.11,0 383 beta, I get the full VRAM for rendering.
Fortunately I have a 3060 XC arriving on Wednesday so this will no longer be an issue.
The Quadro P6000 is the workstation version of the Pascal based Titan XP. The biggest change is the Titan has 12GB and the Quadro has 24GB
Having said that... Depending on the price you are looking at for the P6000 (I'm seeing them starting at a little over $2000 on ebay.) You would probably be better off looking into getting a Nvidia RTX A5000 new. (They are going for around $2400 for bulk packaging brand new.) The A5000 is basicly a Geforce RTX 3080 with 24GB and a single 8 pin power connector.
...the other advantages of the A5000, is it is a dual instead of a 2.5 or triple slot card, TDP is 220 W instead of 350, it has a higher rated memory clock, ECC memory, superior FP64 performance, and being smaller (267 mm x 112 mm) would fit in most cases. The RTX A series (formerly branded Quadro) also uses an optimised driver set which assures reliability and a significant performance edge as well as have has extensive support.
And then there is the icing on the cake!
The RTX A5000 suports NVLink! This means that if you have two identical cards, they can pool their VRAM and you will have 48GB avalible for Iray.
LOL...well, that would be really nice, but I'd have to win a lottery first.
...based on MSRP, it would actually cost less to get a single 48 GB A6000 (4,650$) than two RTX A5000s (5,195$ plus the cost of the NVLink bridge). Also a single A6000 will take less power than 2 A5000s.
I'm a Cloud Shadow PC user. I do rendering on the Q P-5000. With the newest Daz. I have had zero issues. Runs very well too.
The only reason I'm asking is because there is a very good used rendering workstation that I can afford and it has a Quadro P-6000 24 gig in an HP Z840. I've had a Z620 for years and it's worked out very good for me, so I thought maybe lightning would strike twice LOL. I don't mind running hardware that's a little older if it WORKS. The desktop I have now is older and it still ran the latest version of DS with a 980Ti just fine until it started acting up just recently (I've had it for about 5 years). For what I paid for it, I definitely got my money's worth out of it ;).
...before I was able to score the 3060 XC which for months I had been on a watch list for, I was considering an RTX A4000 which is about on par with the Ampere generation Quadro RTX 5000 save for being single slot and less than half the price. Granted it cannot take advantage of NVLink but in many aspects it out performs Quadro RTX 5000. MSRP is 1,000$ and I've seen them priced at between 1,150$ and 1,300$
Oh, that changes things.
Yes the Quadro P6000 will render circles around the GTX 980ti. Plus you will have enough VRAM to keep your renders on the GPU. Just make sure that if the new (used) system has less than 64GB of system RAM, buy some more to get up to that goal.
Just to throw this in although it basically re-states many things said above. I have a computer still using an M6000 (a generation before the P6000). It works great up through Daz 4.11 and Generation 7 (Genesis 3). It does okay with more recent versions of Daz, but it does lose some Vram and speed as described above. It also does okay with Generation 8. So ... it is doable. And the Quadro series is built to last a long time.
However, if you have the money, purchasing a newer card would probably be better in the long run to keep up with all the technological advancements that are happening. If you are getting a great deal on a used card and can get it cheaply or if your computer system is a little older and may not handle the newer cards anyway, then a P6000 might be a good investment.
EDIT: oh, I just saw your comment about a used workstation. Yes, it is probably a good buy. I have a laptop with an GTX M960. The M6000 will generally do renders in about one tenth the time it takes the 960 to do it ... so much faster ... and much bigger scenes.
It has 256 gigs of system ram.