RTX 4070 vs 3090

marble

I'd like to share my experience and ask for other opinions on this subject. I have had a RTX 3090 for just over 2 years and it has been such a huge improvement over the original 1070 that I had before that. However, it has started to fail and crash my PC during renders so I took it back to the store hoping for a Warranty exchange (3 Year Warranty). Unfortunately the store said they have to send it back to the manufacturer (PNY) which, I assume, is in the USA (I am in New Zealand). That could take months and I am not certain they will exchange it because it only fails when rendering in DAZ Studio - it functions normally for videos, games, etc.

Anyhow, I needed a replacement and could not afford a 4090 so I shelled out for a new 4070 (not the Ti version) and have to say that I am impressed. OK it only has half the VRAM (12 vs 24GB) but I don't do huge scenes. Render times *seem* to be comparable - maybe slightly slower. I googled a comparison and the performance of a 3090 was stated to be 10% better than the 4070 which is negligable to me.

So I wonder whether anyone else has a similar experience? Also, I wonder whether - if they do send me a new 3090 in exchange - I could use both together (I do have a spare PCIE slot). I know that I would be restricted to the 12 GB of the 4070 VRAM (unless I disable it) but for most scenes I could manage with 12.

crosswind

I don't have 40 series card but 3090 (10496 Cuda Cores) is appr. 12 - 15% better than 4070 (5888 Cuda Cores) in terms of performance of rendering with DS (https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/341041/daz-studio-iray-rendering-hardware-benchmarking/p41), though the peer of comparison for 4070 should be 3070Ti (6144 Cuda Cores)...

I think you made a good choice (based on cost-effectiveness) as long as... yeah, as you said, you can well control the VRAM consumption with your scene. And if you can get 3090 back, making them work together will be even much better.

Silver Dolphin

I have a 3090 and I run msi afterburner and change the paste on this card regularly. You should know this particular card runs hot so the fan should be at 100% to keep it cool. Make sure a regular fan is aimed at your case and take the side panel off. A better solution is to water cool your GPU if you don't want the noise. 

marble

Silver Dolphin said:

I have a 3090 and I run msi afterburner and change the paste on this card regularly. You should know this particular card runs hot so the fan should be at 100% to keep it cool. Make sure a regular fan is aimed at your case and take the side panel off. A better solution is to water cool your GPU if you don't want the noise. 

I regularly checked the temps with GPU-Z (especially when it started failing) and they looked reasonable - usually between 60 and 80 Max. I think the NVidia rating is up to 93 Deg C. I also have MSI Afterburner and I can hear when the fans are boosted but that rarely happens. I think the cards also throttle when the temp goes too high.

I just checked the new 4070 and it seems to be running considerably cooler though.

oddbob

marble said:

Silver Dolphin said:

I have a 3090 and I run msi afterburner and change the paste on this card regularly. You should know this particular card runs hot so the fan should be at 100% to keep it cool. Make sure a regular fan is aimed at your case and take the side panel off. A better solution is to water cool your GPU if you don't want the noise. 

I regularly checked the temps with GPU-Z (especially when it started failing) and they looked reasonable - usually between 60 and 80 Max. I think the NVidia rating is up to 93 Deg C. I also have MSI Afterburner and I can hear when the fans are boosted but that rarely happens. I think the cards also throttle when the temp goes too high.

I just checked the new 4070 and it seems to be running considerably cooler though.

With a 3090 the main issue is the vram junction temp, it's hard to cool the vram on the back of the board. Mine is usually around the 100c mark in use while the core temp is <70 which makes you wonder about long time reliability. I watercooled mine when it was my main card because of the temps and fan noise and the vram junction temp was still in the 70s. With a watercooled 4090 my ram temps are within a few degrees +/- core temp with the hotspot temp about 12c over core temp. Air cooled 4090s do just fine for temps as well, they have big coolers and all the vram is on the same side as the cooler.

StratDragon

what size PSU are you running and did the crashes coinside with any new hardware?

 

marble

StratDragon said:

what size PSU are you running and did the crashes coinside with any new hardware?

 

 

I bought the motherboard, PSU (880W) and 3090 at around the same time and they all worked perfectly well together for well over 2 years. I wasn't sure it was actually the GPU so I tried different driver versions, different DAZ Studio version and even borrowed my son's monitor. When I was just about certain it was the GPU I took it back for a warranty claim but I don't have confidence the manufacturer will find a fault because it worked fine unless I was rendering in DAZ Studio (I doubt the manufacturer will test it in DAZ Studio). Anyway - the long wait time expected for the warranty claim plus that uncertainty almost forced me into buying a new GPU anyway so I opted for the 4070. This has been remarkably close in performance (from my observations) to the 3090 which was, at least, a positive note going forward.

By the way, it wasn't just failing on heavy scenes, it was failing on even the most simple render with minimal VRAM demands.