Specific question about an nvidia card

halfmast88

I want to buy a new nvidia card to work with iray. I have about $200 to spend on it since im more of a hobbyist than a serious artist. My question is this: what are the minimum specs a card needs to have in order to actually make it a worthwhile purchase for use with iray? Im running windows 10 with an Intel i5-6400. I will include a link to a card I am looking at. From what I have read, 4GB+ Ram on card, and the more cores the better. I'm not sure if memory bit width is important as well. Any advise about a mid-range card would be helpful. -Thanks 

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-Perfect-Graphics-04G-P4-1962-KR/dp/B012NOWEY0/ref=sr_1_12?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1454202581&sr=1-12&keywords=GTX+870

captainklutz_a2ec859073

Well I am using a GTX660 myself & have 16gig RAM. I find it quite acceptable performance wise. It really depends what type of renders you intend doing. Typically I use 1 hi res character in scene with good quality textures throughout. Typically a render takes 40mins to 1 hour.

 

 

Silver Dolphin

halfmast88 said:

I want to buy a new nvidia card to work with iray. I have about $200 to spend on it since im more of a hobbyist than a serious artist. My question is this: what are the minimum specs a card needs to have in order to actually make it a worthwhile purchase for use with iray? Im running windows 10 with an Intel i5-6400. I will include a link to a card I am looking at. From what I have read, 4GB+ Ram on card, and the more cores the better. I'm not sure if memory bit width is important as well. Any advise about a mid-range card would be helpful. -Thanks 

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-Perfect-Graphics-04G-P4-1962-KR/dp/B012NOWEY0/ref=sr_1_12?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1454202581&sr=1-12&keywords=GTX+870

Looks like a nice card for the money and the 128bit memory bus is not going to be a problem. 4gb of DDR5 and 1024 cuda cores is what matters most because you need the space and cuda cores to render with. a step down from that is the Gigabyte GV-N75TWF2OC-4GI is a $150 dollar card with 4 Gb of video ram and 640 cuda cores.

Zilvergrafix

This one, hurry up

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-Classified-Graphics-04G-P4-3688-KR/dp/B008HZ53ZC/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1454275913&sr=1-1&refinements=p_36:1253506011,p_n_feature_keywords_five_browse-bin:6147187011,p_n_feature_keywords_three_browse-bin:6813170011,p_n_feature_four_browse-bin:6066316011

Silver Dolphin

Zilvergrafix said:

This one, hurry up

http://www.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-Classified-Graphics-04G-P4-3688-KR/dp/B008HZ53ZC/ref=sr_1_1?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1454275913&sr=1-1&refinements=p_36:1253506011,p_n_feature_keywords_five_browse-bin:6147187011,p_n_feature_keywords_three_browse-bin:6813170011,p_n_feature_four_browse-bin:6066316011

Sorry too much I have 3 Nvidia 780 6gb which I purchased for around $350 dollars each they have 2304 cuda cores and 6gb of video ram. Anything on or over $400 you need to save up and get a 6gb version of Nvidia 980.

JCThomas

I strongly recommend the card you linked to originally.

Serefina_Moon

How new is your motherboard Halfmast88 ?

I was going to update to a new nVidia card, only to find out my m//board is PCI v2, not v3.
v3 runs at a higher speed, and putting a v3 card in a v2 M/board would just slow the card to the M/boards speed.
I went for a second GTX 470 OC, to match the one I already have from when I built the PC, and the performance gain has been noticable, once I activated SLi in the nVidia control panel, and then in the Advanced tab of the Render Settings.

I do wonder how many people forget to do that last bit ever, and instead are rendering using the CPU alone.