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Graphics Card for Renders (and Gaming)

SaintOfTheDragonsSaintOfTheDragons Posts: 50
in Daz Studio Discussion

So I was looking for some advice from renderers: 1) I use DAZ Studio and am looking to render animations via Source Filmmaker, 2) I want graphics better than my AMD Radeon card presently gives me in gaming, and 3) I'm on a budget, but I don't know what I can get at what price.

I know, it's a terrible mix, but I do realize I'll have to trade quality for price. Any good cards out there that might fit my situation?

(BTW: My current AMD Radeon card does do renders- just very slowly. Additionally I can play games with it, but some require graphics turned down to a 100% low setting. I'm looking to do effecient renders and medium-quality graphics at least.)

Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,436

    Which Radeon is it? There have been a lot of them, so saying which nVidia cards will be better requires knowing which you have. Also, what is your PSU rated at, if you know, and does the radeon currently hae an auxillary power connector?

  • Silver DolphinSilver Dolphin Posts: 1,615

    What kind of budget do you have?  What kind of hardware? Do you have a powersupply that can handle a gaming video card? What kind of open video card slot do you have? Answering these important question and users here can steer you in the right direction. This program released by steam is like iclone but is free but like iclone you need a beefy video card to render those pixels.

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 18,293

    From what I've seen in these DAZ forums, you must pay $700 for a what said to be a mediocre nVidia video card and still get slow performance.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,436

    I paid £125 fro the card I bought a month or so back, 4GB 750GTI, and it is noticeably faster than CPU. Obviosuly how fast you want will depend on what you put in your scenes - I've msotly been limited to character trials as I try to get caught up with purchases - but you certainly don't need to spend $700 to get a worthwhile speed up.

  • MattymanxMattymanx Posts: 6,949

    With older cards you have you remember that just because they have CUDA cores doesn't mean its going to give you amazing performance.

     

    I have two of these and they are not mediocre

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500379 - or - http://www.amazon.com/ZOTAC-GeForce-980Ti-Extreme-ZT-90505-10P/dp/B00YOJ91YO

    Just one can play any game out there with everything turned up to the fullest and not drop below 60FPS @ 1920x1080

    In Iray they preform very well.

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 18,293
    edited March 2016

    Thanks, so I did some searching outside the forums and it seems the nVidia cards are branded differently in America. Maybe I'll be able to buy such a equivalent laptop card with the next MacMini they come out with. blush

    This is the nearest equivalent I would recommend -

    nVidia 760

    (eg EVGA GeForce GTX 960 4GB SSC GAMING ACX 2.0+, Whisper Silent Cooling w/ Free Installed Backplate Graphics Card 04G-P4-3966-KR but PNY, ASUS, and many other make competitive models) 

    is HW DirectX 12 compiant and can be had for $190 - $220.

    The nVidia 750 can be had for about $120 and the nVidia 730 for about $50.

    Once you go about the nVidia 760 though you get into prices as high a a complete computer, especially now that you can get Atom CPU computers for about $200.

    You'll want to read the slot and power requirement specs carefully. And these fan cooled cards invariably eventually get noisy.

    Post edited by nonesuch00 on
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