Replacing RX 480 with GTX 1070

garciiia

I am using Cinema 4D to model and animate - beginner level. While i was looking for new tutorials, i saw that something like Octane or RedShift is always mentioned. I don't have the bucks to purchase any of those two at the moment, but i just wanted to ask you about your opinion. That is my current hardware:

• i5 2500K CPU
• RX 480 GPU
• 16GB RAM

Too bad that my GPU only runs the AMD Renderer.

I am currently on a level where i don't need the GPU or the Renderer, i know. But my goal is to create short animations with close ups of high resoluted objects or show detailed textures. The question is: Is the 1070 enough for the next 2 years and it's worth spending 200€ or should i just invest into a completely new setup with a new cpu?

EarthQuake

I would look at the RTX 2060 rather than the GTX 1070, price should be about the same but the RTX will be faster, and supports hardware accelerated ray tracing, which a lot of renderers will support soon (if they don't already).

Some other considerations though:

If you're using a CPU renderer, your GPU doesn't matter, the RX 480 will be fine for that purpose. In this case your CPU, being relatively old and slow, will be the bottle neck.

If you're using 3D texturing programs (Substance Painter etc) that are video memory hungry, the 8GB of VRAM in the 1070 would be better than the 6GB in the 2060. The RTX 2060 Super comes in an 8GB version and is a little faster than a 1080, so that is a very good choice if you're willing to spend a little more money.

Your 480 has 8GB of ram, and is still a relatively fast card, so unless you have a very specific reason to need a faster card I would consider sticking with this card until you can afford something that is more of an upgrade (2060 Super at minimum).

1070 is 58% faster than 480
1060 is 70% faster than 480
1060 Super is 84% faster than 480
1070 Super is 113% faster than 480

Source: https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

Personally, I try to avoid buying new CPUs/GPUs until I can double the performance for a relatively reasonable price. For your CPU that's easy. An AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X is $200 USD (not sure on local pricing for you) and is more than 4x as fast. You have to factor in motherboard and ram cost too of course, but if you're CPU bound (CPU rendering) this would make a huge difference in render times, especially with animations where you have to render a lot of frames.

For the GPU it will be a bit harder. Going up ~50% to a 1070 won't make that much of a difference. If you can wait until the RTX 30** cards, you could get a 3060 (or whatever they're going to call it) for a good price that will probably be in the realm of twice as fast as your 480. Again, if you're willing to spend a little more, and absolutely must buy a GPU right now, something like a 2060 Super is a solid choice.

PolyHertz

If you feel you need a new GPU for renderers that primarily rely on it instead of the CPU, I'd go for at least a 2060 Super. Has the same amount of VRAM as the GTX 1070 (unlike a regular 2060) but can get up to about 3x the performance in Octane due to the RTX tech.

But yea, your CPU is getting a bit old atp. Even a cheap Ryzen 1600AF ($80-$100) will outperform it.

EarthQuake

And yeah as @PolyHertz mentions, with an RTX series card, you'll see bigger gains for apps that support RTX acceleration, the benchmark numbers above are for games - which aren't using RTX stuff for the most part.