Gpu upgrade recommendations?

electronic-fox · Dec 2016

Currently I use an r9 270x, it does the job just fine but now I'm thinking it's a good time to upgrade. I have a budget around £300, but it can go up to £400 for a card that would be really good value for that extra spend.

I use Maya, Zbrush, Unity and the Quixel suite pretty much daily, but my workstation also doubles as a gaming station/game recording station.

At the moment I'm looking at the gtx 1060 and 1070, mostly wondering if the 1070 has enough extra power to justify buying over the cheaper 1060.

I use an i5 4670k (not overclocked) and 16gb ram, as far as I can tell these will run quite happilly with the cards I'm checking out, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Anyway, gpu recommendations! Go!

(Thank you in advance)

EarthQuake · Dec 2016

This stuff is really pretty cut and dry, just depends on how much you're willing to pay and the sort of jump you would like to see:

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

For reference, compared your current card:

The 1080 is 2.6x faster
The 1070 is 2.5x faster
The 1060 is 1.8x faster

The 1070 is basically the sweet spot for price vs performance right now, but the 1060 is not a bad upgrade either.

It is worth nothing that with the software you use, you may not see much of a jump in performance with a better GPU. Zbrush is highly CPU reliant, rendering in Maya is 100% CPU, Quixel will stress your CPU and RAM/Hard drive, but not really your GPU, and Unity while of course is a GPU renderer, is not particularly high end and a better GPU may not do much for you there either.

If you were using GPU renderers/bakers like Marmoset Toolbag, Knald, or Octane, you will probably see a noticeable jump in performance. Also, you'll probably see better performance in most games with a better GPU, if you care.

remon · Dec 2016

Jump on the live chat and get Nividia to check you current set up and what cards are compatible to upgrade. I think they need to check the power supply specs, motherboard and software you use and they will give you a recommendation for upgrading you GPU. I did it and found my motherboard was too dated and power supply was to low watt to get a decent GPU and had to get a lower spec one.

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/chat/chat_launch

electronic-fox · Dec 2016

Thanks for the info guys. I male fairly complex scenes in Unity, but tbh I haven't seen any real slowdown even with highly unoptimised setups aside from when light baking and such is going on in the background, and at the moment games all run flawlessly even when recording. I use knald, but none of my bakes have taken more than a minute or two at 2k 16x aa. Would my money be better used on a cpu upgrade and ssd in this case? I'd imagine something with more cores and power would allow for faster light bakes in Unity, and better performance with dense meshes in Zbrush? And an ssd would keep Quixel running smoothly?

JedTheKrampus · Dec 2016

Yes, almost all of those programs would benefit more from a faster CPU, particularly Quixel. But right now isn't a great time to buy CPUs since AMD might be about to release some CPUs that are actually competitive, which will probably drive down prices for both Intel and AMD 8-core CPUs quite a bit. Just save your money up for now so you can get something that's a really cost-effective upgrade after Ryzen's launched, whether it's from AMD or Intel.

electronic-fox · Dec 2016

Great, thanks for the info! I'll hold back on upgrades for now and see how prices go in the next few months.

skycity02 · Dec 2016

I did all my personal work using a GTX 750 TI and a 2011 MacBook pro when I was away from home.... I definitely upgrade to GTX1070 when I have available cash.

Gpu upgrade recommendations?

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