How to pick a GPU?

CGXel · Sep 2018

For gaming a question like that is a google search away from the answer.

But regarding 3D GPU rendering, texturing, simulations, etc, all those kind of tasks that may come to your mind, how do you pick a GPU for that?

It's legit not clear to me... is it the amount of CUDA cores? is it VRAM? both? I don't even know how much those numbers matter for 3D.

Please help me to understand this, thank you.

JordanN · Sep 2018

It's more or less based on budget.

No point going for a $1000 GPU if you can only afford a $500 computer, for example.
Generally speaking though, more VRAM, CUDA Cores is better for rendering*. How much, you need to look for benchmarks used online.

There's a thread on Polycount with more information of buildings rigs however:

https://polycount.com/discussion/173350/upgrading-or-building-a-new-pc-this-is-the-thread-for-you/p1

*Only for renderers that use GPGPU rendering. There are still some render engines that use just the CPU, making the GPU useless.

ant1fact · Sep 2018

Get a good gaming card, don't worry about quadro and stuff. Using a 1080ti here, I couldn't be happier. Even if you're not worried about rendering, lots of vram is also good for Substance Painter for example

EarthQuake · Sep 2018

Go here: https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

Buy the fastest card with the most RAM, that you can reasonably afford.

The value rankings are good too, you can see which card gives you the best performance for the money. I usually like to cross-reference this list with the overall performance list: https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_value.html

With that in mind you'll note that for around $400, a 1070 or 1070 Ti is a better value than a 1080, and a significantly better value than a 1080 Ti, which would be closer to $650.

In the $200-250 range, the 1060 (6GB) and RX 580 are good cards as well.

How to pick a GPU?

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