GTX 970 or 980 for Blender?

[trag1c]

My 448 core is on its last legs so I need a replacement. I know that the GTX 980 will offer higher performance in any application compared to the GTX 970 however I'am wondering if the extra $250 (CAD) cost can be justified when used in blender.

 

If anyone has some benchmarks with a 3D rendering application such as 3DS Max, Maya, or Blender that would be great.

 

[DtrollMC]

My 970 does blender renders quite quickly. However extra performance is always great. It all really depends on your budget.

[Mattr567]

My 448 core is on its last legs so I need a replacement. I know that the GTX 980 will offer higher performance in any application compared to the GTX 970 however I'am wondering if the extra $250 (CAD) cost can be justified when used in blender.

 

If anyone has some benchmarks with a 3D rendering application such as 3DS Max, Maya, or Blender that would be great.

 

I work with Blender with a 750 Ti 0.0 Its rather slow, like a 350 frame animation took 4 days + nights.

 

And thats why I recently bought a 970 G1 Gaming and some other things as an upgrade from my current rig. http://pcpartpicker.com/p/B7g8yc

[zlolslavez]

Buying a 980 versus a 970 will offer a slight performance increase for a quite more expensive price tag. If you are doing something for personal use, or don't have a tight budget I would go for a 970. If you need it for some commercial/business use, then 980 might be better despite the price. However, I was told, at least from a gaming perspective, that SLI 970s performed better than a single 980 dollar per performance, that may be an alternative to 980 if you decide to go that route.

[Mattr567]

Buying a 980 versus a 970 will offer a slight performance increase for a quite more expensive price tag. If you are doing something for personal use, or don't have a tight budget I would go for a 970. If you need it for some commercial/business use, then 980 might be better despite the price. However, I was told, at least from a gaming perspective, that SLI 970s performed better than a single 980 dollar per performance, that may be an alternative to 980 if you decide to go that route.

 

Not sure how well Blender supports Sli, if at all.

 

The only thing I know of is using the cards separately and rendering two frames at a time, one for each GPU.

[trag1c]

I work with Blender with a 750 Ti 0.0 Its rather slow, like a 350 frame animation took 4 days + nights.

 

And thats why I recently bought a 970 G1 Gaming and some other things as an upgrade from my current rig. http://pcpartpicker.com/p/B7g8yc

That is brutal. How is the build quality on the G1? I've never bought a gigabyte product before but from game bench marks the G1 seems to be the king for the 970s.

 

 

Buying a 980 versus a 970 will offer a slight performance increase for a quite more expensive price tag. If you are doing something for personal use, or don't have a tight budget I would go for a 970. If you need it for some commercial/business use, then 980 might be better despite the price. However, I was told, at least from a gaming perspective, that SLI 970s performed better than a single 980 dollar per performance, that may be an alternative to 980 if you decide to go that route.

Those are some very good points.

 

 

Not sure how well Blender supports Sli, if at all.

 

The only thing I know of is using the cards separately and rendering two frames at a time, one for each GPU.

From what I read blender isn't designed for SLI at all. It can utilize multiple GPU's (either the same or different) but the workload isn't split.  Other than rendering where each card would render a tile, only one card would be used for calculations and refreshing the view port. Though if you have an old GPU lying around it might be beneficial since you could designate the newer GPU to do all the calculations + some rendering and have the older GPU assist with rendering to get slightly faster renders. With that said I buying more than 1 GPU for blender is a terrible idea.

[Mattr567]

That is brutal. How is the build quality on the G1? I've never bought a gigabyte product before but from game bench marks the G1 seems to be the king for the 970s.

 

 

Those are some very good points.

 

 

From what I read blender isn't designed for SLI at all. It can utilize multiple GPU's (either the same or different) but the workload isn't split.  Other than rendering where each card would render a tile, only one card would be used for calculations and refreshing the view port. Though if you have an old GPU lying around it might be beneficial since you could designate the newer GPU to do all the calculations + some rendering and have the older GPU assist with rendering to get slightly faster renders. With that said I buying more than 1 GPU for blender is a terrible idea.

 

Quite Brutal Indeed. 90-95% GPU usage for 4 days? Thats one hell of  stress test. Poor little 750 Ti, it was never designed for that type of work, but It made through though, there's your EVGA build quality.

 

Thats why I bought a G1 out of the 970's.

Ive never owned a Gibabyte product, but JayzTwoCents review of the 970 G1 is a great example. He even tried to bend the card on camera. 

 

 

 

 

 

Agreed, Sli wont be around for a while. Hell Blender doesn't naively support AMD cards for rendering yet.

[Zweihander]

I'd opt out for a 980 if money isn't an issue...Otherwise yes, grab a 970. 

[trag1c]

Quite Brutal Indeed. 90-95% GPU usage for 4 days? Thats one hell of  stress test. Poor little 750 Ti, it was never designed for that type of work, but It made through though, there's your EVGA build quality.

 

Thats why I bought a G1 out of the 970's.

Ive never owned a Gibabyte product, but JayzTwoCents review of the 970 G1 is a great example. He even tried to bend the card on camera. 

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAahjdwfbRw

 

 

 

Agreed, Sli wont be around for a while. Hell Blender doesn't naively support AMD cards for rendering yet.

Yeah my 448 core is EVGA and I have to agree with you on the EVGA build quality since my GPU lasted this and was being used in very undesirable conditions for a very long time. (small poorly ventilated case.)

 

Yeah its funny that they're using CUDA over openCL seeing how openCL can reach a much larger audience and is also another open source initiative.

[Mattr567]

Yeah my 448 core is EVGA and I have to agree with you on the EVGA build quality since my GPU lasted this and was being used in very undesirable conditions for a very long time. (small poorly ventilated case.)

 

Yeah its funny that they're using CUDA over openCL seeing how openCL can reach a much larger audience and is also another open source initiative.

 

Agreed, limits my cards preference to nvidia, which isnt a bad thing, but still. Question, why do you call your card 448 core? You mean a 560 Ti?

[trag1c]

Yeah its the 560 ti 448 core limited edition. Im saying 448 core since its not really a 560 ti nor a 570 (though it was probably intended to be a 570)

[Zulkkis]

It scales well with multiple GPUs, just look at the benchmarks.

 

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?359492-The-new-Cycles-GPU-2-73-Benchmark

 

Blender doesn't use SLI, because it doesn't need it. You can use multiple GPUs, even of a different kind.

 

If you were to build a renderfarm you can actually populate every PCI-E slot on the motherboard. The rendering will start a bit slower as the scene is loaded into the GPU memory, but apart from that you'll still render as fast on every card regardless of the PCI-E speed.

[trag1c]

It scales well with multiple GPUs, just look at the benchmarks.

 

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?359492-The-new-Cycles-GPU-2-73-Benchmark

 

Blender doesn't use SLI, because it doesn't need it. You can use multiple GPUs, even of a different kind.

 

If you were to build a renderfarm you can actually populate every PCI-E slot on the motherboard. The rendering will start a bit slower as the scene is loaded into the GPU memory, but apart from that you'll still render as fast on every card regardless of the PCI-E speed.

Im not going to dismiss those results but as soon as a scene moves beyond rendering only that is where the second GPU will become utterly useless since blender can't do CUDA computations on multiple GPU's. Im not sure how this would scale with render farms but I would imagine it would be 1 GPU in each of the slaves doing all the computational work. If one where to already have 2 identical GPU's for gaming I would say thats great but specifically buying one (or any other card) for Blender is a waste since the majority of the application will not be able to benefit.

[Zulkkis]

I'll have to look about that, thanks for the insight.

 

About the topic, 980 is obviously faster but if it is worth the price tag then that is another question altogether. In the benchmarks that exist, the 7XX-series are faster so far (and have higher memory alternatives) but it has to be noted that 9XX-series support has only been there for like 1,5 versions.

[ZealousComput3r]

Not sure how well Blender supports Sli, if at all.

 

The only thing I know of is using the cards separately and rendering two frames at a time, one for each GPU.

Im fairly sure the new Cycles Render supports SLI 0.o

[Mattr567]

Im fairly sure the new Cycles Render supports SLI 0.o

 

Cycles render has been around for a little while now, not sure. Source?

[Sintezza]

i would concider a 780 (Ti) for blender.

allot more cuda goodies onboard, then on those midrange 9xx series cards.

[trag1c]

Blender does not benefit from SLI. both cards would render from the computations performed but only one would do computations which is essentially 90% of a rendering.

[trag1c]

And also why was my thread from like a month ago revived 0.o

[Snadzies]

Damn.

I saw the topic title and thought it was going to be a "Will it blend?" or "Big Shredder - What needs shredding?" type of thing.

I am disappointed.

[LtStaffel]

Everyone seems to be forgetting a lot of things, like volumetrics, and fire, and simulations, in Cycles, will not support GPU rendering in a lot of situations.  And if it does support it, it might crash.  So PLEASE do remember that you can't just GPU everything.

[GangstaRas]

That said, these Blender benchmarks usually have the results of others so you can check them out. I don't remember the project's specifics exactly but for one particular project I was writing down all the times I could find and comparing them to the 960 I plan to buy in the future, just to see how much I was missing. What I saw was that if the 980 took 7 mins to render a frame, the 970 took 8 mins to do the same work; the 960 took 13 mins. Multiple GPUs even from different generations tend you give a huge boost in rendering performance as well so if I were in your shoes and have the money, I'd buy 2 GPUs either 2 970s or a 970 and a 960. It would beat 1 980 by a long shot

[Superguy4ever]

On 1/13/2015 at 4:44 AM, Mattr567 said:

 

I work with Blender with a 750 Ti 0.0 Its rather slow, like a 350 frame animation took 4 days + nights.

 

And thats why I recently bought a 970 G1 Gaming and some other things as an upgrade from my current rig. http://pcpartpicker.com/p/B7g8yc

I know this is very old and i dont know if you'll even reply but its worth a try  . Anyways, im on a pretty tight budget so i wanted to know, how well does the gtx 970 perform with blender? And is it worth getting one over an AMD rx 480 (i found both on Newegg for $230 so i wanted to know). I heard blender doesn't support OpenCL better than Cuda and that the 16** cuda cores on the gtx 970 really make it breeze through renders, i just wanted to check tho. Thanks <3  

[Zodiark1593]

2 hours ago, Superguy4ever said:

I know this is very old and i dont know if you'll even reply but its worth a try  . Anyways, im on a pretty tight budget so i wanted to know, how well does the gtx 970 perform with blender? And is it worth getting one over an AMD rx 480 (i found both on Newegg for $230 so i wanted to know). I heard blender doesn't support OpenCL better than Cuda and that the 16** cuda cores on the gtx 970 really make it breeze through renders, i just wanted to check tho. Thanks <3  

Bit of a necro bump, however, OpenCL is supported well in Blender, with only several features missing vs Cuda. Speed should also be better on AMD cards as if this writing. However, OpenCL support is still considered to be in beta. 

[Superguy4ever]

9 hours ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Bit of a necro bump, however, OpenCL is supported well in Blender, with only several features missing vs Cuda. Speed should also be better on AMD cards as if this writing. However, OpenCL support is still considered to be in beta. 

Well, i had a question since u sound like you know a lot better about blender than me (im still learning it). Anyways, when rendering complicated models (ex of a really big home with all the details (down to the smallest curve on a flower vase) or when rendering animations, does GPU core speed influence powerformance? Like i said im on a really tight budget and so i wanted to know, will getting a gtx 1060 (going $50 over budget) influence my performance much or not really. I could either get a gigabyte gtx 970 xtreme gaming (very good overclocking card with a 10+2 digital power delivery system) and get the advantage of having over 1600 Cuda cores but lose out on the extra 2GB of ddr5 memory (and slightly faster memory) or i could get an msi gtx 1060 for an extra $50 and get the advantage of having an extra 2GB of the ddr5 and get the 8000Mhz memory and get the much faster GPU core but lose out on about 500 Cuda cores. If u can help me choose i would be very grateful.