4K CAD with RX 580: am I pushing it?

[maxtch]

I don’t game, but I do quite a bit of CAD work using KiCad and FreeCAD. Am I pushing it using a RX 580 for that? Base system is Xeon E3-1231v3 with a 3% BCLK overclock, and I use UNIX OS.

[Mephi00]

The rx 580 might keep up if its the 8 gig option, i wouldnt even bother trying 4k woth the 4 gig

[maxtch]

17 hours ago, Mephi00 said:

The rx 580 might keep up if its the 8 gig option, i wouldnt even bother trying 4k woth the 4 gig

I am on the 8GB VRAM version. (I went from a GTX 1060 3GB to RX 580 8GB, and the 4K demand of VRAM is kind of obvious.)

[Mephi00]

4 hours ago, maxtch said:

I am on the 8GB VRAM version. (I went from a GTX 1060 3GB to RX 580 8GB, and the 4K demand of VRAM is kind of obvious.)

Then go for it and try you can still set the resolition lower on the screen until you can buy something more powerful

[maxtch]

40 minutes ago, Mephi00 said:

Then go for it and try you can still set the resolition lower on the screen until you can buy something more powerful

My rackmount case has a physical size constraint. I can not go any more powerful unless I swap out the case.

[AndrewCC]

If VRAM is an issue, AMD has a 16gb card coming out 

Might be an issue power/thermal-wise and maybe price too (700$US).

[Madgemade]

If you're not gaming then you can use a potato and as long as it supports 4K 3840x2160 60hz then your good. Of course if you are doing CAD then you will need something half decent but running a higher res monitor isn't going to affect performance in those programs. A quicker GPU will render faster but the monitor doesn't necessarily affect the CAD programs.

 

I have an R9 290 4GB and a 4K monitor, it works fine can even play BF1 on median settings. RX 580 is pretty much the same speed so you will be 100% fine.

 

People saying you need 8GB for 4K are talking about gaming. Amount for VRAM has nothing to do with the resolution you can run. Some GPUs from 10 years ago can run 4K 30hz and some junky old quadros can do it will less than 1GB of VRAM!

[Mattias Edeslatt]

@Madgemade We are not discussing resolutions here, we are talking about if the card is able to handle models that are in 4K resolutions. He can edit that on 800x600 for all that matters, but the card is going to compute hi-res modelling and that takes it's VRAM and compute-power.

 

So, no, he can't use a "potato" that can display 4K as a graphics card as it can not handle the modelling.

[maxtch]

14 hours ago, Madgemade said:

If you're not gaming then you can use a potato and as long as it supports 4K 3840x2160 60hz then your good. Of course if you are doing CAD then you will need something half decent but running a higher res monitor isn't going to affect performance in those programs. A quicker GPU will render faster but the monitor doesn't necessarily affect the CAD programs.

 

I have an R9 290 4GB and a 4K monitor, it works fine can even play BF1 on median settings. RX 580 is pretty much the same speed so you will be 100% fine.

 

People saying you need 8GB for 4K are talking about gaming. Amount for VRAM has nothing to do with the resolution you can run. Some GPUs from 10 years ago can run 4K 30hz and some junky old quadros can do it will less than 1GB of VRAM!

Even those not-so-serious open source CAD software like KiCad for electronic engineering and FreeCAD for mechanical engineering can be more taxing than the most demanding of all games, if a sufficiently complex 3D model is loaded. I have a PCB design with over 200 components and about 1500 traces and vias, that thing consistently bogs my computer down maxing out both CPU and GPU.

[Madgemade]

1 hour ago, maxtch said:

I have a PCB design with over 200 components and about 1500 traces and vias, that thing consistently bogs my computer down maxing out both CPU and GPU.

If your CPU is maxed out then upgrading the GPU won't help but from what I can tell KiCad isn't supposed to be that demanding on the GPU but then again the recommended system page is likely pretty outdated.

I notice you say you're using Linux, if so I would recommend sticking with AMD GPUs, Nvidia works fine on most Linux Distros but not all and can be more problematic.

I also had a look at FreeCAD and it doesn't use the GPU for anything other than rendering (no compute) so pretty much if your CPU isn't bottlenecking you first then you could probably upgrade to a Vega 56, I think that would be the best value faster option. RX 590 is almost the same as 580 for performance and the new Radeon 7 is far more expensive than the vega56/64 for not as much of a performance improvement.

[Mattias Edeslatt]

5 hours ago, Madgemade said:

e and the new Radeon 7 is far more expensive than the vega56/64 for not as much of a performance improvement.

Say what? Not as much of a performance improvement?  The new Vega VII is a beast of a compute-card. 

 

For the money a Vega 56/64 is a wiser investment if you are on a budget thou.... But if you want compute-power worth a couple of thousand $$$ in "normal" workstation cards then Vega VII is a steal.....

[maxtch]

5 hours ago, Madgemade said:

If your CPU is maxed out then upgrading the GPU won't help but from what I can tell KiCad isn't supposed to be that demanding on the GPU but then again the recommended system page is likely pretty outdated.

I notice you say you're using Linux, if so I would recommend sticking with AMD GPUs, Nvidia works fine on most Linux Distros but not all and can be more problematic.

I also had a look at FreeCAD and it doesn't use the GPU for anything other than rendering (no compute) so pretty much if your CPU isn't bottlenecking you first then you could probably upgrade to a Vega 56, I think that would be the best value faster option. RX 590 is almost the same as 580 for performance and the new Radeon 7 is far more expensive than the vega56/64 for not as much of a performance improvement.

I am running a Hackintosh so GPU choice is limited by Apple drivers.

 

KiCad 5.0.1 has a bug that wastes CPU cycles unnecessarily. With 5.0.2 I am back to GPU limited again.

2 minutes ago, Mattias Edeslatt said:

Say what? Not as much of a performance improvement?  The new Vega VII is a beast of a compute-card. 

 

For the money a Vega 56/64 is a wiser investment if you are on a budget thou.... But if you want compute-power worth a couple of thousand $$$ in "normal" workstation cards then Vega VII is a steal.....

I am size constrained by way too small a rackmount case I used. The Sapphire RX 580 I am using is the biggest size card I can fit in my chassis and I already can not close the lid on the chassis due to the card being too tall.

[Madgemade]

1 hour ago, Mattias Edeslatt said:

Say what? Not as much of a performance improvement?  The new Vega VII is a beast of a compute-card. 

 

For the money a Vega 56/64 is a wiser investment if you are on a budget thou.... But if you want compute-power worth a couple of thousand $$$ in "normal" workstation cards then Vega VII is a steal.....

Unfortunately OP isn't using compute in his programs. Apple even dropped/are dropping OpenCL support sadly. Otherwise yes it's better than the 2080 Ti for compute almost better than Quadros and Volta. I will likely be buying one myself for that reason alone.

57 minutes ago, maxtch said:

I am size constrained by way too small a rackmount case I used. The Sapphire RX 580 I am using is the biggest size card I can fit in my chassis and I already can not close the lid on the chassis due to the card being too tall. 

You could get a Nano version of Vega which is much smaller, shorter than the RX 580.

You could look at something like this. The price is way inflated on Newegg but might be another website with a reasonable price. I don't think there are many designs like this though.

[maxtch]

16 hours ago, Madgemade said:

Unfortunately OP isn't using compute in his programs. Apple even dropped/are dropping OpenCL support sadly. Otherwise yes it's better than the 2080 Ti for compute almost better than Quadros and Volta. I will likely be buying one myself for that reason alone.

You could get a Nano version of Vega which is much smaller, shorter than the RX 580.

You could look at something like this. The price is way inflated on Newegg but might be another website with a reasonable price. I don't think there are many designs like this though.

While Apple is dropping OpenCL in favor of a vendor-provided driver, compute with CoreML and Metal 2 is being actively pushed.

 

Also the Apple driver usually require cards sufficiently similar to the reference design.