Workstation Video Card Recommendations

[DAGGER51]

Hello LTT community,

 

I currently am building my PC with an i7-6700K, and the final component I need to acquire is the video card(s).  Most of my work will be in the SolidWorks Premium CAE/CAD suite (Student Edition is a 12-month subscription basically) with lots of work with CFD.  Now, this includes a program called Visualize Standard, which allows you to render projects and more advanced assemblies with much greater resolutions, lighting effects, and visual details.  My question is this: Since Visualize can take advantage of the nVidia Iray ray tracing framework (runs of GeForce cards as well), would I be better served getting two GTX 1060s or 970s, or going with a single, more powerful card?

 

I know GTX 1060s cannot be put in SLI, but Iray doesn't require it at all.  Also, I do some gaming on the side, but one GTX 1060 or similar card should do the job just fine there.  One final factor is compute performance, which is critical, but all cards in my budget are about the same for FP32 performance.  Additionally, I know that Quadro or FirePro cards are recommended, but some clever registry hacks will work just fine for things like Real View in the modelling suite, and with some tweaking, can run with virtually no performance degradation.

 

Anyone with more experience or more in depth knowledge on this is welcome to share other suggestions as well.

 

Thanks,

DAGGER51

[asdf2061]

 

A quadro card isn't really worth it (as shown above by the almighty Linus), so I would just go with a GTX 1070 to be safe.

[DAGGER51]

Just now, I_IHaveNoLife_l said:

 

A quadro card isn't really worth it (as shown above by the almighty Linus), so I would just go with a GTX 1070 to be safe.

Yes, but what about harnessing more power than a GTX 1070 with two GTX 1060s?  For GPU rendering of course.

[asdf2061]

1 minute ago, DAGGER51 said:

Yes, but what about harnessing more power than a GTX 1070 with two GTX 1060s?  For GPU rendering of course.

The price of 2 1060s is equivalent to a 1080, so I would suggest just buy a 1080 if you want 2 1060s. It's more practical this way (don't mention faster too.).

[DAGGER51]

Just now, I_IHaveNoLife_l said:

The price of 2 1060s is equivalent to a 1080, so I would suggest just buy a 1080 if you want 2 1060s. It's more practical this way (don't mention faster too.).

Where I'm located, it's actually cheaper to but two GTX 1060s, but okay, I see your point.  I'm still waiting for somebody to weigh in on how Iray is integrated into using the hardware, so consider that.

[Electronics Wizardy]

10 minutes ago, DAGGER51 said:

Where I'm located, it's actually cheaper to but two GTX 1060s, but okay, I see your point.  I'm still waiting for somebody to weigh in on how Iray is integrated into using the hardware, so consider that.

It would be faster as you using cuda, not opengl.

[DAGGER51]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

It would be faster as you using cuda, not opengl.

I assume GTX 1060s over GTX 1080, but clarify please?

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, DAGGER51 said:

I assume GTX 1060s over GTX 1080, but clarify please?

Yea 1060s

 

When rendering you use cuda or opencl. WIth these you can use different cards(different manafactures with opencl). And they will scale almost perfectly(so if a single 1060 takes 2min, then 2 will take about 1 min.

[DAGGER51]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Yea 1060s

 

When rendering you use cuda or opencl. WIth these you can use different cards(different manafactures with opencl). And they will scale almost perfectly(so if a single 1060 takes 2min, then 2 will take about 1 min.

Okay, great!  It seems like two GTX 1060s will be it then, providing pricing works out.  Thanks!