Are Titan xp / Titan V worth it for 3D design?

[Daphnis26]

Hi, I'm thinking of building a new PC centered on the i9-7980XE. I'm not too concerned with price, so I'm looking at high end components all around.

 

My aim is to create a PC for 3D content creation great for running Maya, Zbrush, Substance, Houdini & UE4. Poly counts can reach into the tens of millions so I want a GPU that can handle absurd amounts of geometry, processing and simulations. I'm trying to compare GPUs but am a bit unclear about the advantages of the higher end cards for my needs. I mainly see comparisons for gaming and deep learning, but not really for 3D content creation.

 

What advantages do the Titan xp or Titan V have over the 1080 for 3D work, if any?

 

Any help would be appreciated!

[Streetguru]

1 minute ago, Daphnis26 said:

 

Titan V is for machine learning

 

I take it you have no budget then?

Vega FE comes with 16GBs of VRAM, that might be useful

[Brooksie359]

14 minutes ago, Daphnis26 said:

Hi, I'm thinking of building a new PC centered on the i9-7980XE. I'm not too concerned with price, so I'm looking at high end components all around.

 

My aim is to create a PC for 3D content creation great for running Maya, Zbrush, Substance, Houdini & UE4. Poly counts can reach into the tens of millions so I want a GPU that can handle absurd amounts of geometry, processing and simulations. I'm trying to compare GPUs but am a bit unclear about the advantages of the higher end cards for my needs. I mainly see comparisons for gaming and deep learning, but not really for 3D content creation.

 

What advantages do the Titan xp or Titan V have over the 1080 for 3D work, if any?

 

Any help would be appreciated!

More memory for one. They are more powerful than the 1080 so it would be safe to assume they would preform better in situations that utilize all their extra resources. 

[Princess Luna]

I think you could still justify the Xp, certainly is better than Quadro solutions, as long as you don't run out of VRAM on it, but not the TITAN V that card is meant to predict weather and shit, what they call deep learning and all.

[Damascus]

Considering what they cost

1 titan v = $3000

1 titan Xp = $1200

1 1080 ti = $700

 

I would get 4 1080 tis if your software scales, best performance available without spending 12k on 4 titan v

[Princess Luna]

16 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

Vega FE comes with 16GBs of VRAM, that might be useful

They also are worthless:

It is the kind of GPU you mock and make fun out of who buys it, really... at least the Xp gives bragging rights for real.

[Brooksie359]

9 minutes ago, Damascus said:

Considering what they cost

1 titan v = $3000

1 titan Xp = $1200

1 1080 ti = $700

 

I would get 4 1080 tis if your software scales, best performance available without spending 12k on 4 titan v

Yeah idk why they said 1080 and not 1080 ti. The 1080 ti would be really good for most gpu intensive workloads.

[Streetguru]

13 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

They also are worthless:

It is the kind of GPU you mock a

3 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Yeah idk why they said 1080 and not 1080 ti. The 1080 ti would be really good for most gpu intensive workloads.

nd make fun out of who buys it, really... at least the Xp gives bragging rights for real.

Isn't VRAM somewhat important for 3D modeling?

Either way it seems to go back and forth on the professional side
https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Radeon-Vega-Frontier-Edition-16GB-Air-Cooled-Review/Professional-Testing-SPEC

If money is no object he might just want a Quadro or WX card

[bimmerman]

You're asking an audience primarily composed of video gamers whether a machine learning card is valid for professional CAD software.

 

Short answer-- depends on the software and whether there are features that require Quadro / Firepro drivers. Solidworks, for one, only enables some features if you have certified drivers for either Quadro or Firepro. As an example: I bought my Xeon laptop rather than the i7 because the Xeon came with Solidworks certified drivers for the iGPU, meaning I can work more effectively on a plane than not (it also has a quadro for powered work). I have seen on a few occasions crappy Quadros out-performing high end gaming cards due to driver support for the software package of interest.

 

Will using a Titan card suffice? Yes, certainly. Will it be optimal? Depends on the software and on its reliance on professional drivers. If the software doesn't care, then I'd suggest a 1080ti or Titan for calculation speed and VRAM, not for irrelevant FPS reasons. The Titan V I don't think makes a lot of sense at its price point for your use case since you're mostly buying tensor cores that you wouldn't use. If the software DOES specifically call out Quadro or Firepro as required/recommended, buy the best of that card that you can afford.

 

If you're making money with the computer don't screw around with consumer grade hardware to save a buck. Titans are in a weird quasi-consumer quasi-pro no man's land when it comes to CAD work.

[Princess Luna]

17 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

Isn't VRAM somewhat important for 3D modeling?

While it is, this still makes the Xp a much better value product as the benchmarks show it gets destroyed at every thing... 12gb is still considerable a lot even in more professional workloads.

 

12 minutes ago, bimmerman said:

If the software DOES specifically call out Quadro or Firepro as required/recommended, buy the best of that card that you can afford.

Driver certification really is no biggies, my brother has picked TITAN X cards over Quadro solutions all his life.

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, Princess Cadence said:

While it is, this still makes the Xp a much better value product as the benchmarks show it gets destroyed at every thing... 12gb is still considerable a lot even in more professional workloads.

 

Driver certification really is no biggies, my brother has picked TITAN X cards over Quadro solutions all his life.

Yeah I also heard there are ways to get around that for many softwares as well.

[Brooksie359]

6 hours ago, bimmerman said:

You're asking an audience primarily composed of video gamers whether a machine learning card is valid for professional CAD software.

 

Short answer-- depends on the software and whether there are features that require Quadro / Firepro drivers. Solidworks, for one, only enables some features if you have certified drivers for either Quadro or Firepro. As an example: I bought my Xeon laptop rather than the i7 because the Xeon came with Solidworks certified drivers for the iGPU, meaning I can work more effectively on a plane than not (it also has a quadro for powered work). I have seen on a few occasions crappy Quadros out-performing high end gaming cards due to driver support for the software package of interest.

 

Will using a Titan card suffice? Yes, certainly. Will it be optimal? Depends on the software and on its reliance on professional drivers. If the software doesn't care, then I'd suggest a 1080ti or Titan for calculation speed and VRAM, not for irrelevant FPS reasons. The Titan V I don't think makes a lot of sense at its price point for your use case since you're mostly buying tensor cores that you wouldn't use. If the software DOES specifically call out Quadro or Firepro as required/recommended, buy the best of that card that you can afford.

 

If you're making money with the computer don't screw around with consumer grade hardware to save a buck. Titans are in a weird quasi-consumer quasi-pro no man's land when it comes to CAD work.

Yeah I actually wanted to use my graphics card accelerate a cfd simulation and it said that it needed to be a quadro but there was a workaround that somebody figured out for it.

[rushboarduk]

@Daphnis26 I myself are in a similar situation to you, so I might be in a better place to answer your question if you haven't decided yet.  In addition to the applications you mentioned, I also use MATLAB and Ansys, which is where the computational aspects of this graphics card comes into play.  At the moment, Titan V's benchmarks are all over the place based on what it is used for besides Deep Learning.

 

For example, it has great performance with V-Ray over an Xp, some Quadros or a 1080 Ti, but whilst Solidworks can be used with the Titan V, its "visualise" function will not be compatible until SP3/SP4 at the earliest.  ZBrush is mostly a scultiping application, so it's not fussy what GPU you have; even a 1080 Ti will work just fine.

 

This brings us to Maya, Houdini and Unreal.  I suppose you could argue the rendering/VFX capabilities of the Titan V fair better in these circumstances than a 1080 Ti or Xp, though it may also be comparable to a Quadro P5000 (which has 16GB VRAM and is the sweet spot in price between both Titans)...

 

It really depends whether you want to spend $3000 on a GPU.  Titan V is great if you plan on doing programming or mathematical work as well, but rendering CGI, and then testing ingame is hard to justify over using simply an Xp or a Quadro.

[Crunchy Dragon]

On 1/2/2018 at 2:26 PM, Princess Cadence said:

They also are worthless

I wouldn't go that far, Vega does pretty well for 3D design. It's only until you bring in the Quadro P1000 that it takes the backseat:

 

But it depends on software, others might do better with a Titan.

[ItsBlck]

 You should probably watch linus' video *nodds over to the above post*

[Daphnis26]

I decided to go with the Titan Xp. It was difficult to acquire, but I finally have it now! I've been so happy with my original Titan card that I wanted to stick with the name.

 

Thanks to everyone for the input!