best reasonasbly priced graphics card for Blender Cycles/CUDA?

[lost_soul]

I'm looking to upgrade my graphics card. What is the fastest reasonably priced card for Blender cycles/CUDA operations. Note that a graphics card absolutely creams a CPU in terms of rendering speed (10x+ faster). I won't touch anything with less than 4 GB. My current card is 1 GB and going to a 2 GB card seems stupid and wasteful.

Edited December 28, 2013 by lost_soul

[Arcturus]

I only know that AMD cards don't work with Cycles so it has to be Nvidia, but you probably know that.

[Bikerdude]

1. I'm looking to upgrade my graphics card. What is the fastest reasonably priced card for Blender cycles/CUDA operations.
   
2. I won't touch anything with less than 4 GB. My current card is 1 GB and going to a 2 GB card seems stupid and wasteful.
   

 

Has to be an Nvidia card then for cuda

Whats your budget?, here is what I found on scan.co.uk

 

EVGA GTX660, 3GB, 960 cores - £184 - http://www.scan.co.u...z-boost-1137mhz

Gigabyte GTX760, 4GB, 1152 cores - £234 - http://www.scan.co.u...-dport-dvi-d-dv

Gigabyte GTX770, 4GB, 1536 cores - £299 - http://www.scan.co.u...es-1536-dp-dvi-

 

Found this thread - http://www.blendergu...er-for-blender/

 

And the cycles benchmark comparision spreadsheet - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0As2oZAgjSqDCdElkM3l6VTdRQjhTRWhpVS1hZmV3OGc#gid=0

[lost_soul]

Yeah, I'm looking at a GTX760 with 4 GB of VRAM. I've got a GTX460 in this machine right now and a GT440 in another PC. The plan is as follows.

 

Take the GT440 out of the other PC and install it in this machine along with the new 760. The 760 will be used for rendering, and while rendering, I will be able to use the GT440 to keep using the PC. The current GTX460 in this machine will be put in the other machine that currently has the GT440. This main machine has a 650 watt PSU so I think that will be enough for the 760+440 cards together...

 

Rendering on the same card that is being used to display your desktop results in lots of lag

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500312

Edited December 29, 2013 by lost_soul

[Bikerdude]

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814500312

Avoid the Zotac because -

• as it has a crappy OEM cooler,
  
• is clocked slower
  
• only has a 2yr warranty
  

Instead go for the following Gigabyte, 3yr warranty, faster clocks, superior cooler and only $10 more.

 

http://www.newegg.co...N82E16814125494

[STiFU]

Ti-versions of geforces allways have a very good cost-benefit ratio. But yeah, I had been looking at the 760 myself. Now that I got into stereo 3d gaming, I need a little more oumph than my 560 Ti offers.

[lost_soul]

Thanks for the suggestions, Bikerdude. Do you think I can run that card you linked to above along with a GT440 that pulls around 75 watts on a 650 watt PSU? I don't have lots of hard drives, just a single HDD and an SSD.

[Bikerdude]

@LS,

 

A stock GTX760 only pulls 160 watts under extreme load and I imagine your GT440 only 65 watts. So with that in mind whats the spec of the rest of your system and the make/model of the PSU?

 

I took a look at the following website - http://www.extreme.o...n.com/PSUEngine and based on rough idea of your system, the PSU you have assuming its a descent one, should be more than capable.

[lost_soul]

Well, I've got an Earthwatts 650 PSU (Antec). I think the current video card I have pulls >200 watts at full load.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371044

[Bikerdude]

That PSU looks like it will do the job as it has 2 12v rails each at 38A

[lost_soul]

Somewhat unrelated: I have a frankenstein PC I rebuilt in a recycled case. It seems as though the power switch is going out. I have to push it in and wiggle it around a lot to get it to come on most of the time. It seems like these switches are proprietary. I.e. it has specific pieces which fit into the case and allow it to protrude out the front enough to be pushed. I doubt I will be able to find a replacement for the switch locally, so I was thinking of re-purposing the Firewire port on the front of the case and mounting a power switch in there.

 

I don't really feel like rebuilding the whole machine in another case just because of a faulty switch.

Edited December 30, 2013 by lost_soul

[Bikerdude]

so I was thinking of re-purposing the Firewire port on the front of the case and mounting a power switch in there. I don't really feel like rebuilding the whole machine in another case just because of a faulty switch.

 

You'll find its a std push-to-contact 2pin micro switch behind the exterior button on the case.

 

see this example on ebay

or a cheaper one on amazon

 

[ezze]

(out topic alert)

 

lost_soul are you aware you can enable again the CTRL-ALT-Backspace sequence to terminate Xorg adding an option? You can bind any key actually...

Section "InputClass"
Identifier	  "Keyboard Defaults"
MatchIsKeyboard "yes"
Option		  "XkbOptions" "terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp"
EndSection

Still I agree it is a weird the default

Edited December 30, 2013 by ezze