Graphic card for GPU rendering?

[Hellboy]

Hi. Sorry if this does not belong here or has been discussed before.

I am a Daz Studio 4/Reality 2 user wanting to make use of the GPU rendering and I’m trying to decide which graphic card I need for this, but I don’t understand anything about this things at all.
I took my PC to the shop for some additional RAM, asked for graphic cards specifically for this (with the info about supported ones I found here) available for my machine. They got me these 3 options:

N550GTX-TI CYCLONE II
N560GTX-TI HAWK PCI
R6670 1024 (1GB) DDR5

¿Are they any good? ¿Will any of them work for GPU rendering and if so, which one would you recommend?

I’ll appreciate any help you can give me.

Thanks!

[zeealpal]

All of them will work, as long as you have the OpenCL Drivers installed (Available for all of them).

Out of those three options, The GTX 560 would probably be the best. The HD6670 is several levels lower than the GTX 560, perhaps a HD6870 at least or HD6950 2GB for better performance thats clsoer to the GTX 560's. A 2GB Version of any of the cards is useful, especially if you choose the SLG Mode in Reality2..

[Ze_Blob]

I second that, avoid lowcost cards like the GTX550. The GTX560 is the minimum, GTX570 would be better if you can, and look the bench here : http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/LuxMark_Results

And since a few months already, and new improved OpenCL support, the AMD cards have a better price/performance ratio. So a HD6950/70 is more interesting than a GTX560/70, unless you definitely want a Nvidia cards.

But i would advise you to wait as AMD is just going to release its new cards next month (with the new 28nm process).

They will probably be more expansive at first but more interesting on the long run, more RAM, consume less power, probably very good in OpenCL.

And right now hybrid Path OpenCL in Luxrender is not really interesting (at least from my point of view, i am afraid my CPU cannot feed enough my HD5870), all the hope is on hybrid bidir, initial test i did showed a doubling of samples/s. However hybrid bidir is not finished yet and only available on the development branch.

So don't make a too fast purchase, take your time to see benches about the new AMD line of product. And even i you don't want to jump for the new HD7xxx, may be there will be some bargains on the older products.

[Pilchard123]

New GFX cards? OOH! Where? When? What spec?

Link?

[Dade]

New GFX cards? OOH! Where? When? What spec?

Link?

HD7970 is going to be presented the 22 December. Forums are full of rumors about the specs

[strangeday]

Mhhhhh....probably You should wait!!! (Anyway, many compliment Dade also AMD likes you!!!)

[Ze_Blob]

Truly awesome leak !

I was really wondering the perfs under Luxmark. Now the suspense is over, if it's not a fake, of course

That's really cool ! More than doubling is pretty nice, me wants one.

[Hellboy]

Thanks for the advice!

So, do you think I can expect something good enough out of any of those cards? Sadly I can't spend more than the cost of the 560GTX, but if its really not that much of an improvement I guess I'd preffer not to spend at all.

I know its very relative and depends on many things, but someone knows aproximately what I could expect with one of those cards in terms of speed compared to a normal rendering?

Thanks agin!

[SATtva]

Mhhhhh....probably You should wait!!! (Anyway, many compliment Dade also AMD likes you!!!)

Do we all have to sign an NDA now?

[B.Y.O.B.]

I know its very relative and depends on many things, but someone knows aproximately what I could expect with one of those cards in terms of speed compared to a normal rendering?

AFAIK it highly depends on your scene. You won't get any speed increase with less than a few hundreds of thousands polygons, e.g. 300,000.
See also: http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/GPU