GTX 660ti rendering and best version?

leo115

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Sep 19, 2012
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APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: 9/24/12

USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: High end gaming and GPU rendering for 3DS MAX/ Blender, Zbrush etc.

CURRENT GPU AND POWER SUPPLY: 8400GS (Temporary Card) Raidmax Rx-630SS 630W power supply

OTHER RELEVANT SYSTEM SPECS: Motherboard: ASUS M4A87TD/USB2, CPU: AMD AthlonII X3 455

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: Newegg/Amazon

PARTS PREFERENCES: Nvidia for CUDA compatibility

OVERCLOCKING: No SLI OR CROSSFIRE: No

MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1920x1080

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: Looking at getting a 660ti to replace my dead 8600GT. Wondering what to expect for rendering speed increase and which variation of 660Ti to purchase. Im currently looking at http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127696
 
+1 660 non ti unless you are going to get a whole new system.

the difference between a 660 and the ti is not worth 70-80 bucks also you are very light in the cpu area maybe spend the saved 80 and another 40 on a 965 BE. or spend 40 on a good cooler mugen 3 or something or CM v6 gt to overclock to say 3.8 on your current cpu. or unlock the core if possible and go to 3.6.
 
It's kinda funny, but Guru3d just posted a 9800 GT vs. GTX 660 article to give you an idea of what the performance upgrade would be, even more than these charts indicate.
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_9800_gt_vs_geforce_660_gtx_review,1.html

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To be honest I expected more from the 660 than this, a dated card that is almost half a decade old putting out close to a third of what the 660 offered. The benches are consistent to what newegg had posted on youtube. So for those who are using two 9800gt in sli or higher the upgrade % isn't going to be as massive as many are expecting when upgrading. I hope that someone does a review with two 9800gtx in sli vs one of these kepler era cards.
 



Expected more ! Wow I want to play on your computer !

For it's time it held up well IMHO

Looked more like 4 times to me but I'm sitting on the couch almost 8 feet from the computer.

96GT still computes well I think likely because of the more complex shaders being used at the time. Actually that is what I was told not what I know ( I don't do rendering) but someone I worked with a few years ago started in on it one day. So ofcourse grain of salt and a google search
 

leo115

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Thanks for the input everyone Im partial to Nvidia because many of the programs I use have CUDA support. As for the CPU I've never noticed any bogging down but perhaps a winter investment would be good. Also the free borderlands 2 is giving me the incentive for the 660ti as well as the extra CUDA cores over the non-ti.

Perhaps I will notice more of a CPU hit with the better GPU any suggestions for a good AM3 slot CPU?

Also out of the variations is there at least a variation that would be better (open fan preferred, my case is plenty cooled) then the other brands?
 


My stuff isn't the latest lol but you won't like the noise my rigs dump out, even my pentium 1 box is loud by most standards. The shader being stronger unit to unit in older cards is correct. Keep in mind that around 20% of the card's actual performance is lost before the user or application is able to use it due to internal synchronization and other operations. In Fermi they moved some of those functions into a dedicated unit but it still left some of the shaders idle at times even when under supposed full load. They made some big changes that are going to be put to use in big Kepler.
 

jnrivers

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Aug 2, 2011
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Can't believe how bad the advice is on this thread, It's like no one read your post.
If you are going to be focusing on rendering using CUDU acceleration, might want to consider a card from the 5xx generation (Fermi) as Nvidia has packed less CUDU performance in the Kepler series of consumer cards.
Currently Blender has no support for CUDU 3.0 so GPU rendering won't be avail on these cards for a while.
Not sure what your budget is, but a 560 Ti 448, or a 570 are good if you are on a budget, if not then a 580 would be ideal for CUDU operations.
I don't use Zbrush or 3DS MAX, but I do know iRay (Mental Ray) does support the 6xx series of cards, if that's the direction you're thinking.

Anyway all I can offer is food for thought, hope it helps.
 

leo115

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Thanks jnrivers, finally giving an answer. How much of a performance hit are we talking about? I've seen some Blender render benchmarks here:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?239480-2.61-Cycles-render-benchmark
and people are using the 670. Knowing that both cards have the same core design (the 192 bit bandwidth being the major difference), I was unaware that the programs wouldn't have support.
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As for budget I'm looking right around $300 looking to the 660ti for game power and CUDA core numbers (I figured more cores would mean better performance).
 
People try to see things in black or white in terms of compute capabilities. In reality, there are several compute oriented tasks the Kepler series excels in, yes, even better than Fermis and Tahiti's.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6276/nvidia-geforce-gtx-660-review-gk106-rounds-out-the-kepler-family/14

So you do need to look at the actual software you intend to use.

Some clues here, it seems zbrush is CPU only and 3ds max runs fine:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-103852.html
 

leo115

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Sep 19, 2012
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So from what Im seeing the 660ti is working fairly well according to the folks at polycount, thanks for that info. I rather stick with a 600 series card over the 500's so the 660ti is where im gonna be staying.

Anyone have a particular view of the variations of the 660ti? is there a card/company I should stray from or flock to? the MSI looked good but Zotac's offerings seem flaky.
 

cool07ist

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your cpu will surely bottleneck a gtx 660ti. you must consider getting at least phenom ii x4 980 @4.0 ghz not to bottleneck that card. but if you dont wanna replace then you can be well on track with single radeon hd 7770's.
 


I love that you said nobody is focusing on rendering... it is secondary thus buy a better gaming card is the most important part. The performance gained in rendering is lost in gaming performance and has a price premium, it was in the second line by the OP I am surprised you did not notice that.......

Spending more and getting less is not good advice as far as this forum is concerned.
 

leo115

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Basically I am just looking for the best card for gaming with good rendering capability without breaking the bank (sub $330). I know if i want extreme gaming I should get a 670 or 7950 etc. At the same time I also need decent rendering improvements so I no longer wait 4 hours for a 30 second render.

 

jnrivers

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Leo, no problem.

Looks like the latest test builds of Blender are supporting CUDU 3.0 now.
http://builder.blender.org/download/

Might want to look around on here too:
http://www.graphicall.org/


As for as performance goes only time will tell, as I don't have a 6xx series card I cannot say with any certainty.
The link you provided looks like a good thread to keep an eye on.
As you can see from the posts any modern CUDU enabled card offers a drastic speed up for Cycles rendering.

As far as the cores go sure more is better generally, keep in mind however Kepler's cores are clocked lower.
A $300 budget gives you reasonable flexibility, and as someone else pointed out it's not black and white, if all your software supports Kepler then it's no longer an issue the way I see it.


As far as gaming goes, sure Kepler series cards are a logical choice and more future proof (I hate that term), but bang for buck Fermi still has a lot to offer. Reading more of your posts it looks like you are set on a Kepler card at this point.
Personally I don't game anymore, at least no where near what I used to. I just do DCC.

Enjoy your new rig.