AMD 7770 Rendering Power

[QuantumCD]

I previously asked about a general outline for a Linux workstation, and the GPU came up as AMD 7770. Could any of you give me some info on the card's rendering power? I will probably be using Blender (Cycles has GPU rendering support) a lot on Linux, and was wondering if it is a decent card when it comes to OpenCL rendering. My price range for a GPU is not much, as I only have about 600-700 dollars for the parts. So if you have better suggestions, try to keep the price within a reasonable limit/range of the 7770 or so. I will be using an AMD FX Piledriver 8320 or 8350 with 8-32 GB of RAM. Thanks for any light you can shed on this!

 

[Max Collodi]

If your going to use Blender, I would recommend visiting some of the Blender forums and ask questions there. You will get the best advice. Using a certain 3D program with a certain type or brand of video card may have particular issues that you should be aware of before making a decision.

 

[QuantumCD]

If your going to use Blender, I would recommend visiting some of the Blender forums and ask questions there. You will get the best advice. Using a certain 3D program with a certain type or brand of video card may have particular issues that you should be aware of before making a decision.

Thanks for the advice. Is there anything you could offer in more broad terms? Is the 7770 a good card in general? Should I consider Nvidia? etc.

 

[Max Collodi]

Thanks for the advice. Is there anything you could offer in more broad terms? Is the 7770 a good card in general? Should I consider Nvidia? etc.

I don't use Blender so I can't offer any advice about any issues it may have with video cards, but here is an example of how a certain 3D program can have issues with certain cards. I do most of my modeling in Rhino 3D which uses Open GL. Both AMD's game cards and workstation cards perform well with Open GL in Rhino, but while Rhino works well with Nvidia's workstation cards, it has issues with their game cards.

Another thing to keep in mind is that rendering is not the only issue to consider when doing 3D work. The other, perhaps more important, task is viewport manipulation. Rendering is time related and while it is great to be able to do fast rendering, it is not as big an issue as viewport manipulation. If your dealing with large datasets, trying to rotate or pan your model without a card that is up to the task can be very unproductive. A lot depends on the type of work you are doing. If you're modeling small parts in industrial design work, it would not be as much of an issue as someone modeling large architectural structures.

 

[QuantumCD]

I don't use Blender so I can't offer any advice about any issues it may have with video cards, but here is an example of how a certain 3D program can have issues with certain cards. I do most of my modeling in Rhino 3D which uses Open GL. Both AMD's game cards and workstation cards perform well with Open GL in Rhino, but while Rhino works well with Nvidia's workstation cards, it has issues with their game cards.

Another thing to keep in mind is that rendering is not the only issue to consider when doing 3D work. The other, perhaps more important, task is viewport manipulation. Rendering is time related and while it is great to be able to do fast rendering, it is not as big an issue as viewport manipulation. If your dealing with large datasets, trying to rotate or pan your model without a card that is up to the task can be very unproductive. A lot depends on the type of work you are doing. If you're modeling small parts in industrial design work, it would not be as much of an issue as someone modeling large architectural structures.

Yeah, I completely understand. I think the latest builds of Blender are compatible with this card, so I think I will stick with it. Do you think that the 1GB of GDDR5 RAM will be enough for heavy graphics work? I really can't find another card priced around this that has more memory.

 

[Max Collodi]

Yeah, I completely understand. I think the latest builds of Blender are compatible with this card, so I think I will stick with it. Do you think that the 1GB of GDDR5 RAM will be enough for heavy graphics work? I really can't find another card priced around this that has more memory.

I have no personal experience with that card, but if there are no particular issues with it and Blender, it should work fine.

 

[QuantumCD]

I have no personal experience with that card, but if there are no particular issues with it and Blender, it should work fine.

That's fine. The card seems to work on Blender, and I'm sure it isn't too bad of a card. I'm a bit concerned about the memory the card has and how that will affect me in 3D work. Do you have any say on that? Should I shoot for more than 1GB?

 

[Guest]

It depends on ur output. Professional or otherwise. Hardware rendering is different from software ones. Hardware rendering without reqd hardware ,u may end up with certain artifacts. My blender works are limited for gaming purpose, so knowledge is limited here.


It seems openCL is not yet officially fully supported yet.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Cycles/GPU_Rendering#GPU_Rendering.

Analyze the systems used by blender developers in the link below.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Dev:Ref/Supported_platforms .

It is better to have a card with good gpu performance. As u r going for amd platform , even its integrated gpu is good and can help u to some extend.


NB (Windows platform) : You even run without hardware gpu support by placing the file from the link below. That file is very useful as sometimes ur graphic card may have issues and blender may crash. Then just place the file opengl32.dll in the folder where blender.exe is located. Any info of this file can be found in blender.org

http://download.blender.org/ftp/incoming/softwaregl/win64/

 

[arnoldlouie]

Before, Nvidia was recommended for Rhino right now I am not sure. I am not sure about the drivers also.. But for the work your doing I would suggest this card GTX 650 Ti 2GB. It's more expensive than hd 7770 but you should give this a look. This is the one of the latest cards from nvidia.. It might not be a good thing for drivers.. HD 7770 is a good choice..just give this a look. I would assume that most of your budget is for a video card anyway. Also try GTX 560 it was said to be good at cycles rendering.

 

[QuantumCD]

Before, Nvidia was recommended for Rhino right now I am not sure. I am not sure about the drivers also.. But for the work your doing I would suggest this card GTX 650 Ti 2GB. It's more expensive than hd 7770 but you should give this a look. This is the one of the latest cards from nvidia.. It might not be a good thing for drivers.. HD 7770 is a good choice..just give this a look. I would assume that most of your budget is for a video card anyway. Also try GTX 560 it was said to be good at cycles rendering.

How do you think this card http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130826 would fare? It has a huge amount of CUDA cores for the price compared to similar cores--as well as 2GB of GDDR5 RAM. Could you recommend a better card? I'd really like to stay under 200 dollars with the GPU, but this seems to be a great deal for the specs.

 

[arnoldlouie]

it think that's a good choice.. Im sorry I don't have any benchmarks for rendering and it's a new card so it might not be tested in the way you want to use it. Most benchmarks are for gaming. Just to show you the comparison between hd 7770 and gtx 660. I am not expert on blenders.. only uses blenders for making fruit juices and baby food. Anyway I am just suggesting a card better than hd 7770 and within your budget. The choices you have is hd 7850 2gb and gtx 660 for $200 cards, gtx 660 is better. That's why I suggested 650 ti because its under 200 but since you can afford the 660 then that would be better. I'd like to let you know that the cards that we are talking about are new cards and may/may not have driver issues with the software that you are using. I don't want to give the impression that I tried this card for the purpose you intend to. These are gaming cards and not quadro. heheh..

http://www.hwcompare.com/13304/geforce-gtx-660-vs-radeon-hd-7770/

 

[QuantumCD]

it think that's a good choice.. I'm sorry I don't have any benchmarks for rendering and it's a new card so it might not be tested in the way you want to use it. Most benchmarks are for gaming. Just to show you the comparison between hd 7770 and gtx 660. I am not expert on blenders.. only uses blenders for making fruit juices and baby food. Anyway I am just suggesting a card better than hd 7770 and within your budget. The choices you have is hd 7850 2gb and gtx 660 for $200 cards, gtx 660 is better. That's why I suggested 650 ti because its under 200 but since you can afford the 660 then that would be better. I'd like to let you know that the cards that we are talking about are new cards and may/may not have driver issues with the software that you are using. I don't want to give the impression that I tried this card for the purpose you intend to. These are gaming cards and not quadro. heheh..

http://www.hwcompare.com/13304/geforce-gtx-660-vs-radeon-hd-7770/

Yeah, it's fine. I might get the one that's lower priced. The 660 seems to have so much more cores/memory for like 40 bucks more though. And believe it or not, Quadro is much worse than GTX when it comes to Blender's GPU rendering. Another thing is will my CPU (AMD FX) bottleneck the GPU (660/Those other cards)? I keep hearing "Go Intel... Intel is better... " etc. Should I really invest in a better GPU in this case? Or the CPU? Here's the processors I'm debating between:

AMD FX 8350: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113284
Intel i5 3570K: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116504

Will either of those bottleneck my GPU? I've heard that Intel and Nvidia work together more so than AMD. Also, I know this probably isn't the place to ask a bit about CPU's, but which one do you think is better for the money?

 

[arnoldlouie]

you won't have any bottlenecks.. their is no actual intel-nvidia, amd-amd cpu-gpu combo, but in gaming in general.. amd cpus doesn't compare to intels.. Most people are saying i5 for a reason.. i5 2500k and 3570k doesn't have an amd equivalent afaik. Most opinions are based on gaming and not like what you would use them for. Check this review, it would help you alot in your cpu decision.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested/2

 

[QuantumCD]

you won't have any bottlenecks.. their is no actual intel-nvidia, amd-amd cpu-gpu combo, but in gaming in general.. amd cpus doesn't compare to intels.. Most people are saying i5 for a reason.. i5 2500k and 3570k doesn't have an amd equivalent afaik. Most opinions are based on gaming and not like what you would use them for. Check this review, it would help you alot in your cpu decision.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6396/the-vishera-review-amd-fx8350-fx8320-fx6300-and-fx4300-tested/2

Well, I don't know... I plan to be doing almost all my rendering on the GPU... Hmm... I really like the looks of the i5. With hyper-threading I can easily get 8 threads if I choose to render on the CPU... Do you know if it would be possible to get an i5 3570K with a 660 in a build for under 800-900 USD? This is really pushing my budget, but I don't see myself building another computer for a while so I really want to stretch my dollars as far as I can--even if it means buying the parts over the course of a few weeks.

 

[arnoldlouie]

this is a good build.. except the motherboard

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/build-a-pc-overclock-benchmark,3276.html

 

[arnoldlouie]

If you can't afford to buy a whole build at one time you might regret buying it part by part since prices go down almost monthly and something that you bought $200 today could be $180 tomorrow. The build that i posted is 1000$ build but since you are buying a $200 videocard instead of 400 that would make this under $900.. Anyway its hard to buy technology stuff..prices go down at fast rate.. and it sucks to know that you're $1000 dollar build today..is just worth $500 after 6 months..hehe

 

[QuantumCD]

If you can't afford to buy a whole build at one time you might regret buying it part by part since prices go down almost monthly and something that you bought $200 today could be $180 tomorrow. The build that i posted is 1000$ build but since you are buying a $200 videocard instead of 400 that would make this under $900.. Anyway its hard to buy technology stuff..prices go down at fast rate.. and it sucks to know that you're $1000 dollar build today..is just worth $500 after 6 months..hehe

Thanks for the advice... and yeah... I know. I think I'll wait a month or two and see how things are then. I really like that build, thanks! The cooler will allow some room for overclocking as well as keeping everything.. well, cool. With the near 200 savings, maybe I will have enough for Windows 7/8 and some games! Another thing, what makes the 670 so much more expensive? I compared them and noticed hardly any differences.

Edit: Oh, and what was wrong with the motherboard?

 

[arnoldlouie]

is an old motherboard..hehe.. buy this instead.. most recommended

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157293

i think some memory controllers are disabled in the gtx 660... their is a big performance and also price gap between the two...hehehe...

 

[QuantumCD]

is an old motherboard..hehe.. buy this instead.. most recommended

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157293

i think some memory controllers are disabled in the gtx 660... their is a big performance and also price gap between the two...hehehe...

Ahh well... an i5 Ivy Bridge and an SSD even it all out, right? I'm really having a hard time making sense of all the GPU options. CPU's seem to be so much easier to find and select (I already knew about the i5 and Ivy Bridge). The GTX series cards are better as the number rises all the way up to 690 which is their best card, right? So confused... but at least I settled on Nvidia--CUDA is up to 50% faster at rendering than OpenCL on AMD cards. That's a big hit when you don't have 15,000 to spend on a Quadro Plex... because at those prices just the psychology will make it faster...

 

[QuantumCD]

Best answer selected by QuantumCD.