Best Card For Graphics Designing

[Trafalgar747]

Hey there guys, i need to purchase a card for graphics designing and i need to decide between the RX 480(8gb), the GTX 970(4gb), or the R9 390(8gb).

Which is the best for graphics design and why?

 

[bicycle_repair_man]

None of them, really.

For graphics design, assuming you're referring to CAD software, you should use a Quadro and FirePro card. Both of these have certified drivers that allow the GPU to do the rendering. Whilst it's entirely possible to render with just the CPU, the process is considerably slower.

 

[Trafalgar747]

What card would you suggest? This is the rest of the build.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i7-6700 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor ($389.98 @ DirectCanada)
Motherboard: ASRock Z170A-X1/3.1 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($89.98 @ NCIX)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($85.98 @ Newegg Canada)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($115.45 @ Vuugo)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($87.98 @ DirectCanada)
Case: Thermaltake Versa H22 ATX Mid Tower Case ($42.01 @ Amazon Canada)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G2 550W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($99.99 @ NCIX)
Total: $911.37
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-07-27 02:56 EDT-0400

 

[apk24]

With no first hand experience in graphics design, from my experience with engineering CAD, animation, and video editing software, I'd say that the 480 and 970 are probably tied. In my experience, especially for the older versions of software you find in a lot of corporate or education settings, CUDA is way better optimized than OpenCL. However, the RX 480 isn't a weak card and a larger frame buffer helps a lot too. I don't think you can decide w/o seeing benchmarks on a similar workload. Doesn't AutoCAD Maya have a benchmark suite?

Ideally, I'd want something like one of the new Pascal Quadros coming out, but who's got that kind of cash? Quadros will have the same overall performance as the geforce counterparts, but have some extra features, e.g. 10 bit color, etc enabled in their drivers and more stable drivers overall. For most amateur/prosumer scenarios, it doesn't matter.

Really, the same general ideas as choosing a GPU for games apply. Pick the one with the best benchmarks that you can afford. I'd wager that right now, those charts are topped by GTX 1080/Titan X SLI setups.

Edit: Here's the Blender (animation software) benchmark results for a whole variety of setups. My assumption is that the workload is not dissimilar from what you're trying to do. http://blenchmark.com/benchmarks-overview

 

[bicycle_repair_man]

A Quadro K4000M or FirePro W5100 would be good choices, at least from the current line-up. Nvidia and AMD have announced that they're releasing new workstation cards, so you may want to hold fire for them.

 

[jasonkaler]

Hey there guys, i need to purchase a card for graphics designing and i need to decide between the RX 480(8gb), the GTX 970(4gb), or the R9 390(8gb).

Which is the best for graphics design and why?

Do you design you graphics in 3D?

If you don't, then you don't need a 3D graphics accelerator. Surprise!