Best video card for AutoCad, Sketchup, 3D Rending?

[fede2022]

Hey guys! Im building a PC and i was wondering which card would be the best for the listed programs. I was looking to be in the $300-$500 range and was considering either a R9 290 or a GTX 970. I found an XFX R9 290 for $279.99 CAD. The GTX 970 are harder to find the only brand available is Zotac for $439 CAD. Any input would be appricated!
Thanks!

Also the processor is AMD 8350 with 16gb RAM.

 

[Abmario]

Those cards are good for gaming, but Fire Pro or Quadro cards would be the best for those applications.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-workstation-graphics-card,3493-3.html

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133353
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133483

 

[Luca Rood]

Go for the 970, as Nvidia cards have better compaibility with most of those kinds of applications. I would avoid the Quadros, as you'll have to pay much more for a comparable performance. Also, the Quadros are more of a marketing thing, with companies like AutoDesk "officially supporting" those cards, making people tend to trust them more, though you can get great results with GeForce cards.

Now, when you say "3D Rendering", you have to be more specific, as the render engines you use can greatly affect your hardware choice. I say that, because many people buy GPUs, expecting them to speed-up rendering, but often are using non GPU accelerated render engines. Most of the popular render engines, such as VRay, RenderMan, Maxwell, MentalRay use CPU compute (though MentalRay uses GPU for GI). A few render engines, like Octane, LuxRender, Cycles, Indigo, and VRay RT (with limited features) are GPU compatible. So take that into consideration, when evaluating if it is even worth buying a better GPU.

 

[fede2022]

Thanks for your replies guys! The 3D rendering is mostly VRay and Sketchup. Would the processor and ram listed be sufficient?

 

[Luca Rood]

As I said in my previous post, VRay doesn't have GPU support. Though, if you can live with the more limited feature set of VRay RT, it does support GPU.
Now, you say you render with Sketchup, but Sketchup doesn't have a real render engine built in, only the viewport renderer. If the viewport renderer is what you mean, yes it is rendered by GPU. If you mean you use VRay for Sketchup, then the same I said about VRay applies.

About the CPU, that depends on what you are rendering, and how much time you have. One could say that any CPU is good enough for rendering, but that depends on the complexity of the scenes, and how much you want to wait for the render.
I would say your choice of CPU is pretty good, and will probably perform reasonably well while rendering. You will need a GPU though, as your CPU doesn't have integrated graphics. I would say the 970 is a great choice, though you might want to check out some cheaper options if you are only going to render on CPU.

Moving on to RAM, 16gb is enough for most people. And just a heads up: Sketchup is a pretty poor piece of software, and only runs 32bit, so you can have any amount of RAM, and it will still only use 4gb. So if you are only going to use Sketchup on your machine, 16gb is overkill. But I imagine you'll also be doing other things on your machine, so 16gb might be necessary for you (or not). Have you checked out the RAM usage on your current machine? That would be a good place to start, when choosing RAM.