Hi All,

Just wondering if I could get some input on a gpu related dilemmaI’m facing.

I desperately need a gpu upgrade (current card isun-workable with iray) given the stock shortage of the new nvidia 30-series I’mfaced with a choice to avoid my work grinding to a halt.

Either purchase a 2080 super brand new, now, and that is my permanentcard.

Or

Get something temporary and upgrade to a 30-series nextyear when stock levels are up. I can get a used card with two year warranty choosing either of thefollowing which are all a similar price;

GeForce RTX 2080 8GB

GTX Titan X Pascal (2016) 12GB

GeForce RTX 2070 Super 8GB

GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB (AIO Water Cooled)

For rendering in Iray what would you guys do? I just wantsomething workable, able to render preview and process a render in a reasonabletime. My gut would have told me to go for the highest vram possible but I also want to be able to render from iray in the fastest possible time within my budget.

There's another alternative -- find the 30 series card you want now.

Not impossible -- I found a 3090 at GPUNation (I was given a tip on another site) and got it for $1500 plus free shipping, so I didn't even have to pay a premium for it.  But it took some doing.  IIRC (and I may not) you are in the Mother Country so I don't know how things are there or perhaps in Europe but I wouldn't give up completely on finding something.  There ARE amounts of them around, whichever version you want (again, IIRC you wanted a 3080 -- that place I mentioned DID have 10 of them or so.  I think they are all sold out now, but this was only a week ago so places ARE getting them in trickles and dabs).

Also - the rumor (and it seems pretty good) is that NVidia will be releasing a 3080Ti card soon -- that could help in two ways.  First, you might well be able to jump FAST on it and get one and, second, it might make finding the first version easier as folks look to dump that stock.  At the very least if I were you I'd wait a month or so (and keep trying to find what you want -- the interweb is an amazing place).

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Thanks Mike. I have been hammering the web pretty hard and over here the best i found was one site selling a 3070  for about 30% over the RRP. A 3080ti would be out of my price range I suspect. At a push I could manage around £800 (around $1000). Yes I could save and wait for another year and maybe dabble with some 2D stuff for now but I'm so eager to get going properly based on the 3d work I've done so far. I've got the whole software suite sitting there ready for me to work with.

One of the things I've noticed on the forum in discussions about cards is those who own the top end cards seem to feel that unless you can get yourself a top end card you may as well not bother at all. I suppose i'd like to see what people with experience would recommend to those with more modest budgets as I think we would all have a 3090 or 3080(minimum). For me, I'd likely be going for a 3070 if they were avaialble right now. (still a fair amount of money for a hobby but from what I gather, still a reasonable card. Not an option for me right now unless I want to pay hugely over the odds.

So Mike, you're in my place, would you quit entirely until you could get a 3080ti installed or would you press on with one of the options I have and get animating keeping the 3080 in the pipeline?

You can certainly animate with less -- although I have a Titan currently on my main machine (soon to be replaced by the 3090) my secondary machine has a 1080 which served me well for many years since 7 was first released.  The biggest issue is not speed per se but memory -- memory requirements keep going up and up and OCCASIONALLY I run into issues with even 12GB.  But, as I said, I operated for years with only 8GB and if it meant only two characters in a scene at most that was doable.

There may well be used 1080/1070 cards floating around -- paying (U.S. dollars) $300 for one such would be a good buy and something that could tide you over for the next six months (which it might take to get what you are looking for ultimately).  But I certainly wouldn't let ANY hardware come in the way of animating -- it's easy to get into the "grass is always greener" mindset where you think if only you had this ONE MORE THING (be it mocap suit, or facial capture system, or high end card, or computer, or whatever) you would be fine.  You're always chasing after your tail then.  Folks can animate even in iClone perfectly well without any of those things -- it may take a lot more time and patience, but sometimes those are good things to learn.

I'm sure whatever you decide will work for you -- just keep your chin up and think about this: you are so young that long after I'm dead you'll have hardware and software that makes all we can do today look like nothing.  So you have a lot to look forward to.

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Thanks Mike. My issue really only started when I purchased Iray. My card takes about 15mins to load the preview screen alone. If I attempt to render it just crashes. I'm still new to the world of animating so I'd like to hone the craft a bit before I get the most expensive set up anyway so if a 1080ti will handle Iray to a half decent level I'm sure I can pick one up. Then next year I'll upgrade. From what I gather Iclone can't make full use of RTX yet anyway.

surprised the GTX 1660 I have turned out so useless. Seemed ok when I was looking.

Well, I don't do iRay and never will so I can't comment there.  But a TON of animations have been made without it, so I wouldn't let that stop me if that's your desire (if your desire is more to make pretty pictures than do animations then it's a different story).

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Yeah I'm starting to wish I hadn't got that carried away with the 50% off deal now!

I guess my aim was to see how much realism I could bring to an animation. How close could I get to the movie quality using kit anyone can buy. I figured all the hype around iray would mean i'd need a card that could handle it. I'll leave it to one side and I think I'll do as you suggest. Pick up an 11gb 1080ti for now. Big step up from where I am and will get me in a position where I can get some things put together then next year (after the initial craze) I'll pick up a 3080.

Thanks for the input Mike - you are certainly somewhat of an oracle!

You're more than welcome -- and be sure and share the things you do.  It helps everyone and encourages everyone.

I'm sure your animation journey will be successful.

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Hi am new here, Sorry for interjecting in this thread. I am in a similar predicament, I am enticed by the 50% deal, and do not know what to expect since I've always worked on Mac, but now because of the iClone Pipline solution I am ready to buy and try PC.
If I may also ask a question here.
Does anyone know if one would be eligible to get the (Unreal Live Link) for free if one gets only the Facial Mocap bundle.
Also how good may be the Alienware m3 with RTX 2060 for any Unreal Live Link and iClone Machinama rendering stuff?

The main software requirements for Unreal Live Link is having iClone 7 plus 3DXchange 7 Pipeline which the Facial Mocap Bundle includes. So providing you are an indie developer and meet the eligibility requirements on the page below you will be entitled to a free copy of Unreal Live Link. 

iClone Unreal Live Link - Indie License (reallusion.com)

                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com