GTX Titan vs. Radeon 7990 for Game Development

[mason_s]

Hey folks. I'm an indie game developer and our team is moving on our first big-ish-budget game using a 3D engine (Unity for the time being or UE4 depending on how our upcoming kickstarter goes, with Blender for asset creation). I'm looking at outfitting our studio with a bunch of capable rendering workstations, but our budget is roughly $3,000/each for the whole kit. I'm looking for video cards that will fit our needs for high-ish-end rendering, but aren't as expensive as the FirePro or Quadro line. I know both of these cards (the Titan and the 7990) pack some muscle and are FP64 capable. From all the benchmarks and the raw FP output (the 7990 is almost double the Titan), the 7990 looks superior for ~$1,000. However, I have no experience at this depth in pool that is graphics rendering. Anybody with experience in this regard that has a preference that would be helpful? Particularly if there is hard data behind that preference. That would be much, much appreciated.

 

[HurleyBird]

What 3D modelling app are you guys using?

 

[Kenmitch]

(Unity for the time being or UE4 depending on how our upcoming kickstarter goes, with Blender for asset creation).

Welcome to the forum

What 3D modelling app are you guys using?

Looks like that is what they plan on using.

Not sure what card would be best for the rendering. System requirements https://store.unity3d.com/products/v18/feature_1_pro.en.html

I'm not sure on what you plan on whipping up as far as a game goes....But you should kinda have something from both AMD and Nvidia to test on at least.

Not even sure what the target market is. Window? iOS? Android?

 

[ViRGE]

I'm looking for video cards that will fit our needs for high-ish-end rendering, but aren't as expensive as the FirePro or Quadro line.

It's a reasonable goal, but keep in mind that there will be some tradeoffs. Most professional tool vendors will not give you the time of day, let alone any real support, if you're not running it on a pro level card with certified drivers. If you don't need support that's fine, but it is something to take into consideration.

In any case, the 7990 is a dual-GPU card. It's a fine card on its own, but it's not a good fit for development purposes as it introduces another (potentially wild) variable into the process. For development you should stick with single-GPU cards such as the 7970 series, GTX Titan, etc.

 

[ocre]

I am not gonna pretend i know but i would also imagine a single GPU solution would be better. Their are others here that might know more, but i am not sure how many are indie game developers. I would think there are a few.

 

[HurleyBird]

Looks like that is what they plan on using.

Actually, it's Blender. I missed that point in the original post. I'd recommend asking the question on the Blender forums, though as far as I can tell Blender can use multiple rendering engines which might make things complicated.

One of the rendering engines (cycles) doesn't even work on AMD GPUs yet, although LuxRenderer seems to run significantly faster on AMD cards.

No matter which way you go, be sure to at least have one card from the other hardware vendor so you can test compatibility and performance. If you want to develop for next generation consoles, keep in mind that they use a very similar architecture to current generation Radeons, so shader code that runs fast on them should also work good for next gen consoles.

 

[EliteRetard]

I'm gonna take the other two suggestions and second them:

Get both a Nvidia card and an AMD card. Single GPU.
So basically get a Titan and a 7970GHz edition.

It may be worth trying a dual GPU 7990 as well, but Id get the top single card from both companies first.

 

[EliteRetard]

ERMAHGERD!

Derber perst!

 

[tviceman]

Like others have said, I think you'd be better off with a single-GPU solution. Get the fastest /most feature rich one within your budget. But also, like others have said, you will eventually need a GPU from both Nvidia and AMD to bug test your game and ensure compatibility.