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Which graphics card for unity 4.6 and unity 5.0?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Artomiano, Jan 23, 2015.

  1. Artomiano

    Artomiano

    Joined:
    Dec 1, 2014
    Posts:
    200
    Hi there,

    I'm new at unity, but I plan to use it for real work, like simulation and (indy) game development (3d).

    Shortly, I upgraded my computer to an intel Core i7-5820K (hexacore) with 32GB of RAM. Now I think about an upgrade for my old nVidia Geforce GTX460 (2GB). I think I have to upgrade it because of the bad performance in editor mode (4.6). In simple scenes, all is fine. But in comlex scenes, not. The picture is jerky when rotating and zooming continuously and the screen layout when pre-rendering is too slow.

    What's my system: Windows 7 (Pro, 64). I use unity with some of the following plugins: TerrainComposer, WorldComposer, RTP3, Playmaker, AdventureCreator and some more - but not all at the same time.

    What graphics cards can you recommend?

    Best regards,
    Tom
     
  2. Deon-Cadme

    Deon-Cadme

    Joined:
    Sep 10, 2013
    Posts:
    288
    I7 with 32GB of ram o_O Sounds like you must render a ton of videos and work with extreme resolution art.

    Well... unity doesn't need much in general to run... your scene could lag for many reasons... but it looks like you got the money to spend and while you anyway started building an over-the-top computer, why not go for a GTX 980 so that you got a GPU to match that CPU and RAM.

    Hope that it got a suitable motherboard and fast harddrive as well.

    About lagging... my computer isn't new but it is well built and always taken care of... it can do lots of calculations, rendering and I am a multitasking person by nature so I always got lots of stuff running in the background... still, things are smooth like silk but... I know of Unity functions that I only have to place into a loop to bring my machine into a halt for a few seconds :) Shader Forge is also a good way to cause slowdowns or weird behavior but I can't live without that shader editor...

    Also, I know from experience that the GTX 460 isn't a bad card... ran Skyrim with some graphic mods at high settings without problems (60+ fps at all times). Don't know how it handles later games though but let us not compare against Assassins Creed or DA:I beucase they behave like a drunk employee optimized them (sorry if a developer of these games read this but it is the painful truth).

    My bet at the moment is that you are in a bigger need of making an optimization pass over your code. Look for areas of code that take to much time and improve them... you could also look into profiling your code to find these bottlenecks. It is really simple to bring even the strongest computers to their knees with bad code...

    Hehe, just give me a loop and the Debug.Log function and I can show you what I mean ;) Anyways, there is lots of other ways to bring a computer to a halt...
     
  3. Artomiano

    Artomiano

    Joined:
    Dec 1, 2014
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    200
    Hi Deon,

    My old computer broke. That's the reason why I bought a new one - or better said: new components. In this situation I thought, if I now buy new components, it should be good for the next few years. So I decided to upgrade my old system to a new system that fits my actual and further needs. For example, I work with blender, so the six cores of my cpu will used very well, also the ram! Or I use Photoshop & Co. with really big pictures (10k+ pixels) to work on. This will use more than 20GB of ram! Add a GTX980 will add about additional 500 bucks. That's not sooo good. Sometimes I have to take care of my money. ;)

    It's the MSI X99S Gaming7. A good one, I think. Actually I use a RAID10 with 4TB on WD Blacks on a special adaptec PCI-Express raid controller.

    Hm, I think that's a rumor. ;)

    Like I said: I'm totally new at unity. There are no individual code yet. ;)

    I knew it: It would be complicated. ;)
     
  4. Arowx

    Arowx

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    Make sure it's DX12 compatible. ;)
     
  5. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    Last edited: Jan 23, 2015
  6. Artomiano

    Artomiano

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    I'm not sure, if the 960 is the right card for me. There is only a 128 bit interface, this limits the bandwith is much cases. I could imagine, for 3d rendering and - maybe - for "heavy" unity usage, it is a problem...
     
  7. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    Memory bus size is dependent on the amount of memory on the card. Essentially there is a memory controller for every specifically sized chunk of memory. The GTX 460, for example, had a 64-bit controller for every 256MB. Thus the 512MB model had a 128-bit bus and the 1GB model had a 256-bit bus.

    This is partially my motivation for waiting for higher memory models. A 4GB model should have a 256-bit bus.
     
    Last edited: Jan 23, 2015
  8. ShilohGames

    ShilohGames

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    Get a NVidia GTX 980.
     
    lmbarns likes this.
  9. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    He stated earlier he wasn't willing to spend that much. Which is why I suggested the new GTX 960. The GTX 970 might be a good compromise given that he wants higher performance without the $500 price tag.
     
    Last edited: Jan 23, 2015
  10. ShilohGames

    ShilohGames

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    The GTX 960 was an excellent suggestion for him, since he said he did not want to pay for the GTX 980. I only mentioned the GTX 980 again because he did not like the GTX 960 specs. If the GTX 960 is honestly too slow, then he needs to increase his budget and buy a faster card.
     
    Ryiah likes this.
  11. Dreamcube017

    Dreamcube017

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    If you're getting a new GFX card, I'd go with the others on the GTX 960 since it has DX12 support. I don't think it's used much now, but it's always a good idea to future prof yourself.

    Also, try running some example scenes in Unity and see if those run properly.

    Do other 3D aplications (like games) run on your computer well? (e.g. skyrim, GTA4, Saints Row, any benchmark) That's also a good test to see if it's Unity, your specific project, or just the machine in general.
     
    Ryiah likes this.
  12. lmbarns

    lmbarns

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    Whatever you can afford in the GTX 900 series. I'm getting a 980 and will compare with the quadro 5k I have now. The quadro outputs Unity at 4k resolution.
     
  13. ZJP

    ZJP

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    Buy a GTX 960. If this is not sufficient in the future buy another one and make an SLI.
     
  14. sugee1966

    sugee1966

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    i hava a 512mb vga card nvidea geforce 1080gtx.can I run it
     
  15. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    A GTX 1080 doesn't have 512 MB VRAM.
     
  16. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    Also this thread is 3 years old and about unity 4.6 and 5.
     
  17. FMark92

    FMark92

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    dont call out superior chinese viceocards thank you fren
     
  18. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    Official GPUs for China markets tend to have a slight reduction in memory (eg a 5GB 1060). Having 1/16th of the memory is much more akin to an online rebrand scam. :p
     
    Last edited: Dec 7, 2018
  19. FMark92

    FMark92

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    The price was probably appropriate.
     
  20. AndersMalmgren

    AndersMalmgren

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    At this point I would wait for the Titan RTX
     
  21. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    Only one? NVIDIA's website clearly shows the connector NVLink. :p
     
    Antypodish likes this.
  22. AndersMalmgren

    AndersMalmgren

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    I would wait buying more until UNity supports GPU baking!