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Graphics card - GTX-1070 TI or RTX-2060?


Art V

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I get to upgrade my graphics card from a GTX-960 to a newer model and the choice is going to be between a GTX-1070 TI on sale or the new RTX-2060 for basically the same price, both should be quite a bit faster than the GTX-960 I have now and may (hopefully) solve some of the lag issues.

 

The main differences are that GTX-1070 TI has a 8GB of RAM and a 256-bit interface and therefore a bit more bandwidth than the RTX-2060 with a 192-bit interface, the RTX has 6GB of memory. However the RTX-2060 is most of the time just as fast or even a bit faster than the GTX-1070 TI according to gaming site tests.

 

VW isn't a gaming application, though it can be fun anyway and sometimes a gamble on how well it will do certain things :-), so I don't expect these test to translate 1 on 1  for VW.

The RTX-2060 has built in support for raytracing etc. but I doubt that VW will be using this in the near future (i.e. next 3 years or so).

 

What would be the better choice in this case for use with VW?

GTX-1070 TI with a bit more memory and data bandwidth, but 2 years old already, or the newer GTX-2060 with newer tech on board which seems to have more processing power but has a bit less memory and bandwidth?

 

@Jim Wilson do you already happen to have some info based on user experience on how well the GTX-2060 performs with VW, i.e. better, equal or worse to be expected than the 1070 TI?

 

Thanks in advance for any insights

 

 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Honestly, since the 1070 Ti can be had cheaply right now, it's the better buy. We don't (and likely wont) support the more advanced features in the RTX line before that card hits end of life anyway, and the additional VRAM will be more of a benefit going forward than the extra speed offered by the 2060. 

Functionally right now in Vectorworks if you compared the two side by side, you very likely would be unable to tell the difference until you got into the multiple 4K display range for screen resolution. For single display comparison they'd likely not be visibly different at all.

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@Jim Wilson Thanks for the info, this is very useful to know for using it with VW. I'll have to do some more reading on the differences between the two for some of my other programs but I wanted to be sure that one or the other wouldn't end up being a bottleneck thing for VW performance if it does not make much difference for the other programs which one I choose.

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I would tend to the newer models anyway.

 

At that time I also looked for GTX 1080ies (Ti) after RTX launch first,

which were already sold and went finally with a RTX 2070 instead.

(Gigabyte RTX 2070 Windforce)

Slightly above the maximum I am willing to pay for a "Gaming" Card.

(for an interims Machine)

AMD Vegas were even pricier at that time and need so much power.

 

I was aware that no 3D App will ever profit from the RTX stuff but the

GTX stuff in it is ok anyway. Also I wanted at least 8 GB VRAM as I

already had 6 GB before.

Finally I am pretty happy with my choice as it is dead silent,

even when I did some Eevee, Cycles or Prorender GPU Tests.

And so far it is totally bored by any 3D OpenGL View Window.

Looks like the Bottlenecks are somewhere else.

 

AMD, at least on Mac, may not be the preferred 3D accelerator

for any 3D App. When I will build a final Machine, I would go

AMD, for other reasons, though.

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I took a look at the AMD Vega card as well and noticed they require a lot more power than an equivalent nVidia card, get hotter and are not faster in most cases. In a VRay benchmark the RTX2060 and RTX2070 beat the Vega cards by a considerable margin, and even the GTX-1070 Ti can't really keep up in that benchmark if I recall correctly.

 

Are you getting a better OpenGL performance with the 2070 than with the old(er) card you have been using, or rephrased... does VW perfom noticably better with the 2070 than the other card?

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Hmmh, I was on my old new Mac Pro before.

Which D700's are 5 years old (ATI 480 level or even lower)

But they have sufficient 6 GB VRAM and it was always fine for VW,

good for C4D, but not so for Modo.

So if a Project in OpenGL lags on Mac in VW or Bricscad,

it will also lag in WIndows with my RTX 2070.

The Bottlenecks seem to be somwhere else.

 

Of course the RTX is a much faster card now, which you can see

in GPU Rendering. I have found no files that would lag on Mac

opposed to running smooth on RTX Windows though.

I think I'm still far from hitting my VRAM limit.

 

When I had to replace my 4870 with 1 GB VRAM (?) in my old Mac Pro

with my (old) new Mac Pro D700 6 GB in 2015, it was between >

does not work

at all vs works effortlessly.

 

I currently have a large Project,

once loaded I can rotate my views anywhere fine. Doesn't feel like

60 Fps everywhere but fine.

But any data access or changes lag up to minutes.

In Bricscad it was something like 300 Materials, 5000 Blocks,

17000 Solids and 50000 Block instances.

In 3D I think it was 24 mio Polygons.

 

21 hours ago, Art V said:

does VW perfom noticably better with the 2070 than the other card?

 

Beside 2015 with less VRAM, I never had a problem with VW 3D OpenGL.

 

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 2/15/2019 at 12:40 AM, Art V said:

Are you getting a better OpenGL performance with the 2070 than with the old(er) card you have been using, or rephrased... does VW perfom noticably better with the 2070 than the other card?

 

 

I tested again.

I have here really ugly hyper complicated Revit DWG export about 1Gig of VW size.

The worst I ever got offered.

(Which won't even import in VW when I do not deactivate Material Import BTW)

 

The RTX 2070 on Windows, according Task Manager gets barely used,

20% GPU max at best and VRAM still sub 2 GB.

Rotating the Model in OpenGL is fine.

 

So I thought,

the outdated D700(s) in Mac Pro with 6 GB should also work.

And they do.

I can rotate my Modelcompletely fine on outdated Mac Pro too.

 

 

The only difference because it is no fun to work with that file

(on both systems)

is that the that final loading of the OpenGL takes (even) more time on the

old Mac. But same for ANY action as the single core speed of the old

XEON W 6 core, DDR3, 1 Gb/s SATA SSD, VRAM

vs

Ryzen 2700, DDR4, 3 Gb/s NVMe SSD, GDDR5

is weaker.

(Although it really isn't that much difference after 7 years of PC evolution)

 

 

BTW I am happy that all that still works with 24 or 32 GB RAM.

Just that I often would like to open the project in VW, Bricscad, Modo and C4D

at the same time. (Currently better max. two of them),

which makes me think about adding another two 16 GB DDR4 2400 (only)

As the RAM prizes got more reasonable meanwhile.

Edited by zoomer
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1 hour ago, zoomer said:

I can rotate my Modelcompletely fine on outdated Mac Pro too.

😁 I found the same about my GTX-960 to some extend. The 1070i got sold out before I could make a final decision, so it became a decision between GTX-2060 or a bit more for the GTX-2070 for the extra VRAM.  Then a windows update crashed windows so I had to do a refresh and then got a big surprise, ouch.

 

Because the software had to be reinstalled I only installed the absolute basic software (Office, CAD software including Vectorworks 2019 (no older versions) and some other needed programs), to get back running.

Guess what... quite a bit of the lag that was amost killing on VW2017/18 and to a slightly lesser extent 2019 has diseappeared even though the hardware is still the same. There is still a clearly noticeable lag with some move and a few other operations but not as killing as it used to be so it is sort of bearable now compared to the old situation before the windows 10 refresh. It now 5-10 times faster than in the old situation, it almost looks as if the 2017/2018 versions still being installed are somehow affecting each other and VW2019 in a negative way. VW ws on Best performance in the graphics setting.

 

It remains to be seen if this will hold once all other software has been installed, if it does then for those suffering from quite a bit of lag it might be an option to do a refresh of Windows if they are on Windows 8 or newer and only install VW2019. No guarantuees it may solve their lag issues but it might be worth a try if nothing else works.

 

@Jim Wilson do you perhaps have an idea why the refresh solved most of the lag issues to a considerable extent, even though it is not fully gone? Is it old junk that got out of the system because of the refresh that did the trick or could it be the clean "removal" of old VW 2017/2018 installs? For the record, VW2016 never suffered that kind of lag as 2017 and later did.

 

Anyway, the selection of a new graphics card got slightly postponed until the system if fully operational again from a software perspective once all programs have been installed again. Your latest findings on the 2070 and the old system somewhat align with what I suspected after seeing what happened after the Win 10 refresh, but for the other software I probably will see a noticable improvement anyway from a new graphics card.

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9 minutes ago, Art V said:

do you perhaps have an idea why the refresh solved most of the lag issues to a considerable extent

 

For me that sounds a bit like you were running out of Memory a bit (RAM)

(If I watch my Task Manager and see how many millions of little tasks eat my Memory.

Even things like Cortana (halted), although I deactivated all such things wherever

could in any Settings)

 

So as long as your fresh System is free of all those extra Drivers and extra Software

that run in Background, the free RAM may be just enough for your current Projects

currently (?)

 

But I think you already checked that.

 

 

An Update of GPU Performance on the Bricscad Side.

Although I fight more with Selections and BIM Structure Tree refreshes,

The same File that rotates fine on Windows RTX 2070 will not rotate

without seconds long lags on Macs D700.

(Have to re-check with the v19 Beta though)

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10 minutes ago, zoomer said:

But I think you already checked that.

Yes I checked that already, there won't be that much more running in the background when everything is installed but some software has a habit of installing older common files over more recent versions so that might be a factor. The system has 32GB of RAM so that could not really have been the issue with the lag as the files that were suffering badly from the lag have a size in the 250-300 MB range so hardly taxing on the overall memory.

 

13 minutes ago, zoomer said:

An Update of GPU Performance on the Bricscad Side.

Although I fight more with Selections and BIM Structure Tree refreshes,

The same File that rotates fine on Windows RTX 2070 will not rotate

without seconds long lags on Macs D700. 

(Have to re-check with the v19 Beta though)

This is one of the programs where I expect to see a more clear benefit from the newer graphics card as well as some other software that is more heavy on GPU usage.

 

Though I think/hope that the VW VGM will benefit from the much higher bandwidths as well, even if it won't be as much as the other software right now, but future VW versions should benefit more when the offloading from CPU to GPU for the graphics display etc. progresses.

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30 minutes ago, Art V said:

@Jim Wilson do you perhaps have an idea why the refresh solved most of the lag issues to a considerable extent, even though it is not fully gone? Is it old junk that got out of the system because of the refresh that did the trick or could it be the clean "removal" of old VW 2017/2018 installs? For the record, VW2016 never suffered that kind of lag as 2017 and later did.


Mainly: Reinstalling your OS from scratch and freshly installing applications is the best way to keep performance maxed overall, even unrelated to Vectorworks. I do this personally at least once a year on my home machine, and every two or so on my work ones. As smooth as OS updates may be getting on the surface, underneath going through "dirty" updates ( "dirty" not meaning to imply you did it wrong, just not fresh from scratch) like win7 to Win8 to Win10 or macOS 10.12 to 10.13 to 10.14.

I don't harp on this much as a cure-all because very few people I spoke to on the phone in my support days were interested in doing a complete install, understandably, but when all else fails it's the best option especially for things that are very odd, nor replicable on similar/identical hardware, or problems that slowly get worse over time.

The things wrong with Vectorworks specifically are usually cleared out with a regular preference reset like I so often prescribe here, but if the leftover junk is OS related, the clean wipe is the only surefire cure that doesn't involve an IT rep digging through your user folders and registry for hours trying to find bits to clear manually, often not even sure what to look for.

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Just now, Art V said:

Though I think/hope that the VW VGM will benefit from the much higher bandwidths as well, even if it won't be as much as the other software right now, but future VW versions should benefit more when the offloading from CPU to GPU for the graphics display etc. progresses.


Going forward, Vectorworks is going to rely more and more on the graphics hardware as versions progress as we convert more and more tech to use the VGM. This is also where all high end rendering tech is going as well, so it's a wise consideration when upgrading hardware.

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2 minutes ago, Jim Wilson said:

I do this personally at least once a year on my home machine, and every two or so on my work ones.

I used to do that too during the XMas holidays every year. Unfortunately some picky activation systems combined with needing a day or three to get everyting reinstalled (this includes updates on updates or triggering updates to other things in Windows) do make this a bit less feasible if there are time constraints (read: work that needs to get done).

(Oh, and before anyone suggests creating disk images... been there, done that and given the software I use it's an option that is close to useless as it breaks activations etc. in a way that is more inconvenient to resolve than a deactivation/uninstall before the OS refresh and then do a full fresh install)

 

So I guess when VW 2020 launches I better should prepare for another windows 10 refresh just in case. 😁

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3 minutes ago, Jim Wilson said:

Mainly: Reinstalling your OS from scratch and freshly installing applications is the best way to keep performance maxed overall

 

Thank god that isn't such an issue under macOS.

At least 6 Years of System Upgrades on top of System Migration,

at least 2 VW Versions beside each other and tons of Software

tested and simply thrown in the trash bin afterwards.

From time to time a manually clean up Preferences when I notice

things that aren't really there anymore ...

 

 

9 minutes ago, Art V said:

This is one of the programs where I expect to see a more clear benefit from the newer graphics card as well as some other software that is more heavy on GPU usage.

 

 

Yes, but overall in OpenGL VW feels still much smoother in OpenGL.

Could be related to the BC macOS Versions though.

Like Modo Windows vs Mac+AMD is also night and day.

 

Interesting will be Linux,

once V19 is out and comes in an Arch Version for my Manjaro.

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2 minutes ago, zoomer said:

Thank god that isn't such an issue under macOS.

Not Jobs and Wozniak? Or the buyout of NeXT by Apple later on? 😊

 

4 minutes ago, zoomer said:

Could be related to the BC macOS Versions though. 

Yes, my guess is that the MacOS version is still not as optimised as the Windows version as there is little difference in OpenGL responsiveness between BC and VW as far as I can tell with my 3D models.

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Maybe Jobs as he forced anyone to do the way he thought it should be ...

(As I agree heavily with it is(*), how it should be)

 

(*) or was 2006-20012

As for me macOS is a bit going downhill the last years ...

But still plenty ahead, as far as I still experience on my PC every day.

Edited by zoomer
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  • 1 year later...

Hi, sorry to drag up an old thread but did you ever feel a noticeable different upgrading your GPU to the RTX? Reading through this it sounds like the program is a bottleneck and extra gpu speed is irrelevant?

 

i am considering upgrading from K4200 to a RTX 2070super. I don’t seem to use all the 4gb VRAM in my k4200 yet but there is an annoying delay between things that I would like to loose (viewport performance) with low settings.

 

i know my CPU needs upgrading Xeon 2650v2 but replacing gpu is easiest fix first.

 

GPU rarely is past about 10% used however so it’s never maxed out and I worry a new gpu isn’t going to speed things up.

 

anyone care to share their experience in upgrading graphics cards?

 

thank you

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  • 3 weeks later...

For others thinking of updating your graphics card to improve performance I can say it's not worth if you are hoping for a snappier experience.  I don't see any difference from my K4200 to a RTX2070 Super in viewport performance at all with my old CPU.

 

It has drastically improved updating Open GL viewports, from say 4mins to 1min. 

 

Using  Enscape in sketchup with the K4200 was pretty terrible but the RTX2070 is super fast and definitely worth the upgrade but thinking you will fix Vectorworks issues isn't the case.

 

The RTX2070 actually seems to be way slower in response times in ArchiCAD and I wish I hadn't swapped it, there is a 10 second lag moving lines in plan mode, I'm hoping it's an Nvidia setting to fix this.

 

Does anyone have any experience with 8700k or 9900k or 3800x CPU's and Vectorworks, are they a joy to use or do you still have delays doing things?

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