GTX 460 2GB or GTX 470 1280MB for the same price?

[blueshine]

Hi.
I am in the procces of switching the old 8800 gts whith some up-to-date video card.
So I was wondering if someone can tell me which one of the two is best for gpu accelerated rendering.
Would I benefit from 2gb of RAM or is 1280MB plenti and are additional Cuda cores on 470 more beneficial?

Thanks for the answers to all.

[Zom-B]

Anandtech uses SmallLuxGPU for their Benchmark: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/amds ... -market/19
SLG uses OpenCL, so you can compare ATI with AMD (but performance is also quite Driver sensitive!)

Regarding Indigos GPU future I wouldn't bet on CUDA, afaik a openCL version is also planed.
I wait with my GPU shopping plans until Glare releases some hard facts about GPU support future and benchmarks

I would wait 2 weeks until new GeForce 5xx hits the market and check out benchmarks on Anandtech to see how the cards perform!

Regarding RAM size... afaik there is some kind of (Driver based) limitation that only 50% of RAM can be used for GPGPU needs atm, not absolutely sure about it! Anyway RAM is used for storing mesh info mostly (besides Apps like Octane, that put everything on the GPU RAM), so your theoretical limit with 1GB RAM is already skyhigh

[dougal2]

There have been reported issues with the 460 also that some models/variants can never get 100% load for GPGPU purposes. I don't know if the same 'bug'/limitation exists in the 470 models.

(I have a 465 myself, and have seen this happen, but can't recall the exact details of hoe to ensure full GPU load).

[StompinTom]

Hmmm... I've got a 480; I'll have to check if it can use its full load... Any good benchmark program to use for it? Or should I just boot up Octane or something similar?

[dougal2]

Hmmm... I've got a 480; I'll have to check if it can use its full load... Any good benchmark program to use for it? Or should I just boot up Octane or something similar?

The 480 is OK. I think the reason for the 'problem' is that a 46x is in fact a 480 that has been intentionally 'crippled' to be sold at a lower price point.

There's a little info here: http://www.luxrender.net/forum/viewtopi ... =34&t=4538