Topic: GTX 1060 vs. RX 480

[ubicz]

Hello everyone.

No idea, why nobody asked this question on forums yet. I will do that then.
It seems like RX 480 might be a good choice in a long run, if DirectX 12 makes it into a Lumion 7 (speculations).

The question is - does anybody here knows, if Lumion for now performs significantly better on nVidia cards, then on AMD cards? Should I go for nVidia, or rather for more card memory (8gb by RX 480) - Card Memory seems to be deciding factor when picking a card for Lumion.

Maybe Lumion staff can answer this question? Really hard to decide between those 2 ^^

[Morten]

Hi ubicz, the GTX 1080 has about 1,800 Passmark points more than the RX 480 (click here to see the benchmark table), so the framerate and render times will be significantly better if you opt for the GTX 1060.

As for the onboard memory it's 8GB vs 6GB, but you can compensate for this difference by buying more system memory (system memory is used when the graphics card memory is full - it's a slower type of memory than graphics card memory but it's not that noticeable).

So in summary, if you ask me which of those graphics cards I'd buy for my own PC, I'd probably choose the GTX 1060 with 6GB memory.

What kind kind of projects are you planning om working on? Small villas/residential projects or huge projects, e.g. airports?

[peterm]

Hi ubicz

To add a few comments to Morten's reply.

1. People should always evaluate software based on current features, not on speculation.

2. Purchasing hardware is most likely to be a business decision.  So, for any graphics card that has a useful life of at least two years, then the benefits from performance differences balanced against additional costs over the life should be considered. 

Not possible of course to also have a crystal ball about future projects, but there is always more cost in finding you have to replace a piece of hardware because you set the criteria too low.  In other words, aim for something as powerful as possible within a flexible budget, that also gives go forward. 

It's also possible to adjust the hardware and buy better performance for the same budget.  For example, do you need a CD/DVD reader/writer these days.  Can the funds released, then be used to get a better card.

3. We do not evaluate the performance of NVIDIA versus AMD cards for Lumion, but rather rely on the benchmarks such as Passmark to give us an indication of overall performance.  NVIDIA cards have had the edge over AMD for some time in terms of general 3D graphics which is in the area which Lumion operates.  However, there is also a cost difference.

[ubicz]

Thanks for the answers.

Hehe, I silently hoped someone will persuade me to buy Radeon, but it looks like in this price segment 1060 is the best option at this time. Curious if 480 would ever outperform it in Lumion. Maybe someone with RX 480 wants to compare on the same test project? ^^

[Morten]

Hi ubicz, in our experience, the PassMark points for each graphics card tend to match the expected performance in Lumion (framerate and render times), so I'd be very surprised if the RX 480 performs better in Lumion than the GTX 1060.

I'm guessing you saw the Doom benchmark in the DirectX 12 Vulkan test, but this is a low-level API and is not representative of regular 3D games and applications. Also, Lumion only recently switched to DirectX 11 (on the 28th of June 2016), so don't expect DirectX 12 support any time soon.

As far as I can tell, the GTX 1060 is in the lead in most of the DirectX 11 benchmark tests (between 5 and 18% faster).