November 01, 2014, 12:49:38 am
Hi
Thanks for your interest in Lumion.

1. Lumion product pricing provides for an upgrade price that is generally about one third purchase price. Upgrades are considered a change from major version to another major version. You can see the price table and how a 'discount' for existing customer works here:
Upgrade Pricing.
2. Our suggestions are as in the following links below. The GTX 980 is showing the best performance at the Passmark site. The best card depends on the complexity of scenes. Which is about the number of objects in the scene, complexity of models and quality of texturing among other factors.
The Titan (Black) has more cores for processing yes, but is now an older chip type. The GTX 980 seems to out-perform the Titan and Titan Black because of the new chip and enhanced algorithms. In terms of Lumion that should translate in to faster FPS when Building a scene (Build Mode) and faster rendering times. It is not possible to say by how much.
In terms of VRAM, yes, the more the better for Lumion, as it allows for scenes with more texture demands or for higher resolution texturing and maps. In some cases that can translate in to improved quality at render time. The Titan has the maximum of the NVIDIA products by 2GB over the GTX 980. It is possible they will produce a GTX 980 with either 6 or 8 GB VRAM, but what or when would be anyone's guess.
Titans are still about a third more in price than the GTX 980.
So a decision on which to get depends on your budget and expected scenes you are going to do with Lumion, along with other uses of the PC. A bit of a balancing act as both have pro's for Lumion.
Some users also run their CAD with Titans rather than Quadros and seem happy with the performance and cost effectiveness of the general graphics card.
Note we do not differentiate between NVIDIA GTX and ATI Radeon. However, there are currently performance differences when you look at sites like Passmarks.
Hope that helps answer your questions.
Refer further:
1.
LUMION 4: Minimum hardware requirements.
2.
Lumion Web Site: Specifications.
3.
Passmark: Videocard Benchmarks.
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Caveat: these comments are provided only to assist forum members in considering their options for purchasing hardware to use with Lumion. They should in no way be considered as recommendations or qualified advice.