September 19, 2013, 01:39:47 am
Hi SteveY
.. Is it possible to monitor the card and see how much memory is being utilized? So I can have a benchmark to help decide if I need 3 or 6GB?
Try one of the PC or GPU specific performance monitoring tools available. These should let you see how much memory is being used in your current scenes. GPU-Z, Passmarks PC Performance, OCCT, HWinfo.
Does Lumion have sample files for Simple, Moderately Complex, and Very Complex I could try?
Sorry, no. Those requirements are very much guides only. It's very difficult to both specify what might work for some scenes and then not others as the 'level of complexity' changes. There's too many factors, so at present to 'assist' we have to be very general.
Complexity is a measure of at least:- polygon count, number of imported objects, number of entourage, texture resolution used, effects used, use of the heavy/demanding effects re GI, lights, Reflection Planes, complexity of models imported, nature of models imported etc.
As a very rough example if the scene had say 10M 3D Points (at F1 so no shadow cost count - pure models), more than 5000 Plants and say 20 complex buildings (excl interiors) each at 250k then this is getting to the top end of very complex.
Note the 4GB ref for very complex relates more to the fact there were 680's with 4GB, that picture has changed a little with the new 700 series. We're all waiting for a 4GB GTX 780 which would slot in nicely below the Titan, but still waiting (well I am

).
I think the choice between 780 or Titan apart from budget is memory and a little in speed and cores on board. Note the Titan has out of this world FPU performance, probably targeted for scientific work. If your system is not Ivy Bridge + with PCI v3 then you will not get the max out of either. One option may be to use the funds not spent on Titan towards funding your next PC with the latest and greatest.
We'll have a chat about what is possible for us to provide more guideance in this area, as things grow and change.