Topic: [Answered] New in LUMION - Hardware support.

[xordim]

I'm new on Lumion. I'm close to buying the Lumion 9 software and also to upgrade my PC ... I need advice on the following hardware and be sure they will work very fine with Lumion 9. What do you think?

1. NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition
2. Intel Core i9-9900K Desktop Processor 8 Cores up to 5.0 GHz Turbo Unlocked LGA1151 300 Series 95W
3. ASUS ROG Maximus XI Hero (Wi-Fi) Z390 Gaming Motherboard LGA1151 (Intel 8th 9th Gen) ATX DDR4 DP HDMI M.2 USB 3.1 Gen2 802.11ac Wi-Fi
4. HyperX Predator Black 32GB kit 3600MHz DDR4 CL17 DIMM XMP Desktop PC Memory (HX436C17PB3K2/32)
5. Cooler Master RR-212L-16PR-R1 Hyper 212 LED CPU Cooler with PWM Fan, Four Direct Contact Heat Pipes, Unique Blade Design and Red LEDs
PD... I am working in a small size city.

I need a sincere and constructive advice before buying the hardware and software. Thanks...

[peterm]

Hi xordim

That's a very good specification for a PC for Lumion.  The RTX 2080 Ti is top of the line. 

The only other option is the much more expensive RTX Titan with 24GB of memory, compared to the 11Gb of the Ti.  That would give you a lot more memory to work with for a small city Scene.

Consider also if budget permits, going to 64GB of RAM so there is more overall fast system memory.

Liquid cooling of the GPU can be worthwhile, but you would need to look at one of the other card manufacturers such as EVGA.

All that hardware also means a very good quality brand power supply of at least 850W, possibly 1000W.  See our Knowledge Base article Which power supply do you need?

You have not mentioned hard drives, but in general you need at least a 500TB for the operating system drive as an SSD (ideally Samsung EVO NvME M2 or better) and at least a 2TB SSD or harddrive for your user data.

[xordim]

Hello ... I have 2 questions. 1) Can Lumion handle 2 or more GPUs?. 2) if so, which configuration would be faster and more efficient for animations >> 1 (one) Nvidia Titan RTX card or 2 (two) NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition?.. Thanks.

[Serge L]

Hello xordim,

Multiple graphics cards will not boost the performance in Lumion. Lumion will simply use the graphics card that is connected to the monitor that the Lumion window is running on so in this case, the Titan RTX is the best option.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

[xordim]

Thanks again.

[peterm]

You're welcome.

Further to Serges reply, see our Knowledge Base article section 4: Which graphics card do you need?

The speed of both cards is similar, although the clock rates of the Titan (as in all versions of Titan) are slightly lower than the Ti models.  However, the Titan has 24GB of memory so that means it is going to handle Lumion Scenes with another 13GB of data in the fastest Scene handling memory.  The consequence of that is better overall performance for very complex Scenes.  But of course, it is very expensive.

[xordim]

Yes ... Titan RTX is expensive ... I am working a small city with Autocad ... I calculate that the final size of the file will be between 350 to 450 mb ... The 3D design is basic but I will have to add other elements in Lumion (Lumion stuff and Sketchup stuff). The total MB to be processed by the card could reach about 1 GB of data. . I do not know how many MB of data Titan RTX can support. without it being relented. I guess most of the 24 GB that the TITAN RTX has is for data processing. Do you have any reference about large projects with TITAN RTX?

[peterm]

No, we don't, sorry.  I'm not sure if there are any members here who have even bought one as yet.

Any graphics card needs to support the model data, the textures and surface mapping of the model, and the other graphics results on a model such as Scene effects.  AutoCAD stores its models in a format that when the required conversion to Lumion takes places to a polygon mesh, will increase the required data space on the card.  So it is not really possible to use the file size in AutoCAD as an indication of how much space is going to be required on the card.

Furthermore, when the graphics card memory is fully used, the system will then access System Memory (fast), and then hard drive memory (drives and SSD) (slow) to store the data.  So everything does not need to fit on to the card.  That's why I mention the Titan extra memory will simply be the fastest handling memory.

In other words, you will get by with either an RTX 2080 Ti or RTX Titan.  The Titan will handle things a little better if the total Scene data requirements exceed the 11GB.

[xordim]

Thanks ... very useful info.

[peterm]

You're welcome.

We look forward to seeing the results of your city project (and others too) some day at our Gallery.