Best Video Card for UE4 workstation Updated for 4.16

Hello,

I am just finishing up a new workstation build and since SLI does not work in UE4 have decided to go with a TITAN X for rendering as it is less then half the price of the Quadro M6000, and 50% less then the TITAN Z and I understand that Direct X 12 will allow new options of using multiple video cards in the future. I have done test renderings using a GTX980 and it is still taking all 32 cores to max as well as 50Gb memory. I am assuming the TITAN X will give better speeds to render at.

My system is a duel Xeon 32 hyperthread, 196Gb memory, 1.7Tb SSD RAID main drive with backup and 12Tb storage HDD.

Does this seem the best route to go?

I’m not sure how many people use a dev machine with those specs. It really depends on your game. There is a value in using mid level cards, in that if it runs well on your box it will run well on a good portion of others.

Thanks for your input, I should have added this is a 8 year project and it is still in the first year of production.

If you are spending that amount on the Video Card and so much ram, how come not SSD? That will make a big difference for performance.

Oh sorry I did not mention the RAID on the main drive is a 1 Tb SSD mirrored for backup and hot swap.

FWIW there is only a ~15-25% difference between the 980 GTX and the Titan Z on our GDC Kite demo. I am not sure where the Titan X fits in there but I don’t think you will get any huge benefits over the much cheaper 980 gtx.

ok thanks, good to know, is there any other recommendations for enhanced performance you can recommend then?

There is also not much reason to go dual xeon. A single i7 will run better. The xeon will maybe be better for lots of bulk rendering and light baking but an i7 will be faster to run the editor.

128gb is a ton :slight_smile: My machines have 64 and that a good amount. 32 was not enough to be able to load the editor with the GDC KiteDemo + other apps like max, worldmachine, or my favorite, 3 copies of UE4 :wink:

but hey, since when is too much memory a bad thing…

So you can run multiple copies of UE4? I had not thought of that, how do you find that is useful, for multi level work?

Yes, I am also working with World Machine Pro and it uses all 32cores with every render, that was the main reason of the duel cpu system.

We are also looking at adding an ARTEC 3D scanner for quick asset input and rendering and it is a real hog on cpu cores and memory.

Its only useful when you need to work on multiple projects or jump between engine versions. Or say compare something in its current form to an old build. Or migrate content etc.

Sounds like a good choice, if you will do lots of worldmachine.

Just wanted to give you a followup assessment, as I went with installing the TITAN X and have done several test comparisons with the GTX 980 I was using.

In UE4 compared to the GTX 980 the TITAN X performance
Loading: 60% faster for all assets, textures and meshes
Building: 45% faster on total build times

SO I am very happy with this card, I give it an A++

I have just updated to the NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti FTW3 ICX and am enjoying a 50% performance improvement on lighting rebuilds, and for a large open world design it gives very smooth performance.