Looking for guidance, wanting a setup for 3D rendering and simulation. RTX or Quadro ?

[Xonic]

I'm planning to get a new PC or workstation to focus on 3D rendering and simulation, I have around 500$ budget (though if necessary I can increase that ) for the graphic card, I was looking at RTX 3080, then saw for cheaper price there is a Quadro P5000 available, but on the surface the P5000 spec looks worse than 3080. Should I get a gaming card with better spec or a card that is supposed to focus on graphic design? The software I'm mainly using are Maya with Vray, Houdini, Unreal Engine 5, Blender and Photoshop.

If you have good CPU advice, could provide too. Planning to get an i9-14900k.

Thank you for your reply

 

[HBSound]

I have a lot of experience using CAD and 3D-based software. For my GPU, I prefer the PNY A series. I use my GPU in water-cooled systems, and I'm not sure about the amount of RAM required on the GPU. However, based on your budget, I would recommend getting the best PNY A series card you can afford secondhand. Personally, I have the A6 with 48GB of RAM, which I purchased secondhand (2 years ago) for about half the price of retail. Since the GPU prices are stable for this particular card, I could sell it for what I paid for it right now. I chose the 48GB version because, in the world of CAD and 3D, everything is getting bigger and more complex with time. I have no issues with my card keeping up, and the support on professional-based cards is excellent. I've had some great conversations with PNY about the professional cards. Although there is a newer version of my card out now, there is no reason to spend 7K on something like that. I made the switch at the time to get something that would take care of my needs without taxing my system. In my opinion, the 3090s were all over the place, and I actually had a system based on a dual 3090 at first. However, out of all the GPUs available, I feel that A6000 is the best choice. When I tested the results between the dual 3090 and single A6000, the A6000 performed better each time. Additionally, the A6000 has better thermals.

Just the other day I was checking out the A2s on Ebay; they are less than 500 bucks for sure.

Right now I am building a smaller system, and that GPU I have I will use, until. Would it be nice to get the current edition sure, but at $7K, its not worth it. I will wait until they get to 50 off second hand !!!

 

[Xonic]

I have a lot of experience using CAD and 3D-based software. For my GPU, I prefer the PNY A series. I use my GPU in water-cooled systems, and I'm not sure about the amount of RAM required on the GPU. However, based on your budget, I would recommend getting the best PNY A series card you can afford secondhand. Personally, I have the A6 with 48GB of RAM, which I purchased secondhand (2 years ago) for about half the price of retail. Since the GPU prices are stable for this particular card, I could sell it for what I paid for it right now. I chose the 48GB version because, in the world of CAD and 3D, everything is getting bigger and more complex with time. I have no issues with my card keeping up, and the support on professional-based cards is excellent. I've had some great conversations with PNY about the professional cards. Although there is a newer version of my card out now, there is no reason to spend 7K on something like that. I made the switch at the time to get something that would take care of my needs without taxing my system. In my opinion, the 3090s were all over the place, and I actually had a system based on a dual 3090 at first. However, out of all the GPUs available, I feel that A6000 is the best choice. When I tested the results between the dual 3090 and single A6000, the A6000 performed better each time. Additionally, the A6000 has better thermals.

Just the other day I was checking out the A2s on Ebay; they are less than 500 bucks for sure.

Right now I am building a smaller system, and that GPU I have I will use, until. Would it be nice to get the current edition sure, but at $7K, its not worth it. I will wait until they get to 50 off second hand !!!

Thank you for your reply! These are great advice! I haven't even consider the A series yet as I only just started to look into Quadro. And for my budget A2000 indeed is a very good choice.
I also looked into A4000, I'm wondering if it is worth to save up more to get the A4000?

I also saw the base clock for A4000 is 735 MHz with 6144 CUDA, which on surface is less than a gaming card (for example 1.44GHz for RTX 3080 with 8704 CUDA) , the memory bus also looks lower. What is the mechanism that makes Quadro performs better on 3D rendering with supposed "worse" hardware than normal gaming card?

And very interestingly, A4000 is the only card in A series that is single-slot width, why is that? And I saw it doesn't support NVLink, will it affect future use?

If I use A4000 on my old 2013 workstation (Dual Xeon E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz on Z9PE-D8 WS motherboard, 64GB RAM), will the CPU and MB cause bottleneck for the GPU? I will eventually get new CPU and MB, but I wonder if i can make the most use of the old setup before retire it.

 

[HBSound]

Finding a good A4000 at a reasonable price is a good idea. However, it is important to do your research and not just buy any GPU. I made the mistake of buying an EVGA 3090 at retail, but I should have gone for the A6 from the start. The A6 was a better choice and I regret not getting it. When looking for a GPU, keep an eye out for sales and make an informed decision.

It's important to note that while all used cars are not the same, I don't have a problem buying one as long as I do my research. The same goes for computer parts. What you buy today might not be worth the same tomorrow.

I don't have all the technical answers to your questions, but I suggest reaching out to PNY for more information. In the past, they've been very helpful when I needed to understand GPU designs.

There's a difference between A cards and gamer cards, but in my experience, gamer cards are the next level of workstation cards. While the specs on paper might not align, in real-world tests, gamer cards are superior to workstation cards. That is why I think, they develop the workstation card, then build a game card, with the same bones, that trumps the workstation card. For me, this is all about which came first the chicken or the egg. Its all technical and someone HAS to be first when they are developing. I believe each leg learns from the prior GPU and leaps forward.

I chose the A6 over dual 3090s because I wanted to avoid drawing too much power from my system. The 48GB of RAM on the A6 is also more suitable for handling CAD/3D files and it does this on 300 watts MAX.

Be sure to check if your motherboard is based on PCI3 or PCI4 before buying a GPU to avoid bottlenecks. If you have PCI4 and sufficient PSU power, you should be fine. If you plan on building a new PC, you can choose parts that support a good GPU.