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Making a Game: Which Card to Use?

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Started by Jason_Brandy May 28, 2014 12:37 AM

5 comments, last by Jason_Brandy 9 years, 11 months ago

Jason_Brandy

104

Author

May 28, 2014 12:37 AM

Hello Everyone.

I have settled on a game make and with that, also decided to upgrade my 2GB SC 660ti.
I'm caught between an EVGA 780ti ACX Classified/Kingpin and the EVGA Titan Black SC (Signature).

Now, I know the Titan offers higher performance on FP64 situations, but when exactly will that be used (if at all)?
Mainly will UE4, 3ds Max, etc. use FP64 computing in any way?
As a game developer, will the Titan benefit me in any way over the 780ti?

So which card do you guys think would be the best to choose and why?

Fell free to ask for any additional information.

Thanks in Advance.

- Jason Brandy

minibutmany

1,998

May 28, 2014 01:19 AM

Are you noticing any lack of performance in the programs that you mentioned? It may be hard to justify all the extra cash for the titan...

For this kind of thing, you may be better looking into a workstation card like a quadro, rather than a gtx card which is geared towards gaming.

Stay gold, Pony Boy.

kauna

2,925

May 28, 2014 03:43 AM

Typically you won't need FP64, so it may not be so important point. I wouldn't either put any extra bucks to get those workstation graphics cards, probably you won't be able to use them any better than a typical high end GPU. 780 Sounds pretty good.

Cheers!

3Ddreamer

3,826

May 28, 2014 03:52 AM

Hi,

If you are a beginner or intermediate game developer, then I feel that the least expensive one would be very adequate. In my opinion, game development doesn't start demanding highest performance until the developer reaches higher skill and development needs. I personally have two lower performing PCs which combined are still cheaper than 1 top performing one. While one PC is crunching a task, I work with the other one. If you can save enough money with the lower priced one, you might want to consider taking the savings toward getting a cheap laptop PC for doing coding while your high performance one is crunching numbers.

Personal life and your private thoughts always effect your career. Research is the intellectual backbone of game development and the first order. Version Control is crucial for full management of applications and software. The better the workflow pipeline, then the greater the potential output for a quality game. Completing projects is the last but finest order.

by Clinton, 3Ddreamer

SeanMiddleditch

17,596

May 28, 2014 07:43 AM

I'm going to second 3Ddreamer. It is going to be some time before you're doing much to stress out a mediocre card. Even when you do stress it, it'll mostly be because you're doing something bad in your code (or your art assets), not because the card isn't up to par. You can do plenty of indie game development just fine on an Intel integrated GPU.

There's even an argument to be made that you should use the lowest-end card you expect your game to run on it (I don't necessarily agree with said argument, but it's still there).

Sean Middleditch – Game Systems Engineer – Join my team!

21st Century Moose

13,459

May 28, 2014 09:17 AM

There's even an argument to be made that you should use the lowest-end card you expect your game to run on it (I don't necessarily agree with said argument, but it's still there).

You should at least test on it.

If you're developing an OpenGL program you should at a minimum also be prepared to test on AMD and possibly even Intel. Unfortunately the state of OpenGL drivers means that developing on NVIDIA means that you run a very high risk of introducing code that will only work on NVIDIA - whether that's down to NVIDIA's extra permissiveness, or driver bugs in the other two.

Direct3D has need of instancing, but we do not. We have plenty of glVertexAttrib calls.

Jason_Brandy

104

Author

May 28, 2014 10:45 AM

Hey guys thanks for the responses.

In a self-evaluation standpoint I'd say I'm a intermediate developer.

With that said, I never really thought the 780ti would be the better option.

I'm trying to figure out who would even go for a Titan Black then...

Even proffessional wise, I'm assuming most are using Quadros, or regular Titans (?).

As coding on a second computer, I usually do my code work on my 7 year old computer or I just use my main one.

To wrap this up I ended up picking up a 780ti and 290x, so I can see AMD and NVIDIA in action.

Thanks for the help guys!

-Jason

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