Windows 10 - GTX 980 no performance gain, demand explanation

[Anonymous]

Dear graphisoft,

my client is using the new Archicad 19 and just went through an upgrade from
Win8.1 to Win10
GTX 770 2GB to GTX 980 4GB

Let me list the specifications for each card first:
GTX 770
2GB VRAM,
1536 shading units,
3.2GFLOPS Floatingpoint performance

GTX 980
4GB VRAM,
2048 shading units,
4.6GFLOPS Floatingpoint performance

We did document the 770 performance before the upgrade on a normal neigbourhood model, with a couple of trees and houses with enabled sun shadows ofc.
before:
We had aprox. 55-60FPS orbiting around the model on the 770
after:
We have in the same model orbiting at same distance 50-55 on 980
** also the redraw cicle for shadows seems to be longer/slower

I demand an explanation for my client, why was his upgrade in vain (wasted money)
he is using a brand new 4790K cpu with 4.4GHz and 16GB of ram so there is nothing such as CPU botleneck.

Let me give you a note, that its not a problem on our side, because we run a test in Maya and we got a performance increse from 69fps to 116fps which was expected.

I took a look at this: http://helpcenter.graphisoft.com/technotes/video-cards/recommended-video-cards-for-archicad-19/#Test...

Let me tell you in a proper maner that this is not helpful AT ALL, and the informations is not correct I think.
Just look at it yourselfes. What does this FPS ration thing even mean?

Let us take a look at 10M polygon test in Win8.1:


So you claim that a gtx 560 (kepler) is faster as a brand new K2200 (maxwell) quadro and at the same time the gtx 750 (maxwell) is 5x slower ???!!
Now just a fast check:
-gtx -560 - 1GB vram - 336 shading units - 1.1 GFLOPS - kepler
-gtx -750 - 1GB vram - 512 shading units - 1.1 GFLOPS - maxwell
gtx 750Ti - 2GB vram - 640 shading units - 1.3 GFLOPS - maxwell
K2200 ---- 4GB vram - 640 shading units - 1.3 GFLOPS - maxwell
for contrast the two above
gtx 770 ---2GB vram - 1536 shadin units - 3.2 GFLOPS - kepler
gtx 980 ---4GB vram - 2048 shadin units - 4.6 GFLOPS - maxwell

Does this make any sense to you ?

My client who upgraded because your suposedly new faster Optimised Opengl ,wants an explanation from me, and I want from you...

With this logic it seems that a gtx 560 from 2011 which is selling on ebay for 50€ is faster than a brand new K2200, gtx 980 and even gtx 770 ??

So should my client now throw away his expensive 980 and buy a K2200 for even more, so maybe it will be faster than a 50€ 560, altough your images are showing that its actually slower ?

I hope this is an official Archicad support forum, because I think that me myself and a lot of people need some real explanations here

[Anonymous]

There is no point talking about render times graphics card has zero input into rendering process it is used for display only.
If you purchase Octane Render and the ArchiCAD plugin the graphics card can be used for rendering, then I would look 980ti (as many as you can afford) to greatly accelerate rendering
Scott

[Steve Jepson]

sboydturner wrote:
There is no point talking about render times graphics card has zero input into rendering process it is used for display only.
If you purchase Octane Render and the ArchiCAD plugin the graphics card can be used for rendering, then I would look 980ti (as many as you can afford) to greatly accelerate rendering
Scott

Are you sure that for ArchiCAD, the graphics card is only for display? I didn't know that. I have no idea how to configure my NVIDIA 4000M anyway for use with ArchiCAD, but if that is true, I might as well disable it when using ArchiCAD. That is the advice someone gave me one time.

How about when using Cinerender? Does a graphics card help help with that?

I render anything important with Maxwell Render so I do have use for my CUDA Cores but apparently, they are useless with ArchiCAD and Cinerender. ?

[Anonymous]

It is when your trying to work and design stuff at the same time as rendering.

[Anonymous]

Steve,
Cinerender does not use the graphics card for anything other than display, it does not use Cuda or OpenCL for generating the render.
Scott

[Anonymous]

Erwin wrote:
If you are building a workstation for a CAD software using client and are using gaming cards, I think you might want to research things a bit.

If you are building system for CAD - yes!
If you are building system for ArchiCAD - forget about PRO cards, just pointless waste of money, gaming cards provide better performance and same quality at the same or lower cost. This is a fact and there is nothing for us to do about it.
It is GS who must improve their software performance, which has some software bottlenecks. This is not normal when 1000€ and 4000€ station show an equal low level performance.

[Erwin Edel]

We are using fairly low-end pro card (less than €500). I've replied on this same topic that we are more concerned with stability and acceptable performance, than high end glossy 3D graphics when working on a model.

To each his own

The original post, I believe, was more about why a gaming card showed no increase in performance over another gaming card and as such there was a waste in investment for hardware.

I still stand by my statement that IT company should know about or at least research hardware, before purchasing it for a client.

[Anonymous]

I am just getting more and more disappointed about PRO cards in AC. It brings me back here to post one more message about, how slow AC is and how it is not capable to use hardware features.
I use Archiframe addon and it produces quite much 2D graphics in plan. It is shame, AC is not able to manage 5000 2D objects in screen, where maybe 1% are curves.

[Anonymous]

Vahur,
This may have more to do with the Archframe addon rather than ARCHICAD, I have plans with more than 5000 objects in plan and experience good performance in 2D views.
If many objects & morphs with projected 2D representations are used performance drops but I try to avoid using these.
Scott

[Anonymous]

Archiframe uses ArchiCAD tools. But it does not matter. If I copy-paste some data lihe vertical planning from DWG file, there is the same lag. Terribly slow navigation. AutoCAD runs great and smooth even with 500 000 objects in the screen.

[Anonymous]

Surely ""Demand explanation"" is not proper here, i see solution in companies as Graphisoft *At least those bigger and more represented) working closer with Nvidia and AMD engineers to make sure there is hard practical justification in price vs performance when looking at gaming vs workstation card. Nvidia and AMD are so big that they should be able to have drivers written per specific application. Even maybe they should be looking in direction what can be added to hardware besides software and or drivers modifications. Me I still go for workstation card anyway, for more reasons then one, but never the less.