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970M 6G DDR5 vs. 860M 2G GDDR5

Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2014 17:13
by rawdesigns
Was wondering if the different cards would make a big impact in Resolume. I'm getting a new system soon and want 0 hiccups while performing. My old machine would loose frame rate sometimes when pushing out a lot of effects and it was embarrassing.

Here are the two laptops.

Origin EVO15-S Pro
http://www.originpc.com/gaming/laptops/evo15-s/

MSI GS60 Ghost Pro-052
http://www.msimobile.com/level3_product ... d=9&id=472

Re: 970M 6G DDR5 vs. 860M 2G GDDR5

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2014 18:02
by TCO
I would go with the 970 - that's the one i am buying as well. Just comparing the specs of both the cards 970 definitely stands out significantly better :

more memory
wider memory bus
almost double texture rate, shader units
3x render output processors

Not sure how this will translate specifically to Resolume but overall its a significantly better card and not comparable.

Re: 970M 6G DDR5 vs. 860M 2G GDDR5

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2014 18:26
by Oaktown
All things equal, 970M for sure! You really can't go wrong with a better GPU.

Keep in mind you can use MST technology and get 3 HD outputs from your MiniDP port (check out the EVGA DP Hub).

Re: 970M 6G DDR5 vs. 860M 2G GDDR5

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2014 21:13
by rawdesigns
Oaktown wrote: Keep in mind you can use MST technology and get 3 HD outputs from your MiniDP port (check out the EVGA DP Hub).
Thanks i'll look into that i'm sure the 970m can handle multiple outs much better which is a plus

Re: 970M 6G DDR5 vs. 860M 2G GDDR5

Posted: Mon Dec 08, 2014 22:53
by Oaktown
With the Origin laptop, it looks like you'll have 2 outputs (1 @ HDMI & 1 @ MiniDP) but you can split the MiniDP into three independent HD signals using MST giving you four total outputs if necessary.

Re: 970M 6G DDR5 vs. 860M 2G GDDR5

Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2014 07:11
by rawdesigns
Ok next question is.. would the NVIDIA® Quadro® K2100M be better than 970m?
Because, Look what I just found!
:o
http://us.msi.com/product/workstation/W ... o-overview

Re: 970M 6G DDR5 vs. 860M 2G GDDR5

Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2014 10:44
by Joris
I know you like to get excited about faster and faster GPUs, but keep in mind what you're using it for.

As far as Resolume is concerned, at this level the extended 3d capabilities of a Quadro are not really doing much for you. When you want to draw millions of polygons in AutoCad, a Quadro is great. Most of the time, Resolume just needs to draw a few quads and texture some pixels on them. Even the 3d OpenGL effects are highly optimized, so with normal use, they're not scraping the bottom of the barrel.

When you are talking about these kind of cards, your bottleneck is most likely to be the connection from your motherboard to the GPU.

The pixels of your videos are stored on a disk. They need to be uploaded to your GPU, where they will then be used as textures for the quads that are your layers and slices. These modern GPUs can all process them fast enough, and a SSD can read them fast enough.

At this point, you're probably more limited by how many pixels you can push through your PCIe x16 slot, rather than the processing power of your GPU.

If you want to get a good GPU for Resolume, just pick the card that has the most practicality. 4 outputs sounds pretty sweet. I would go with that over anything else.

Re: 970M 6G DDR5 vs. 860M 2G GDDR5

Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2014 15:44
by rawdesigns
Joris wrote:
If you want to get a good GPU for Resolume, just pick the card that has the most practicality. 4 outputs sounds pretty sweet. I would go with that over anything else.
Thanks Joris. When it comes to Quadro I'm never too sure about its internals. I think i'm going to go with the machine that has the 970M 6GB :)

Re: 970M 6G DDR5 vs. 860M 2G GDDR5

Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2014 16:14
by Oaktown
The MSI WS60 uses the NVIDIA Quadro Graphics K2100M with DisplayPort 1.2 technology so you'd be able to use MST as well and split the MiniDP port into 3 independent HD ports.

Looking at the two cards specs side by side:
I would probably pick the 970M which I think will be faster all around.

Re: 970M 6G DDR5 vs. 860M 2G GDDR5

Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2014 17:20
by rawdesigns
Oaktown wrote: would probably pick the 970M which I think will be faster all around.
I agree. Although the quadro is a killer gpu for 3d modeling and would be nice to model while my desktop renders, I really want the best performance I can get for Resolume. The 970m looks like the best answer. :)