Many visual effects (VFX) artists rely on high performance graphics cards for their daily workflow. As such, choosing a good card can significantly impact productivity. The next time you’re looking to upgrade or replace your graphics card, consider some of these tips.

Graphics cards are the main drivers behind the graphical experience of a PC or console game. They can be expensive, especially when compared to CPUs. Therefore, you should choose wisely before buying one.

With major Hollywood blockbusters becoming more ambitious every year, VFX artists are faced with new challenges. In addition, VFX artists often work long hours on projects. That means they are constantly creating files that require GPU rendering. All of this adds pressure on graphics hardware manufacturers to deliver better products.

Graphic Cards Categories

There are three main categories of graphic cards: GPUs, CPU, and APU’s. While all of them perform well in certain applications, each has its strengths and weaknesses. Here’s a brief overview of the three types of graphic cards.

1. GPUs

GPU stands for Graphics Processing Unit. A GPU is essentially an integrated processor built around several hundred cores dedicated to processing graphical data. It also contains up to 16GB of RAM memory. Unlike CPUs which focus only on processing general purpose instructions, GPUs are usually specialized for performing specific tasks like 3D graphics, compute intensive tasks, video encoding/decoding etc.

Some of these cards support DirectX 11 or above which means that it’s compatible with all current titles and future releases. On the downside, these cards have limited power that can cause problems with certain games.

2. CPUs

CPU stands for central processing unit. Just like CPUs, CPUs are processors designed to do different kinds of calculations. However, unlike GPUs, where every core performs similar functions, CPUs have multiple cores with unique functionality. Each core focuses on running one type of task. Therefore, CPUs perform much faster than GPUs at doing general purpose computing. They are used by most PCs today as it provides high speed computation. But since they lack a GPU, they cannot render complex graphics.

Hence, they’re usually recommended for serious gamers who are willing to pay extra for quality gaming experiences. These cards usually feature PCI Express connectors which make installing your favorite games easy. Moreover, they are highly compatible with various operating systems.

3. APUs (Accelerated Processing Units)

APU stands for Accelerated Processing Unit. APUs combine both the CPU and GPU cores into one chip. This creates two distinct advantages over traditional single-core CPUs and GPUs. First, they offer higher overall performance because of having the combined power of dual CPUs and GPUs instead of just one CPU and one GPU. Second, they are less expensive because they use existing technology.

That said, these graphics cards come with incredible specifications including larger frame buffers, dedicated memory controllers, and GDDR5/GDDR6 memory that delivers even higher data rates. Aside from offering more speed, these cards also deliver greater reliability.

How to Choose the Best Graphics Card for VFX

Workflow

When evaluating whether the best graphics card is right for you, there are many factors to consider. For example, you need to find out what kind of program will be using maximum resources. Once you know which programs your graphics card needs to run, you then should ask yourself other questions. Some include: How big is the project? What kind of content would I be needing to render? What resolution am I working on?

These are all significant factors when deciding which graphics cards will best suit your workflow. For instance, if you are planning on taking advantage of stereoscopic rendering technologies while playing casino en ligne, you won’t want to buy a low end GPU. On the other hand, a high performance GPU might not necessarily be necessary if you don’t care about rendering quality.

What’s Next?

The next step is selecting a model of GPU or Graphic Card. If you haven’t decided yet, here are some models to think about: Radeon RX Vega 64. Asus GTX 1070 Supercomputer. Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti. Intel Xeon E5 v2 2620.

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