jwl-ca

All, Thank you for your help. I ended up purchasing the AMD Radeon 7900XT. I did a lot of research to come to this point. Below are the details in case it is of any benefit to others. The short story is that VRAM is the critical component for me. My understanding of the current market is that if you want a card to be viable for up to 5 years, 16GB is the way to go. The lowest end cards that meet that spec are the Nvidia TI Super and the AMD 7800 XT. The Nvidia 4070 TI Super is a significantly better card, then the AMD 7800XT, but it is also about $300 more. For many people here, the Nvidia is the better proposition because Nvidia’s ray tracing capabilities are superior the AMD and many apps in this space have been optimized to leverage its architecture. In my case as a Home Architect user and hobbyist, the advantages Nvidia offers are not relevant. The AMD 7800XT is the card the fits my needs today. But the trouble with video cards is that upgrading means replacing them. To give myself a little room, I looked at the AMD 7900 XT (20GB VRAM) and AMD 7900 XTX (24 GB VRAM). Both outperform the Nvidia 4070 TI Super (16GB VRAM) in the areas that matter to me. I eliminated the AMD 7900 XTX because while similarly priced on its own to the Nvidia 4070 TI Super, it would have required me to replace my Power Supply (with an 850W variant). And then AMD reduced the price of the 7900 XT to about $100 less than the Nvidia 4070 TI Super. Hard to argue with a lower price card that performs better. Details I use the Home Designer product line (not the Premier). I am hobbyist. A professional could probably cost justify investing in the best in market 4090. I have a budget I need enough performance to make the experience enjoyable for the next 3-5 years I elected to purchase a current generation card. The newer higher performing cards are coming in at lower price points than the prior generation. Buying anything older shortens the life expectancy of the card. There is no warranty on used cards. One of the primary benefits to an Nvidia card over an AMD card is superior Ray Tracing. Home Designer does not include Ray Tracing as an option. I run no other apps that use Ray Tracing and no other app that I am likely to run in the foreseeable future uses it. There are relatively few games now that use it Usage of Ray Tracing for games results in a lower FPS rate. Online game reviewer polls indicate that most people prefer not to use it. The 7900 XT Ray Tracing performance is 10% higher than Chief’s recommended 3080 (in case I ever need it). VRAM quantity is far more likely to be a challenge for me than video processing power Complex high poly scenes and hi-res textures require lots of VRAM I do not have an SSA so I do not have access to the full library of Chief symbols I plan to use a lot of symbols and textures in my designs I expect to need to acquire most symbols from sources like 3D warehouse for at least a few years. Many of these have higher surface counts I did look at different programs I might want to try to make stuff as part of this analysis (and considered their recommended requirements for the future). Newer tech such as Frame Generation, Path Tracing, Ray Tracing all consume VRAM Gaming companies are producing games today that require more then 12GB to run games at the highest settings. Reviewers prefer 16GB+ This is a good indicator of the future market The 7900 XT has 20GB of VRAM I use 1440P dual monitors. I have no plans to change that. The higher the bit rate (aka data rate), the higher the image quality. 256 is recommended for 1440p Nvidia’s cards from the 4070 TI down runs at 192 (or lower). They use a higher L3 cache to offset this deficiency, but this only works to a point The Nvidia 4070 TI Super is the lowest 256-bit card Nvidia makes The AMD 7900 XT is a 320-bit card. Another large advantage for Nvidia over AMD is DLSS. It is faster than AMD’s FSR solution DLSS is not used by Chief AMD has a similar tech in FSR, but since it is all software, it will be slower than DLSS I have no applications that use DLSS (or FSR). The general consensus amongst reviews is these technologies are best used on supported games running on 4K monitors – not applicable to me. The quality of AMD’s and Nvidia’s drivers are on par Industry experts report that they now see equal issues between the two. AMD went through a bleak period a few years back where their drivers had more issues. Interestingly, the only direct comparison of such that I found on Chief for cards I was considering was a recommendation for AMD. My current card is an AMD and I never noticed any driver issues. Compatibility with industry tools is higher with Nvidia Chief supports both AMD and Nvidia equally. Applications are often optimized for Nvidia or AMD, but more with Nvidia because of their larger market share. None of the applications that I use today or think I might use in the future favor Nvidia over AMD. AMD is making inroads to increase its footprint. Chief Chief recommends a 3080 (which has 10GB VRAM) or a Radeon 6700 (12GB VRAM). Chief does not have any stats they can provide that explains how they arrived at their recommended card Chief does not expect any major changes to their requirements for the 2025 version of the software. The 7900 XT out performs both these cards across all specifications. Market Considerations Due to the recent release of the Nvidia Super cards, the whole pricing structure of the market shifted dropping card prices across the board. The AMD 7900X ended up being about $100 less expensive than the Nvidia 4070 TI Super (and about $100 more than the 12GB Nvidia 4070 Super). Both AMD and Nvidia expect to release their next gen cards in 2025 Nvidia may release their top tier card (to which AMD has no equivalent) in late 2024 Prices will likely hold steady for the remainder of the year. The Nvidia 4070 TI Super from a spec standpoint is great choice, but the pricing point is odd. It would make a lot more sense if its baseline performance was on par with the 7900 XT and then we paid that extra $100 for Ray Tracing and other Nvidia tools. Because the 7900 XT outperforms in in many areas, it seems like it should be around the same price as the 7900 XT. And at the $800+ range, that is a little too close to the upcoming $999 4080 Super. Consequently, the 4070 TI Super may not be a very popular card, I will never know if I made the right call. The AMD 7800 XT may well have been the best choice. I have just learned over the years to spend a little more on a video card. For me, the 7900 XT hit the spot at a hair under $700. I found some 7900 XTX cards at $800 and might have gone that route because it is significantly faster than the 7900 XT, but it would have also meant investing in a new $200ish power supply (something that I would not need to do for the Nvidia cards making the Nvidia 4080 Super a better choice). And then there was that lingering question of how I got so far off from the $530ish price of the 7800XT. Some sanity needed to prevail. It would be really great if Chief could provide the logic behind its recommendations. I became aware during this process that while many people have high end equipment, there are a lot of people using older/slower tech (with Ray Tracing) just fine. The trouble was that I could not find a way to equate their activity to video card specifications. The whole thing is complicated by the factor that video card evaluators use gameplay benchmarks to evaluate card performance. It is just a completely different way to use a video card. Hopefully the information helps someone. Please be sure to take note of how you use your system as you needs may vary. John

Hi Mark, Thanks for the quick response. I agree that anything I get is going to be a quantum leap over my current card - and it will be massive overkill for everything else I do with the computer. The catch with the 3080 is Nvidia stopped making them. You can still find them on the market, but they are overpriced because the vendors acquired prior to subsequent price drops. Everything on my list outperforms the 3080 in the standard benchmarks used by video card reviewers. They are testing the cards performance against a mixture of games in which about 1/2 use ray tracing. What these tests kick out is frames per second. I am not sure if that is a relevant way to measure a card's performance for CA. I asked CA support, but they did not know the answer to that question. CA support told me that a large plan would have between a few hundred thousand to a few million surfaces. I am maybe 5% into my plan and already have 600K+. I suspect when I am done, this will be around 6 million. That would tend to suggest I need something a little more powerful. Unfortunately, CA could not explain why they recommended the 3080/6700 so it is hard to know where it would make sense to improve. The only guidance they provided was that they thought additional VRAM would be important than a higher clock rate. A 4080 or a 4090 would likely handle everything, but I suspect that might be overkill. So, what I am trying to sort out is where between the 3080/4070/6700/7700 and 4080 would make the most sense to be. Thanks, John

Hi All, I could use a little advice. I am new to the world of Chief Architect. I acquired Home Designer Architect over the holidays and am working on my first build. I am hobbyist and not a professional in this space so I do not anticipate that I would step up to Premier in the foreseeable future. My video card is due for a replacement (it is R9 390x). There is a possibility I may need to make this change sooner than later. Up until acquiring CA, nothing I did not on the computer would warrant more than a basic video card. So, this new card will be strictly for CA and any other software that may make sense to acquire to support CA. I read the recommendations published by CA recommending either an Nvidia 3080 or Radeon RX6800, both with 8GB of VRAM. Both Nvidia and AMD have put out newer models with the Nvidia 4070 and Radeon RX 7700 XT offering comparable performance to their older counterparts. What I am wondering is if it makes sense to get higher performing card or if by doing so, I would just be spending more than I need to. And this is where I need your help. I am not sure what video card specifications really matter to CA. At the bottom, I listed the cards I am thinking about (in price/performance order) with RAM and bit-rate stats. Below, I listed some parameters and considerations that may be important to the choice. I am really curious to know what experienced users would choose. Parameters There is every likelihood that the build I am working on will have multiple millions of surfaces (It is 600K+ now and I have less than 10% of it completed). Part of this is because I am having the rely on 3D Warehouse and the like for resources. It is possible that somewhere along the line I might acquire and learn how to use some application to make my own stuff. And to that end, it would make sense to consider any requirements those types of applications may have. My understanding from CA tech support is that VRAM is important to handle a large volume of surfaces (and textures). I use dual 1440p monitors. o It is advantageous to use cards with a higher bit rate. 256 is a good target. This means a card like Nvidia 4060 with 128-bit rate would eventually run into some performance issues. Nvidia claims that the added L2 cache makes up for its smaller 192-bit bus on its 4070. Testers say that seems to hold true up to a point. I am using Home Designer, so I do not have the option to use Ray Tracing. I do not know if it is something I might need for another program (that I may want to acquire to either build stuff or possibly display my work). CA support stated that they did not expect next year’s release to have much if any impact on video card requirements. CA support also mentioned that VRAM is likely to be more important than GPU when going with a higher-level card. My thinking is that I should purchase a current version card (as opposed to an older model). Cards for consideration Nvidia just released a refresh to the 40x series, and this has kicked off a bit of a price war in the video card market. I have seen a lot of changes this week. Below is a list of cards I have been looking at in rough order of price and performance. I used a GPU site to compare the overall performance* between cards and noted the improvement percentage for each incremental gain. *Performance figures come from benchmark studies which consist of a variety of games. I am not sure how relevant this is to CA. In general, AMD will beat the Nvidia card that is priced slightly higher in rasterization performance by a few percentage points but will lose to the Nvidia by a significantly greater margin in games that leverage Ray Tracing. The tests use a mixture of games that rely on either rasterization or Ray Tracing. Since Ray Tracing is not something I can use in CA, overall performance metric gains for Nvidia cards over their AMD counterparts will be overstated. CA Recommended cards: Both modern equivalents of the recommended cards (the Nvidia 4070 and the Radeon 7700 XT) come with 12GB Ram and 192bit interface, but the Nvidia costs about $100 more ($550 and $450). The Nvidia is about 10% faster. Radeon 7800XT: The next level up for the Radeon is the 7800 XT. It is priced at about $500 (Still $50 less than the Nvidia 4070). This card has very similar overall performance to the 4070, but it comes with 16GB of RAM and a 256-bit bus (better for 1440p). Nvidia 4070 Super: For about $600, there is the brand new Nvidia 4070 Super. It promises roughly 12% greater performance than the 7800 XT, but still has the same 12MB of RAM and 192-bit bus. Radeon 7900 XT: The next step up is the roughly $700 RX-7900 XT. Average performance is on par with the Nvidia 4070 Super, but it offers 20GB of VRAM and a 320-bit bus. Nvidia 4070 TI: The outgoing Nvidia 4070 TI is about 9% faster than the 7900XT, but it still has 12MB of RAM and 192-bit bus. It is about $750. Nvidia 4070 Super TI: The new Nvidia 4070 Super TI is going for about $800. Here we see the bit rate jump to 256-bits and VRAM rises to 16MB. Radeon 7900 XTX: Supposedly, the price of the 7900 XTX will also be $800 (This was just announced, but I have not seen any cards yet at this price). This card offers the same average performance of the Nvidia 4070 Super TI, but it offers 24GB VRAM and a 384-bit bus. Out of Scope: The 4080 and especially the 4090 are significantly more expensive and not something I would consider at this point. Which would you choose and why? Thanks for your help!