Nvidia vs AMD graphic card for real time ray-tracing

I am new to Unreal, I do architectural visualisation with 3dsMax, Vray and Corona. I want to try Unreal and test their real time ray tracing feature. Which graphic card is good for this? I am tossing between Nvidia 2070 Super and AMD RX5700XT (saves some money with this option). Any recommendations will be appreciated.

Hello, it seems AMD does not have Hardware accelerated ray-tracing yet. So you will need to go for a Nvidia card.

Thanks, **UE_FlavienP. **Do you have any suggestion on which model to get? Is the Quadro version worth it? I am planning to get 2070 super, but 2060 super is around 25% cheaper and the performance is quite good as well.

It depends on the usage scenario you are going for, because each model is more suitable for certain tasks. Raytracing will be smoother with hardware able to cast rays in more quantities per frame, so all in all definitely it is a common sense 2060 Super is not worth even for gaming, unless if resolutions are 1080p. Film like the Troll Demo made with Unreal was possible with a RTX 2080Ti. I think personally 2070 Super and 2080 Super is way to go for most of the usage scenarios, but if film is a focus 2080Ti or Titan RTX (only benefit is the amount of VRAM really). Once the multi-gpu support is completely implemented having 2 x 2070Super will perform better than a 2080Ti alone while providing even more VRAM.

Thanks **NilsonLima. **Yeah, I worry about the amount of VRAM too. Most of the time I need at least 32GB RAM to render my architectural scene in Corona. I am not sure how it works in real time ray-tracing in Unreal, how does 8GB be enough to render? Does this mean I need to heavily optimise the scene first? Or it still renders but it will be slower because it needs to constantly upload and off-load stuff to VRAM?

@moifa_gk All depends on the scene complexity. If you are talking about archviz the requirements will be higher than what a RTX 2070 Super can offer as a standalone card. As the engine still does not support multi-gpu (but it is planned to support in the future), you might end up with not an optimal experience, again depends on the complexity of the scene. While in a film scenario like the Troll Demo, was able to be done with a RTX 2080TI, I would assume a RTX 2080 Super will last longer used standalone. Later when the multi-gpu is supported you can invest in another one and you will be set for years, because those cards will still have value for gamers and the used market is good enough to sell them and invest in a future better card.

I can’t answer your question properly regarding how to optimize a scene for archviz, so my advice is for you to post at the section in this forum for this type of question, which probably will get attention of the correct audience where the experts will give you a solid advice. My expertise is more technical on rendering pipelines in general and hardware approachs.

@NilsonLima Thanks for your help. I will look into 2080 Super.