Hey guys, I have my old z840 sitting idle and I wanted to see if anyone had a recommendation for a faster game card that’s relatively cheap.
I know ideally I would match the same system as the one I’m working on, or at least the same GPU… but that’s not financially viable.
Any recs would be awesome!
Thanks,
Fegan
Can you share your budget or a range in what you would like to spend?
Also, are you wanting to use a card that Autodesk will support or are you happy to take that risk. Keeping in mind that the dev team has said there are good reasons to only use NVIDIA workstation cards and not gaming cards. I have used gaming cards on home systems before with no issues but not saying you might not stumble onto some.
Somewhere below the $500 range. It’ll have to be something used(obviously)
Probably your best bet for that cash used would be a Turing RTX 5000. 2 generations old but newer than the Z840.
For that sort of money you might get a P6000 if you are savvy and definitely a P5000 if you go used, which is the generation of the last Z840s. The Turing is a newer card though so I’d choose that over the P series cards.
If you are happy to go a gaming card, a RTX3090 can be had for that money and is probably a better option then any of the 40series gaming cards at the price due to the VRAM. Be warned though, used gaming cards are often pushed hard so I would not trust the reliability of the thing. If it has been over locked and driven hard it could die fast.
I’ve got an old RTX 5000. Low hours. Make me an offer.
I wouldn’t go gamer cards.
Do not get a P card. They will likely be un-supported in Flame in the near future.
As unsupported as a gaming card would be. Doesn’t mean it won’t work but a good caveat nonetheless.
I thought you should always have the same card in the burn nodes as you have in your box… inconsistencies… Is that no longer the case?
Sadly that is. Being close is always better. Ram, GPU specs, vram, etc.
Honestly, unless you have 3 burns plus, the networking and IT overhead isn’t worth it.
I also think of burn as very use-case centric. As in, if
→ then it’s worth it.
But burn is like any other kind of hardware or cap-ex purchase: it rots like fresh veggies. You gotta use it when it’s fresh and get new ones when it’s old and rotten and smells like garbage.
I’m not against it, it’s absolutely saved my ass on multiple occasions. But it should meet a few criteria before going down that road. There is NOTHING sadder than old computers in your office collecting dust.
Except for old computers you’re still trying to eek out a living on.
Burn in the cloud for the win
Totally nothing sad about a working computer!!
Josh
I never even considered that. Good call.
But in this case, I’ve got the over head(networking hardware etc…) just need a GPU. And can’t justify paying $1000+ for an RTX A series card
i run a linux burn node with a 4090 for shits and giggles for my mac flames
works great actually … 
it was shockingly easy to set up and get going
If you have done older workstations sitting around, Burn is an excellent use for them. Done that a few times and have never had issues with them either. If it’s an older system that dies after a couple more years use then that’s surely a good thing rather than a negative.