Question about maximum output resolution vs card's RAM

[Andrew-Not-Kramer]

I know mostly people asked this when they received an error about the layer being too big for the graphics card, but I was wondering if there is some easy way of estimating the maximum output size based on a video card's specs. I want to buy a new card and wonder if it's worth buying one with 4GB for example. I currently use one with 1GB and I'm able to render out 3000x2000, maybe a bit higher resolution, but not 4k for example.

[LordEdington]

I can do 4K with a ATI 7670m (2Gb) and it works fine. I can go higher, but my screen starts to flicker and it crashes. I think I just managed to render out a 6K comp, but the performance was very poor.

I managed to set up a 32k comp, extrude some text, bevel it up and bring it back into my comp, was very impressed, but then smoke started coming out the top of my laptop! Not quite, but near enough.

So I'm not sure if there's some specific way to calculate what comp size you can get away with, based on the VRAM of the card, but 2Gb should do you if you just want to go to 4k. I can't guarantee that obviously, will vary depending on the card. If you've got the cash spare for a 4Gb card then I'd go for that... more the merrier and all that!

[klaus brandenburg]

I would guess it's not only about the GPU and RAM but complexity of the model, texture count and size, material setup, lights etc. I had an "reduce comp size message" in a 1920*1080 comp with my GTX680!

[LordEdington]

Yeah, good point.

[Andrew-Not-Kramer]

Thanks for the replies. I'm not after speed, since I was planning to use it for still renders.
I guess I'll go for a 4GB card. Will let you know how well it performs once I install it.

[Andrew Kramer]

The best suggestion for high resolution outputs is the following. I recently created the Star Trek into darkness trailer title at 4K using Element 3D on a Geforce 580.

Set multi-sampling down to 4 or even 2 and then turn up super-sampling to 2 or 4. Basically super-sampling is slower but doesn't use as much memory. Multi-sampling is very memory hungry. Memory usage is the key to stability in Element. The problem with OpenGL as opposed to DirectX is that when it runs out of memory, it crashes without warning. As much as we are trying to fix bugs, this is not technically a bug so keeping track of usage helps a lot.

[LordEdington]

No need to show off Andrew!

[Andrew Kramer]

Well...

[Andrew-Not-Kramer]

So here are my test results ...
On default settings the scene crashed on a 6k render, but managed to handle a 5k one (5120x3890).
After applying the settings Andrew suggested (2x multisampling and 4x supersampling) it was still working at 7168x5446. I managed to crash the display driver when scaling the scene to 8k.
Tests went better than expected.

The card is a GTX670 with 4GB RAM. No OC, or any strange drivers ... straight out of the box.

[Andrew-Not-Kramer]

If anyone has a 6GB Quadro or has some crazy SLI setup would be great to know how high can you go with even more RAM.