Is NVIDIA or AMD better for Blender? One of the most asked questions when it comes to choosing a GPU for Blender.
In this article, we clarify things on why certain parameters of a GPU are more important than whether it’s from NVIDIA or AMD.
These parameters control the performance of the GPU and can make or break your rendering times. Here’s what you need to know before getting a GPU.
NVIDIA vs AMD For Blender
To be honest, it doesn’t matter which you choose for Blender. Because both companies offer capable cards and Blender supports both cards.
CUDA and OptiX for NVIDIA cards and OpenCL for AMD cards. So it boils down to a matter of personal preference.
What really matters in choosing an NVIDIA or AMD GPU for Blender is the VRAM, clock speed, and the number of cores.
These parameters are important regardless of the brand and determine the performance of the graphics card.
Is AMD Graphics Card Good For Blender?
Yes, AMD graphic cards are good for Blender. AMD even has a plugin called AMD Radeon ProRender Blender™ | Radeon™ ProRender | AMD that leverages CPU and GPU performance to produce realistic images in Blender.
That goes to show how serious AMD is in making their hardware very useful in Blender. Moreover, OpenCL in Blender allows for GPU rendering by AMD GPUs.
In conclusion, AMD graphic cards offer comparable performance to NVIDIA GPUs and are often more affordable than the latter. If you are thinking about getting an AMD GPU for Blender.
Does Graphics Card Matter For Blender?
Yes, graphics card matters a lot for Blender. Although you can use an integrated or weak dedicated graphics card.
You will run into problems and long rendering times as your project gets bigger, more complex, and more realistic.
That’s why a good graphics card is recommended for Blender. In the GPU recommended system requirements, a graphics card with a minimum amount of 4GB VRAM is given.
GPUs that have higher than 4GB RAM are always decent cards. And the higher the VRAM, the faster and more powerful the GPU.
That’s why you see professional Blender users have top of line GPUs and laptops. Because they know powerful hardware means faster rendering times and smoother performance.
Which Graphics Card Is Best For Blender?
The best graphics card for Blender is one that’s able to render projects quickly. The more complex and realistic your projector the better GPU required.
This holds truer if you want fast rendering times. Powerful GPUs have high clock speeds, a high amount of VRAM, and numerous cores.
Moreover, dedicated GPUs are recommended for Blender not integrated. Because integrated GPUs don’t have the performance to render projects and might even cause Blender to crash.
Clock Speed
This metric is pretty straightforward and provided on the spec sheet. The higher the clock speed the more powerful the GPU.
However, clock speed is not the only determining factor in GPU performance.
For example, it is well known that the RTX 2060 is more powerful than the GTX 1650. But, when you take a look at their clock speeds (MHz).
They are almost similar. So, clock speed shouldn’t be the only thing that you should use to gauge a GPU’s performance.
Cores
Just like how CPUs have their own cores. GPUs also have cores except that GPU cores are more numerous than CPU cores.
NVIDIA calls their cores NVIDIA CUDA cores whiles AMD refers to theirs as Stream processors.
The more cores a GPU has the better its performance.
VRAM
Just like how having a lot of RAM helps in system performance and multitasking. VRAM is RAM specifically used by the GPU.
That means the more VRAM a GPU has the more it can handle graphical loads. High VRAM also allows you to connect to multiple high-resolution monitors.
Should I Use CPU Or GPU For Blender?
CPU should only be used for Blender when the GPU isn’t that great. But for everything else always use GPU for Blender when it comes to rendering.
Why? Because GPUs are better at processing graphic data and solving a large quantity of it. Even Blender recommends using your GPU for rendering.
This is not to say you can’t use a CPU for rendering. Some CPUs – the powerful multicore – have impressive rendering times and are sometimes a decent option over GPUs.
But that’s just for the powerful multicore CPUs. You will be better off using your GPU for Blender that is if it’s a capable one.
