GTX 580 3GB or GTX 680 2GB

Question

Hello all, I have a question.
I recently built a x79 3930k sys, I bought a EVGA gtx 580 3GB for the PP MPE....EVGA has a step-up program for 90 days I can step up to a better card. I just bought the card march 3, so I still have a few months. However, I entered their que for a step-up to the gtx 680 2GB for the up in Cuda Cores... but for I have learned from some videos is Adobe After Effects will use all the VRAM (3GB for my 580) and get some sorta performance increase??? Can anyone explain to me what I would be missing
going down to 2GB from 3GB of vram .. I can also cancel my step-up and still reenter for 2 more months.. to see if EVGA offers the 4GB version by then. At that point I would reenter the step up program and upgrade to the gtx 680 4GB....   as it stands I only pay shipping (8.40) for the jump to the 680 2GB, the 4GB version might cost a bit more ($50-100) what the heck should I do... Though I am not using after effects at the moment I anticipate heavy usage.. I am not worried about applying the hack for the 680...

Answer 1

Difficult question to answer at this moment. It depends on a number of things. What kind of material do you edit? If it includes RED 4K or EPIC 5K, I would definitely wait for the 4 GB version, but if you don't do that regularly or only in small amounts then the 2 GB version may suffice. The GTX 680 has of course the advantage of being PCIe-3.0 which can be put to good use on your 2011 platform and supports three or four monitors, something the 580 can't do. Whether the 680 will be faster than the 580 with 3 GB remains to be seen. The number of CUDA cores has tripled, but the memory bus was reduced from 384 to 256 bits, and it is not yet clear what impact that will have on performance.
A second thing to consider is your intended AE use, which you say will be heavy in the future. Tthe fact that After Effects can use multiple GPUs for CUDA computation (for the ray-traced 3D renderer) makes using some GPU setups sensible that may have been a waste for Premiere Pro.
IMO, you currently have the following options, including the announced but not yet available 4 GB versions of the 680:
1. Stick to the 580, but add a 560 Ti for AE and steering a third monitor.
2. Step up to the 680 2 GB for steering a third monitor, but with the risk of running out of VRAM with RED or EPIC material and thus the reduction to software mode only.
3. Step up to the 680 4 GB for steering a third monitor without the risk of software mode fallback.
4. Take a gamble that the 685/690 with a 384 bit memory bus may be announced in the near future (not likely).
The problem is that TSMC, the supplier of the nVidia 28 nm chips has serious difficulty meeting demands for these chips. See http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120405PD218.html