Graphics Card Recommendation for Threadripper Workstation-Gaming Build?

Hardware Build a PC
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Hello! So since last year, I’ve been slowly gathering the parts to replace my trusty Asus ROG G75J1Y laptop with an actual Workstation computer so I can begin doing more portfolio work. I work in 3DSMax, Maya, Zbrush, Photoshop, Unreal Engine, Clip Studio Paint, Google Sketchup, and Illustrator. I want to learn more programming and will be dipping my toes eventually into Unity and Cry Engine as well.

I do like playing games and I would love to play some titles like Ark: Survival Evolved, Star Citizen and Witcher 3 in the future, if possible in 2K. I see no point in 4k, especially since I’m not really wanting to delve into video editing.

I am planning to custom liquid cool this computer as well since I do want to attempt to overclock Threadripper and possibly the GPU. A Vega 56 was my first choice but I would love a second opinion since I was considering even a workstation card, one of the future upgrades for this PC will be a Intel Optane 900P 500GB. This is my build!:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Threadripper 1920X 3.5GHz 12-Core Processor (Purchased For $684.99)
Motherboard: Asus - ROG ZENITH EXTREME EATX TR4 Motherboard (Purchased For $476.96)
Memory: G.Skill - Trident Z RGB 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-3600 Memory (Purchased For $359.99)
Storage: Samsung - 960 PRO 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (Purchased For $279.99)
Storage: Seagate - IronWolf Pro 6TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $254.48)
Video Card: Sapphire - Radeon RX VEGA 56 8GB NITRO+ Video Card
Case: Corsair - Air 740 ATX Full Tower Case (Purchased For $129.99)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - PRIME Titanium 1000W 80+ Titanium Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $224.90)
Other: Massdrop Vast 35-Inch Curved Gaming Monitor (Purchased For $549.99)
Total: $2961.29
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-02-10 16:53 EST-0500

I am interested about getting into Linux to, but core thing is to be able to work on 3D Modeling and Animation and Level Design.

Edit: Oh forgot to mention! The budget for the card well, my only requirement is that I pay it for a fair price and not the insane prices that have been going around right now. I don’t mind having to throw some money towards my passion. I would rather not spend over $1000 for a graphics card if its not the best bang for the buck but if I must I’m willing.

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Do any of your workloads require workstation class validated drivers that would require a workstation card? How many of these workloads use CUDA?

Personally I’d lean more to the GTX 1080/Ti

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Lets be real… your probably going to game and not exclusively do video creation so forget about the quadros and fire pros… I would go for something used at this point… Graphics card demand is so far through the roof… @DerKrieger has the suggestion I would take and if you cant find that for a good price… you can find used ones on ebay and definitely a 980 Ti even though its lesser in performance to the new 10 series… its still a fantastic card and you can grab it for cheap on ebay 400 dollars vs a 1000 dollars or more for 1080 ti right now

I personally own two 980 Ti’s and got them both off ebay and I couldnt be happier with their immense performance. This is coming from a guy who used to run two 290x Vapor X 8gb cards on the AMD side of things… So I think its fair to say i have a decent opinion about these nvidia cards… the 980 Ti are the last Ti to be on 100 series node aka Gx100 so they are a pretty powerful chip and a big chip at that…

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Zbrush is CPU based, from what I saw on Autodesks website with 3DSMax and Maya they are fine with some of AMD and Nvidia’s consumer cards for use for rendering. Unreal is annoyingly optimized for use with Nvidia cards in general and from what I understand tank sometimes with AMD’s cards. And when loading in, or using high polygon or Overall for me as a beginner/student and not doing a ton of freelance work nothing I do would benefit from greatly from CUDA until my workloads start getting more heavy as my skills get better.

1080ti was definitely one of my choices, though I was considering a WX7100 to tide me over, I mean anything would be an upgrade from this 980 4GB and Intel i7-4710 HQ 4 cores 8 threaded processor. My laptop has shut itself off multiple times from heat issues at this point. LOL, And trying to load in assets in unreal that is more than just low poly kills my GPU.

@PhaseLockedLoop Oh don’t worry I’ve been scouring the used market something fierce and I’m glad to hear about the 980ti’s performing pretty reliably. My thing is I’m also pretty patient, so as I said above I was considering a WX7100 just to get this PC up and running since I can always do some gaming on my laptop and just do work on my PC since I can always add a gaming card in the future.