Table of Contents
TL;DR: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 & 3090 Performance in Pix4D
There isn't much of a difference between the cards we tested for this review, with all of them performing within 5% or less of each other. That indicates that either Pix4D is CPU bound at this point or else the video card's utilization in this application is somewhat limited.
This means that the RTX 3080 and 3090 are a solid video cards for Pix4D, but if you already have a high-end GeForce 10 or 20 Series card then there is no reason to upgrade. There is also no reason to spend more on the RTX 3090 over the 3080 if you are buying or building a new Pix4D workstation, and the upcoming RTX 3070 is likely to offer very similar results at an even lower price.
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Introduction
On September 1st, NVIDIA launched the new GeForce RTX 30 Series, touting major advancements in performance and efficiency. While gaming is almost always the media's focus during these kinds of launches, professional applications like Pix4D should see some improvements as well.
If you want to see the full specs for the new GeForce RTX 3070, 3080, and 3090 cards, we recommend checking out NVIDIA's page for the new RTX 30 Series. But at a glance, here are what we consider to be the most important specs:
| VRAM | CUDA Cores | Boost Clock | Power | MSRP | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RTX 2070 Super | 8GB | 2,560 | 1.77 GHz | 215W | $499 |
| RTX 3070 | 8GB | 5,888 | 1.70 GHz | 220W | $499 |
| RTX 2080 Super | 8GB | 3,072 | 1.65 GHz | 250W | $699 |
| RTX 3080 | 10GB | 8,704 | 1.71 GHz | 320W | $699 |
| RTX 2080 Ti | 11GB | 4,352 | 1.55 GHz | 250W | $1,199 |
| RTX 3090 | 24GB | 10,496 | 1.73 GHz | 350W | $1,499 |
| Titan RTX | 24GB | 4,608 | 1.77 GHz | 280W | $2,499 |
While specs don't always line up with real-world performance, it is a great sign that NVIDIA has roughly doubled the number of CUDA cores compared to the GeForce RTX 20 Series cards at similar price points. At the top-end of the new line, NVIDIA appears to have also combined the roles of the previous-gen RTX 2080 Ti and Titan RTX into the new RTX 3090. It has as much VRAM as the Titan did, but for $1,000 less – putting it in the same ballpark as the 2080 Ti, but with more than double the memory and CUDA cores.
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Test Setup
Listed below are the specifications of the system we used for our Pix4D testing:
| Test Platform | |
| CPU | AMD TR 3970X 32 Core |
| CPU Cooler | Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte TRX40 AORUS PRO WIFI |
| RAM | 4x DDR4-2933 16GB (64GB total) |
| Video Card | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 24GB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 10GB NVIDIA Titan RTX 24GB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11GB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8GB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8GB NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER 8GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB |
| Hard Drive | Samsung 960 Pro 1TB |
| Software | Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (Ver. 2004) Pix4Denterprise 4.5.6 |
*All the latest drivers, OS updates, BIOS, and firmware applied as of August 31st, 2020
Big thank you to Gigabyte for providing the GeForce RTX™ 3080 GAMING OC 10G sample used in our testing!
To test each video card, we used our in-house Pix4D benchmark – both the standard and extended versions. Each was run twice per GPU, and the best results were included in the charts below. Here is some basic info about the image sets in these projects:
- Rock Model – 82 photos at 20 megapixels each
- School Map – 51 photos at 18 megapixels each
- School Model – 278 photos at 18 megapixels each
- Park Map – 810 photos at 18 megapixels each
We make these benchmarks publicly available under the Creative Commons BY-ND license, so if you have a copy of Pix4D you can download them from our website and compare your system's performance with the results shown here.
Benchmark Results
Here are charts showing the performance of the new GeForce RTX 3080 and 3090 compared to the other video cards we tested:
Performance Analysis
There isn't much of a difference between the cards we tested for this review, with all of them performing within 5% or less of each other. That indicates to me that either Pix4D is mostly CPU bound or else the video card's utilization in this application is somewhat limited. Digging into the processing steps within Pix4D, we can see that only Step 1's time is substantially impacted by which card is installed:
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Since Step 1 is also the shortest part of the overall Pix4D workflow, the selection of video card ends up having minimal impact on the overall processing time.
Are the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 & 3090 Good for Pix4D?
The RTX 3080 and 3090 are a solid video cards for Pix4D, but if you already have a high-end GeForce 10 or 20 Series card then there is no reason to upgrade. There is also no reason to spend more on the RTX 3090 over the 3080 if you are buying or building a new Pix4D workstation, and the upcoming RTX 3070 is likely to offer very similar performance at an even lower price.
As always, please keep in mind that these results are strictly for photogrammetry in Pix4D. If you have performance concerns for other applications in your workflow, we highly recommend checking out our Hardware Articles (you can filter by "Video Card") for the latest information on how a wide range of programs perform with various GPUs, CPUs, and other hardware.
Puget Systems offers a range of powerful and reliable systems that are tailor-made for your unique workflow.
Our Labs team is available to provide in-depth hardware recommendations based on your workflow.