Graphic cards

[frazer]

hi I was looking into buying a new computer as mine is getting on a bit now. Have been looking at graphics cards and noticed alot of people saying that the quadro series is very good as well as the ati firegl (not sure if the spelling is right). Does a graphic card make any difference when modelling or rendering or would a regular graphics cards be just as good but say alot of money?

 

Also is there any differencein the amount of ram you have. Ie getting 2 gig made up of 2 sticks or 4.

 

Thanks for any help.

[JamesTaylor]

The graphic card is used to update your screen, so when you pan around a building whilst modelling its the Graphics card that figures out what needs to be updated on screen. equally if you want to view materials you've assigned to geometry in the viewports it will be the card that processes the information. The better the card quicker/smoother this happen.

 

At the rendering stage the Graphics card is not used, all the information is processed by the main CPU to produce the final solution or image.

 

The more RAM you have the better....i don't think it makes any difference how its made up as long as its all compatible with the other sticks in the machine. Someone more technical may correct me on this tho!

[ihabkal]

with AMD cpus that have hypertransport technology, like dual opterons, it's faster if you have 2 sticks assigned to each cpu, thus 4 instead of 2.

[AJLynn]

hi I was looking into buying a new computer as mine is getting on a bit now. Have been looking at graphics cards and noticed alot of people saying that the quadro series is very good as well as the ati firegl (not sure if the spelling is right). Does a graphic card make any difference when modelling or rendering or would a regular graphics cards be just as good but say alot of money?

 

Also is there any differencein the amount of ram you have. Ie getting 2 gig made up of 2 sticks or 4.

 

Thanks for any help.

 

Quadro and FireGL are both very good. If you're a 3DS Max or Viz user, Quadro is probably better for you, it has a custom driver for those programs that makes things run very smoothly. But don't overspend - the higher end Quadros are more than most people need and cost a heck of a lot.

[spmichener]

what are some of the lower in quadro cards?

[frazer]

Hi just another quick question, I was thinking about trying to get dual monitors if i can afford it and hopefully some TFT since they seem to be coming down in price alot. Would I need to choose a specially type of graphics card for these. Have noticed that some graphics cards have two DVI-I connections where as others have only one or DVI-I+VGA. Does this make any difference and if so what. Also what is Dual-Link DVI as have been looking on the nividia web site and noticed some of the graphic cards have this and others dont.

 

Was thinking about getting a Quadro FX 1400 would this be a good choice or be too good for what i need it for. Will be using autocad, 3ds max, and adobe photoshop, indesign etc. oh and also probably some games.

 

Thanks again and cheers for the quick responses before.

[AJLynn]

An FX1400 would probably handle whatever you want to throw at it. Most LCD monitors these days (all the good ones anyway) use DVI, so for two LCDs use a card with dual DVI. (I don't recall which Quadros have this, but I'm sure you can look it up.) Anyway, you can use a VGA monitor on a DVI card with a DVI-VGA adapter, which is usually included with the card, so having dual DVI won't hurt. (Dual-Link DVI... sounds like it means two DVI ports...)

 

Don't pay too much for the 1400. They seem to sell in the $700-800 range new these days ($755 even on Neweeg), which is a good bit above the Ebay price. (Not sure about British pricing...) I've been watching the Ebay pricing because I want to sell a 3400 soon, and I'd expect that to be in the $600-700 range.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

definetly Quadro. the reps from Discreet have huge Quadro sticker/logos on their laptops, so that when they flip them open during a presentation, that is what you see.

[tnatua]

hi I was looking into buying a new computer as mine is getting on a bit now. Have been looking at graphics cards and noticed alot of people saying that the quadro series is very good as well as the ati firegl (not sure if the spelling is right). Does a graphic card make any difference when modelling or rendering or would a regular graphics cards be just as good but say alot of money?

 

Also is there any differencein the amount of ram you have. Ie getting 2 gig made up of 2 sticks or 4.

 

Thanks for any help.

go to the link :

http://appsnet.bentley.com/mstnbenchmark/reports/VideoCardBrowser.aspx

you can compare the 8800 gtx vs quadro fx 5600 vs ATI v2900

friendly

[Mario Pende]

Since when the gaming cards become better then profesional ones?!

Is this true??!

[AJLynn]

I'm a bit suspicious of user-survey benchmarks like this, because they're not done in a controlled environment. You get people with different amount of crap on their computers, different amounts and speeds of RAM and most of all, different CPU speeds. When I built a new overclocked Core2 Duo system and transplanted my FireGL v5100 from an older P4 system, the Cinebench OpenGL score on the old PC was 3000 and on the new PC was 5000. Same video card, some amount of RAM, same software, different CPU.

 

If you go to that page and put firegl in the search, and look at the spread of scores you can get from a v7200 - anywhere from 102 to 162 in the first column, 45 to 71 in the second - you won't have much faith anymore in this type of benchmark. It doesn't mean that the 8800 is faster than the FX5600 - it means that comparing one guy's computer that had an 8800 to another guy's that had an FX5600, doing a particular task, the first guy's did it faster.

[tnatua]

Here's what Xi, a workstation specialist, has to say about the 8800:

 

GeForce™ 8800, AutoCAD, DX10 & O-GL

 

The new GeForce™ 8800 GTX/GTS Video Cards, with up 768MB of DDR3 VRAM, have been recently introduced and are available for sale with our MTower™ workstations. Most of you will wonder: why a “gamers” video card for CAD and workstation use? For years the use of a gamers card for CAD has been the poor man’s choice, cheap, but with sure low performance. But… the new 8800 series have a very special feature that justifies its adoption for CAD, even against the more popular (and way more expensive) Nvidia® Quadro™ counterparts: it supports Direct X10 3D standards via accelerated on-board hardware. Now the really interesting part: a subset of DX10 HW accelerated functions is overlapping some of the Open-GL 2.0 (historically only HW accelerated on the Quadro™ video cards) used by the Autodesk® family of products like AutoCAD, 3ds Max etc.. What is the result of this? Our @Xi® MTower™ workstations are breaking new CAD performance benchmark records using the 8800 GeForce instead of the more expensive Quadros. We are constantly researching to offer more speed and productivity for less money, and this is our latest achievement! Capitalizing our 20 years Workstation experience, we recently teamed up with XFX® (Leading Manufacturer of Nvidia GeForce video cards), to customize a XXX Special Edition 8800 series with extended HW assisted 3D CAD functions, for even performance on a broader spectrum of CAD packages.

[Zdravko Barisic]

Here's what Xi, a workstation specialist, has to say about the 8800:

 

GeForce™ 8800, AutoCAD, DX10 & O-GL

 

The new GeForce™ 8800 GTX/GTS Video Cards, with up 768MB of DDR3 VRAM, have been recently introduced and are available for sale with our MTower™ workstations. Most of you will wonder: why a “gamers” video card for CAD and workstation use? For years the use of a gamers card for CAD has been the poor man’s choice, cheap, but with sure low performance. But… the new 8800 series have a very special feature that justifies its adoption for CAD, even against the more popular (and way more expensive) Nvidia® Quadro™ counterparts: it supports Direct X10 3D standards via accelerated on-board hardware. Now the really interesting part: a subset of DX10 HW accelerated functions is overlapping some of the Open-GL 2.0 (historically only HW accelerated on the Quadro™ video cards) used by the Autodesk® family of products like AutoCAD, 3ds Max etc.. What is the result of this? Our @Xi® MTower™ workstations are breaking new CAD performance benchmark records using the 8800 GeForce instead of the more expensive Quadros. We are constantly researching to offer more speed and productivity for less money, and this is our latest achievement! Capitalizing our 20 years Workstation experience, we recently teamed up with XFX® (Leading Manufacturer of Nvidia GeForce video cards), to customize a XXX Special Edition 8800 series with extended HW assisted 3D CAD functions, for even performance on a broader spectrum of CAD packages.

 

 

Can you add some details on this ones bolded, please?

What functions?

HW assisted 3D CAD functions? What is the "name" of yours graphic card? I mean who is assembler? (PNY/Leadtek/XFX...?)

Can you also add some specific numbers due to scenes you were testing?

 

 

 

Since when the gaming cards become better then profesional ones?!

Is this true??!

 

Yea, for some reaseon it is a true, autodesk moves complete line of products to D3D, thats way 7900/8800 works perfect on MAX/AutoCAD/...even for Lightscape I think that they are good enough. Quadro stays for some pure OGL apps like Solidedge, Catia, ProE...etc...

Strange? Isnt it?

[Dave Buchhofer]

I'm quite happy with my 8800.. you can get similar speeds + greater ogl speed out of the higher end quadro cards, but you're paying a HUGE premium. To each his own, i've had several quadro's over the years, and haven't been terribly impressed.

[Brian Cassil]

I have a question related to this thread. Is DX10 only available with vista or can it be used under XP64?

[AJLynn]

It appears to be for Vista only, according to MSDN and Wikipedia.

[Ernest Burden III]

It appears to be for Vista only, according to MSDN and Wikipedia.

 

That would suck, I just bought a Quadro 4600 for an XP64 machine. No DX10?

[AJLynn]

I don't think it's as big a deal as they think it is. You get a new version of DX, but it's chained to an OS with so many other issues that you don't net a gain.

 

Meanwhile, I don't think having DX10 support in your OS would make a single bit of difference for you - Cinema uses OpenGL. I've got a FireGL v5100 on my home PC with a Core2 Duo and it eats most PCs for lunch in Cinebench's OpenGL test - my new work PC with a Core2 Quad, faster clock speed and 8800 GTS is close, but not quite as fast. You've probably got a fast CPU in there so I'd bet your viewports are as fast as anything that's not using an FX5600 or maybe a FireGL x6xx.