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$500 to $1200 is a big range, and you can probably get a decent card even with $500. First of all is your computer using AGP ot PCI-ex slots?

 

You can take a look at the Nvidia Quadro range, and the mid range FX1400 is pretty decent and bang for buck. You can even get one at $250 off eBay.

 

Graphic cards do not help any renderers or Vray to render any faster, its just for viewport prductivity.

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$500 to $1200 is a big range, and you can probably get a decent card even with $500. First of all is your computer using AGP ot PCI-ex slots?

You can take a look at the Nvidia Quadro range, and the mid range FX1400 is pretty decent and bang for buck. You can even get one at $250 off eBay.

Graphic cards do not help any renderers or Vray to render any faster, its just for viewport prductivity.

 

Kiajoon has a good perspective... you may not need a super fast card . . .

First, try to analyze how you work. You may be able to get by with a lower end card and be able to save some money... maybe not. Are your files well-organized and controlled via layers and shortcuts to maximize the hardware you have. If you have a sloppy file with stuff just littered everywhere the fastest card in the world won't do you a lot of good.

 

If you keep things nice and tidy and files still grow so big it takes minutes for viewport regen, then maybe it is time to snag a high end card.

 

In my opinion, if you don't need to put anything else into your system (ram, hd's, etc),... you stated you have up to $1200 to spend on a card... spend it, get a quadro fx 4500 and enjoy the fastest viewports in town : )

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I have an ATI Fire GL and an NVIDIA Ge Force in two of my computers at work, ATI renders interiors very well (Web photometric lighting) whereas NVidia renders exteriors very nice (Daylight views) . Does that make sense?

 

Maybe he is talking about the quality of the viewports and how the hardware shades the scene, but prints will eventually rely on your colour calibaration and printer. But then it can be also associated with the screen and driver you use. For me ATI cards have a better screen quality and I find the colurs more accurate to work with, but Nvidia has much better drivers.

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I have an ATI Fire GL and an NVIDIA Ge Force in two of my computers at work, ATI renders interiors very well (Web photometric lighting) whereas NVidia renders exteriors very nice (Daylight views) . Does that make sense?

 

Maybe he is talking about the quality of the viewports and how the hardware shades the scene, but prints will eventually rely on your colour calibaration and printer. But then it can be also associated with the screen and driver you use. For me ATI cards have a better screen quality and I find the colurs more accurate to work with, but Nvidia has much better drivers.

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My short answer is this:

 

1) Get a 7800GS Nvidia card for $300 and pocket the extra money you were gonna spend on a much more expensive (but not really faster) Quadro card.

 

2) You graphics card does NOTHING to speed up or affect your final rendering. Viewport image and final rendered image are essentially not related at all... UNFORTUNATELY.

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My short answer is this:

 

1) Get a 7800GS Nvidia card for $300 and pocket the extra money you were gonna spend on a much more expensive (but not really faster) Quadro card.

 

 

That is something I totally disagree when it comes to 3Dsmax. AFAIK only Maya & CInema4D it is ample to use gaming cards.

 

What do you based it on? What software? what kind of scene? Any benchmarks? Read this and you will understand more.

 

http://www.behardware.com/articles/560-1/test-7-pci-express-3d-pro-graphic-cards.html

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And in here a FX540 overpowers a 7800GTX in SLI in virtually everything, and one by the double. Eventually you have to see which application you use and check up on the application bench. If you use 3dmark then you do not know what you are doing.

 

http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=3321&page=3

 

I hope I cleared up something as simple as why DCC cards are on the market.

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And in here a FX540 overpowers a 7800GTX in SLI in virtually everything, and one by the double. Eventually you have to see which application you use and check up on the application bench. If you use 3dmark then you do not know what you are doing.

http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=3321&page=3

I hope I cleared up something as simple as why DCC cards are on the market.

 

How about taking a look at the benchmarks again.

http://spec.unipv.it/gpc/opc.static/3dsmax03.html

SpecviewPerf8.1 used essentially 3DS MAX 3.1 as it's basis for analysing how fast these cards are.

 

MAX back in version 3 had absolutely HORRIBLE viewport speed (not that it is that great today, but that is besides the point). Baack then, a pro card did help tremendously. Running MAXtreme on my QUADRO card helped a lot. However that was about 5 years ago and MAX's viewport speed has improved dramatically since then, but the benefits of running "pro" drivers has diminished dramaticaly also. The speed increase I get now with my pro card is negligable when running MAXtreme.

 

"Pro" cards are a waste of money... and you are also forgeting the fact that consumer cards can be unlocked to allow them to run "pro" drivers at nearly full speed, for a fraction of the cost.

 

I used to be a proponent of "pro" cards, but I have woken up to the fact that they are overpriced with little performance payoff.

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  • 1 year later...
Video cards have nothing at all to do with Vray rendering performance. As far as actual video card performance... probably not very much difference between these, they're both the previous generation of their lines.

 

 

thanx for ur answer...

but i got another one..

 

well actually is a problem....

 

i have 2.75G RAM

my video card is Geforce 6600 GT OC 128RAM

pentium 4 3.19 GHz

and sometimes when i do some renders... i get a vray error saying... not enough memory...

 

so my question is... wtf is wrong?? lol maybe i need a better video card like 256/512RAM instead of 128 RAM?? will this help??

 

or maybe u can tell me whats wrong with my pc... i think i got a good pc for rendering...

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No, the video card has nothing to do with rendering. The problem has to do with the amount of RAM, or the amount of RAM being accessed by Max, or the scene being rendered. 2.75GB? That's a very strange amount.

 

 

no.. thats my total ram.. i have 2.75 ram in my pc...

 

and yes the problem is the amount of ram being accessed by Max (or the scene) but.. it doesnt even use the half of my 2.75... then it crashes... any ideas?? maybe theres an option on max that says "use all ram as possible".

 

its weird cuz i have a lot of ram on my pc.. but it will still crash when i have a scene with a lot of stuff to render

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  • 4 months later...

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