Quadro Drivers- Which One?

[ctk111]

Just curious if anyone has a suggestion on which quadro driver to use? There are quadro performance, quadro graphics, autocad performance and max performance options. I currently have the graphics driver installed. I'm wondering how much of a trade-off is there going with one over the other? Is there really that much of a noticeable performance issue between graphics, standard performance and max performance in max?

[AJLynn]

You can install the latest graphics drivers (250-something-point-something), then the performance drivers for the programs you use. The performance drivers are in addition to, not instead of, the regular driver.

[ctk111]

Great, thanks for the clarification.

[Jeff Mottle]

I'm wondering how much of a trade-off is there going with one over the other? Is there really that much of a noticeable performance issue between graphics, standard performance and max performance in max?

 

If you want to see exactly how much the performance drivers in AutoCAD and 3ds Max make, look at our review here:

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/news/Reviews/Review076_1.asp

 

I compared both DX9 and performance drivers in max and all of the tests in AutoCAD were only done with the PDs.

[Jeff Mottle]

You can install the latest graphics drivers (250-something-point-something), then the performance drivers for the programs you use. The performance drivers are in addition to, not instead of, the regular driver.

 

That's not correct. The performance drivers are "instead of" the standard driver. In both max and autocad if you look in the drivers section you will see that a separate drv file is selected when using performance drivers vs the DX9 drivers.

[alias_marks]

You can install the latest graphics drivers (250-something-point-something), then the performance drivers for the programs you use. The performance drivers are in addition to, not instead of, the regular driver.

 

Thought I would chime in..

 

I find that the performance drives help speed things up, however, have always ended up reverting to the 'normal' drivers due to more frequent crashes and un-stability that comes with using performance drivers. At the end of the day, the marginal increase in performance wasn't worth it with the crashes.

 

Just my own 2c from personal experience. Maybe I'm an exception though

[Jeff Mottle]

Thought I would chime in..

 

I find that the performance drives help speed things up, however, have always ended up reverting to the 'normal' drivers due to more frequent crashes and un-stability that comes with using performance drivers.

 

Just my own 2c from personal experience.

 

If you check out the survey link at the end of the above review, there is some feedback from others about driver stability. It's not something that one person can easily test, so I decided to get feedback from the industry.

[alias_marks]

If you check out the survey link at the end of the above review, there is some feedback from others about driver stability. It's not something that one person can easily test, so I decided to get feedback from the industry.

 

Definitely agreed, just thought I'd share some anecdotal experience

 

Thanks for the great review on the graphics cards Jeff. I know it's been an ongoing project for quite some time & took lots of work. It's great to see it finished up. Very Helpful

[Jeff Mottle]

 

Thanks for the great review on the graphics cards Jeff. I know it's been an ongoing project for quite some time & took lots of work. It's great to see it finished up. Very Helpful

 

Yeah this undertaking damn near killed me. Some 3000 data points and about 100 hours or testing is A LOT of work. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I started this. Will be repeating when a few more GPU rendering apps come out too.

[alias_marks]

Yeah this undertaking damn near killed me. Some 3000 data points and about 100 hours or testing is A LOT of work. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I started this. Will be repeating when a few more GPU rendering apps come out too.

 

Well I'm glad you made it through alive I know it goes without saying, but your huge contribution to the industry is always appreciated.

 

Not to get off topic, but it seems like it might be interesting to compare the gpu speeds to cloud computing speeds. It's a ways down the line probably and maybe they're two too different animals, but as a arch viz studio I would probably be considering gpu vs. cloud computing options in the not to distant future.

 

Ultimately at the end of the day, maybe in 5 years or so, it probably won't matter which graphics card you have, but rather how fast you can pump information over the network from a cloud based rendering node.

[Jeff Mottle]

Not to get off topic, but it seems like it might be interesting to compare the gpu speeds to cloud computing speeds. It's a ways down the line probably and maybe they're two too different animals, but as a arch viz studio I would probably be considering gpu vs. cloud computing options in the not to distant future.

 

Ultimately at the end of the day, maybe in 5 years or so, it probably won't matter which graphics card you have, but rather how fast you can pump information over the network from a cloud based rendering node.

 

There were two GPU cloud offerings announced at SIGGRAPH so it's very clear that that will be the future. As those technologies evolve I will be doing tests for sure. I'll have a post SIGGRAPH write up coming in the next few days with some goodies.

[AJLynn]

Jeff, I think we're talking about different things - I thought Chad was asking what to download and install. I meant that you can install the regular drivers then the Max and Autocad ones that are a few megs each - then I agree with you, choose the correct performance driver in Max instead of regular Direct3D. (Last time I used it, installing the Max driver package would automatically switch the config.)

[Jeff Mottle]

Jeff, I think we're talking about different things - I thought Chad was asking what to download and install. I meant that you can install the regular drivers then the Max and Autocad ones that are a few megs each - then I agree with you, choose the correct performance driver in Max instead of regular Direct3D. (Last time I used it, installing the Max driver package would automatically switch the config.)

 

Ahh ok, yes it is a separate install. I misunderstood. And usually max and AutoCAD do recognize the newly installed performance drivers and prompt you to change when you first launch into the app, but I found a couple of times that I had to manually configure them. Although I was also swapping cards back and forth between ATI and NVIDIA, so it probably got confused.

[AJLynn]

Yeah, I understand how that is

 

Now I'm curious to see a GPU computing report - there's a distinct lack of real numbers out there, but not enough software that's developed enough to do a reliable test.

[JonRashid]

What do you think about the demand for more realtime presentations, especially with the advent of Stereoscopic 3d. Perhaps we will all be looking at what your graphics card can do realtime and not rendered animations. The new NVIDIA 3DVision Pro SDK allows for some very impressive results on the architectural models I have tried so far. It also allows for realtime physics etc. Camera paths can be preset and still allow the user to have freedom of movement as well. All in 3D!