Which graphics card?

[Thox]

I'm currently ordering a new system, but wondering which graphics card to opt for. Not sure whether to go for the Quadro 3800FX or 2x480GTX cards. Was wondering what peoples views and experiences of these are.

[AJLynn]

What are the video cards going to be used for? Display only or do you have something involving CUDA or OpenCL in mind?

[Thox]

I'm looking to get Vray RT, so the GTX cards would be beneficial here, but curious about viewport performance, whether it would suffer being essentially a gaming card. Although, my current machine has a 8800GTX, whilst viewport performance is ok it can get very slow in heavy scenes.

[AJLynn]

I wouldn't buy the 3800 now as nVidia's in the process of introducing a new generation of Quadros. I also wouldn't buy two 480's now as multiple cards don't do much for your viewport performance (SLI is best used for games) and since you can't get Vray for GPU yet, it has no immediate advantage. Right now is a bit of a tricky time to buy one of these things.

 

Jeff put up a report on his GPU tests recently where he did find some advantages to using a pro card, so I started including more of them in the 3DATS recommendations - though I included FirePro cards instead of Quadros since the Quadros you could buy a couple weeks ago were a generation old. It looks like the new generation is just hitting stores - Newegg appears to have the 4000 and 5000 in stock while Amazon lists the 4000 as a preorder and the 5000 in stock, and neither has anything about the 6000 yet.

 

So if your budget can handle an FX 3800 and you want a pro card, my recommendation would be either the 4000 or the FirePro v7800. On the other hand, if the priority is future GPU rendering, I'd actually steer you toward a single Geforce GTX 460, 2GB version with a motherboard that can handle three of these and a very good power supply. Later, if you get the GPU render software, buy two more of the same. Three of those would be under $800, give you the most CUDA power you can get for that money and not overrun the capabilities of a high end power supply. The 2GB is actually more than you can get on a 480 or 470, and would come in handy for running a GPU renderer on a complex scene, and you'd only be in for $270, which wouldn't drive you nuts if your Vray GPU plans didn't pan out for a year or two.

[Thox]

Thanks for the advice Andrew it's very useful. Unfortunately, I can't really hold off on the purchasing of a graphics card, as my boss says the money is there for a new workstation now. No idea when I will next be able to upgarde, so I have to buy the best I can now, but it should be capable of hanling future rendering developments.

 

From what I understand from the Chaos Group forums, Vray RT is not too far away, so the card must be capable of dealing with it. The 460 card is an interesting alternative, as from what I understand the more memory the better.

[AJLynn]

Well I guess you could always include more than one video card, since this is one of those business things

[RevitGary]

Thought I would post my similar question here.

 

512MB NVIDIA® Quadro® FX 580,

 

1GB ATI FirePro V4800,

 

 

Which of the above cards would you choose?

For Revit and autocad 2011

They are the same price. How can a 1 gig card be the same price as a 512 gig card?

 

Thanks!

Edited August 24, 2010 by RevitGary

[AJLynn]

I can say instantly and with complete conviction that there is no doubt at all in my mind that a Quadro 580 should never be purchased by anybody and you should get the FirePro.

 

Okay, maybe I should explain myself. A Quadro 580 is a Quadro'ed version of a Geforce 9400 series card. Two generations old and too slow back then. The FirePro V4800 is new this year, it's a FireGL'ed Radeon 5670. Reviewers have actually been pleasantly surprised by it, even though it's the low end of that line.