Quadro FX3800 or Quadro 4000

[paneli]

Hello!

I'm considering upgrading my current GPU, which is Quadro FX 1700.

I was thinking about the Quadro FX3800 or Quadro Fermi 4000.

Well,the price is almost the same, so I started to wander.

 

I googled for some benchmarks, but couldn't find any comparison between these cards.

The only thing I found was this site, but I didn't get it.

 

Does anyone here knows for sure which one of them is stronger?

Quadro FX3800 or Quadro Fermi 4000?

Thank you

[AJLynn]

The 4000 is the better card by far. Depending on what you run you could also consider the FirePro V7800

[paneli]

I am running 3Ds Max 2009, Vray 1.5SP4a, Autocad 2009 and Sketchup.

FirePro is not even an option. (actually not sold in Israel, as far as I know)

[AJLynn]

Huh. Well, in that case, the Quadro 4000 would be the clear choice.

[paneli]

Thank you.

But do you have some test? this card is a serious investment.

In Israel it casts nearly 972$ (which is 3600NIS) and I want to be really sure.

[AJLynn]

I assure you that if you have to choose between those two cards, the 4000 is the better card.

[Elliot]

Andrew

 

They have the PNY Quadro 4000 here in Atlanta. Is that a good card or I should ask, a reliable manufacturer?

 

 

Happy New Year

Thanks

Edited December 27, 2010 by Elliot

[AJLynn]

It's the best Quadro for the money, and PNY is the only manufacturer available. But for the money, unless you plan to use CUDA, I still like the Firepro V7800.

[Elliot]

Andrew

 

I am confused I don't understand what is CUDA. This card if for a remote site computer. We use SoldiWORKS, AutoCAD and 3DS Max. My present ATI gamer card 4870 is causing some issues with SW. It will not display the dimensions. Swapped cards and the dimensions showed up. SW claims it is a known bug. SW highly recommends the Quadro. PNY does not list the Quadro 4000 for Autocad work but they recommend it for SW and 3DS Max.

 

A note to Panibor, please excuse me for asking Andrew about this similar issues on your thread. I have similar questions. On one of the old computers we have a Quadro 5800 or something like that.... That Video Card was very expensive several years ago, then we found the video gamer card for 80% less money was as fast and as reliable as the expensive card. Reliable with the I-7 985 not on the I-7 965. These manufacturers have confused all of us...... it is almost as bad understanding the ATT phone bill.

 

Our 3DS Max is having way too many crashes and we think is something to do with the video card. The local guy who I know for many years has the Quadro 5000 and he recommends this one as well. He mention something called Tesla, a little bit more expensive but more memory. My system already has 24gb of Ram.

 

We have two of these computer, the main one has an I-985 this one has an I-7 965. I think the 965 is a 4 core chip and the other one is a 6 core. The 965 works good but it crashes on basic renderings. Perhaps is nothing to do with the video card. You have any suggestions?

 

Thanks

Elliot

Edited December 28, 2010 by Elliot

[AJLynn]

Elliot, CUDA is... how shall I put this kindly... a concept that is undoubtedly good for nVidia's business. It's what enables calculations running on the GPU instead of the CPU for Arion, Octane and iray, and it's proprietary nVidia tech. (Vray RT for GPU runs OpenCL instead, which is not proprietary so the software will work on ATI GPUs once Chaosgroup is able to get a couple of problems sorted out.) Because CUDA is proprietary, nVidia is able to, um, explore new and creative business opportunities. For example the Tesla cards, which in their current version are $250 worth of underclocked Geforce 470 plus a $3500 upgrade to 6GB of memory. This all may or may not make sense for you.

 

I think you know a bit about how I look at hardware, so I'll just tell you that if I were in your business, I wouldn't buy that. Since you're one of the relatively small number of people here who do work with models complex enough for this sort of hardware, you could go to the more expensive Quadros - the 5000 does throw down in SW (or save some money and look at the Firepro V8800, which also throws down but not quite as well - anyway, either of these would be a big upgrade over your 4870) but I'd check with your software vendors first.

 

BTW, I spoke with a rep about my ATT phone bill today. What she told me was so confusing, I gave up on the conversation and got her to send me a paper bill.

[Elliot]

Andrew

 

Thanks a lot.... as always you are able to describe things in a way this "old bird" can understand. Thanks a lot.

 

Regarding the phone bill.... If we put a thread on this subject it will cause a traffic jam for Jeff... Among our kids, wife and me we have accounts with Sprint, ATT and Verizon..... I just pay...... but I think that by the time you finish your new endeavor you could count on me as a client for a Class Action type of project..... Hi hi hi I may have given a good idea to you..... Hi hi hi hi Specialize on communications overcharge....

 

It's funny when I was a lot younger one of my heroes was a guy called Richard McGowan. He is the guy that caused ATT to be split. he had a heart replacement and died around the end of the 90's. He broke them up but now they are back to what they used to be. I don't care and wish them well, but I still don't understand the phone bill. We only use it for DSL and we get all kind of charges that we do not understand.... Your future may be already plotted by this email...... Hi hi hi

 

Happy Holidays

Elliot

[paneli]

It means Quadros are just a gimic? an underclocked Geforce?

 

I know for sure that Maxtreme driver is available only for Quadros. right?

I heard of people buying Geforces, switching firmwares to a Quadro and wallah.. Is it possible? can it fool the Maxtreme driver?

is there any risks?

 

On the other hand,

If none of the above is possible - what's the point comparing Quadros to Geforces?

Same hardware - different firmware.

[Elliot]

Ilya

 

I have spent most of the day calling the different Product Managers of these companies. My conclusion is almost like you and Andrew. I am about to buy an average card again. Two years ago they got me with a Quadro 5800FX and found the gamer card was better. After talking with all these specialist I think this the same old story as before, just marketing fancy words that mean 5% speed gain for two or three times the price.

 

Most of the people I have talk today can not explain to me what is CUDA in a practical manner as applied to AutoDESK and SolidWORKS. Interesting...... it is just sales gimmicks.

 

Go to the New Egg and search under Quadro 4000 and take a look at the reviews they have posted there.

 

Good Luck

Elliot

[AJLynn]

Whoa, that's not what I'm saying - CUDA and driving viewports in 3D apps are two different issues. A Quadro does have certain features that a Geforce does not that apply to the viewport performance in apps like Max, Revit, Solidworks etc. Though the GPU in a Quadro 6000 is an underclocked Geforce 470, the addition of these features to the firmware makes it run those apps better than a normal Geforce 470 would.

 

CUDA is a programming language that's essentially C++ with some features stripped out that compiles to run on an nVidia GPU instead of a CPU. nVidia has lately been pushing it as God's gift to everything. For us, its primary usefulness is that render engines can be run on the GPU, which nVidia would like us to believe is the proper way to do it. They promote that concept by giving stats like comparisons of nVidia GPUs and Intel CPUs measured in flops, and the GPUs score more flops than the CPUs, ergo they must be faster.

 

The problem with this is that those numbers are achieved by running all the "cores" of a GPU in parallel. (I don't like the use of the term "cores" because it implied parity between shader processors of a GPU and cores of a CPU. A GPU core is much, much less powerful than a CPU core.) For example, a Quadro 6000 or Tesla 2070 has 448 cores. nVidia uses terms like "super computer" to refer to these things. But due to limitations of GPU architecture and the software APIs that can run on it, these cores must run entirely independent threads, which means that the optimized sampling render algorithms we're used to can't be done efficiently unless somebody comes up with a real breakthrough algorithm. What does run is monte carlo algorithms, e.g. brute force unbiased (meaning unoptimized) sampling, e.g. something like Maxwell Render. Which is slow.

 

Now, an unreformed Geforce 470 is an inefficient as hell chip so if you run one of these things on it, which maxes out the GPU for an extended period, it's liable to overheat. When nVidia made the same core into the Quadro and Tesla versions they underclocked it to save power and heat, and made a few alterations to the firmware to make it run less aggressively and cooler. Then, because running software on the GPU requires more GPU RAM than just holding textures for games, they threw some switches in the memory controller and increased the memory on the card. (This is all accomplished in firmware and memory layout - the GPU is the same.) So for the cost of a bit of firmware programming and some RAM they dramatically increased the value to CUDA users and therefore the marketable price. Then they launched iray, which is mental ray's (which nVidia owns now) CUDA renderer, did a terrible demo to make it look faster than regular mental ray, and undoubtedly increased Quadro and Tesla sales - but if you compare, $4000 worth of Quadro running iray accomplishes renders about as quickly as $400 worth of CPU running mental ray when used by a skilled user.

 

Which is not to say that this is completely useless. Arion is more impressive than iray for presentation images, and Vray RT-GPU seems useful for doing previews. But I don't think there's currently any application of CUDA to Autocad or Solidworks, so only get a Quadro if you want it for running viewports. My hope is that programmers start coming up with better uses for GPU computing technology, and that the proprietary CUDA gets replaced in the market by the open OpenCL language, which is much more consumer friendly because it doesn't let nVidia corner the market.

[Elliot]

Andrew

 

This is all very interesting. I still remember the painful memory of two years ago. The 5800FX was like 3,200.00 and the ATI gamer was like 500. The differences among the two card were no really noticeable. For these reasons I am reluctant to believe on any of these terminologies invented to help their sales and marketing department. I am still open minded but very careful about what all these fancy names will mean at the end of the exercise.

 

We may order one of the Quadro's.

 

Thanks for your explanations........!

 

Elliot

[AJLynn]

Jeff did a set of tests on a bunch of cards: http://www.cgarchitect.com/news/Reviews/Review076_1.asp

 

Unfortunately he didn't have the models that are now current, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the ATI drivers at the time were the old ones that weren't nearly as good as the current ones - for example, I know from experience that a Radeon 5000 series is much faster than that in Cinebench (mine is a 5750, his is a 5870, and my CPU is slower, but I get twice the FPS he got) and FirePro performance drivers are currently available for Autocad and Max 2010 and 2011.

[Elliot]

Andrew

 

I was at the ATI site and I can't find the 3DS Max drivers. Could this be correct...? That ATI is definitely worth looking into it. It is almost 200 dif with the Quadro.

 

Thanks

Elliot

[AJLynn]

If you go to ati.amd.com and in the drop downs for drivers choose Workstation > FirePro 3D > FirePro V7800 > Windows 7 64 (this works for other current cards and Windows versions) right below the driver section you'll see the Performance Plugins section.

[paneli]

I was able to Biosmod my 8800GT to a FX3700. I works.

Well, i'm hard to explain.

 

Well after installing 3Ds Max Performance driver 2009 it worked well.

Untill I compared it to the 2nd workstation with the FX1700.

I found a test at evermotion.

 

8800GT@FX3700 - 3.8FPS in viewport.

FX1700 - 5FPS in viewport.

 

on the other hand -

PerformanceTest 7:

8800GT@FX3700- 3D - 1042 points.

2D - 419.5 points.

FX1700 - 3D - 331 points.

2D - 606 points.

 

Autocad 2009 both the 8800GT@FX3700 and the FX1700 performed the same.

(this scene was hard for the FX1700 anyways, so it want a surprise from this point)

 

I donno what to think anymore.

I going to flash the 8800GT to original rom and than post results.

 

EDIT

 

Just flashed back to 8800GT. No noticeable difference.

Autocad 2009 - viewport works as before.

3Ds Max 2009 - only one single project performed worse than under FX3700 rom.

 

PerformanceTest 7:

8800GT@FX3700- 3D - 1287 points.

2D - 476.1 points.

thats it. Flashing roms is pointless.

No matter what you do, Quadro is a Quadro.

I think i'll go for the Fermi 4000

Edited December 29, 2010 by Panibor

[Elliot]

Ilya and Andrew

 

Ilya........ Very interesting information you posted here.

 

This morning we purchased the Quadro 4000. Our results are a little bit un-expected.

 

When Comparing the 4870 (1gb vram) Gamer Card with the Quadro 4000 (2gb vram) this is what we observed:

 

1. On AutoCAD both cards behave very similar if not identical.

2. On 3DS Max both cards behave very similar if not identical.

 

On SOLIDWORKS.......!!!! There is a very dramatic difference.

 

3. When using SolidWORKS 2011 there is a definite and quantifiable improvement with the Quadro 4000. Just as our SW dealer had forecasted. The differences are not so much in rendering but how SW displays the model on real time. We see details not seen before. These real time images we see now will improve our design time and they look pretty on the screen.

 

Perhaps we will keep one or two computers with the Quadro. I think Andrew is totally correct on his cost / performance criteria and advise. Tomorrow we may go and buy a FirePro 7800. If we get SW to perform with the ATI the same way it performs with the Quadro 4000; Then, where we want a step higher performance than with the gamer cards we may just get the FirePro 7800.

 

Another interesting discovery was our conclusion with all the rendering crashes. The crashes was the trigger to the video card investigation. These were not the result of the gamer video card as we had been advised by 2 tech support guys. Immediately after the Quadro was installed we noticed that the crashes persisted. The log created by Win 7 said it was a hard disk transfer rate caused by a setting on the shadow overclock settings at the BIOS. The motherboard was returned to the original settings (no overclocking) and the mini-dump crashes stopped right away.

 

Just for testing purposes, after re-doing the bios, we re-installed the old gamer card 4870 ($400.00) and it worked beautiful on rendering just as the Quadro 4000 ($800.00). Same speed and same quality. On another computer we have a gamer card, the 4870 X2 ($500.00) with 2GB Vram. We think this one is even faster than the Quadro. This 4870 X2 is an over all more responsive card, the Explorer seems to be faster and so as the AutoCAD.

 

The big discovery for us is SolidWORKS. For this reason we will keep the Quadro on the machine where we are mainly using the SolidWORKS program. The difference is substantial enough to make us think that PNY and Nvidia Quadro 4000 didn't fool us this time..... Hi hi hi hi

 

Thanks

Elliot

[AJLynn]

Interesting, I hadn't seen that sort of crash before but I guess it makes sense. Video cards have nothing to do with rendering but it's true that tech support people will blame anything on an unlisted video card.

 

If you like the Radeon 4000 cards you should see the 5000 All the models are faster than the 4000 ones they appear to correspond to, and use way less power. I don't know enough about SW to tell you what's going to be faster in it, the Quadro or the FirePro.

[paneli]

Ilya and Andrew

 

Ilya........ Very interesting information you posted here.

 

This morning we purchased the Quadro 4000. Our results are a little bit un-expected.

 

When Comparing the 4870 (1gb vram) Gamer Card with the Quadro 4000 (2gb vram) this is what we observed:

 

1. On AutoCAD both cards behave very similar if not identical.

2. On 3DS Max both cards behave very similar if not identical.

 

On SOLIDWORKS.......!!!! There is a very dramatic difference.

 

3. When using SolidWORKS 2011 there is a definite and quantifiable improvement with the Quadro 4000. Just as our SW dealer had forecasted. The differences are not so much in rendering but how SW displays the model on real time. We see details not seen before. These real time images we see now will improve our design time and they look pretty on the screen.

 

Perhaps we will keep one or two computers with the Quadro. I think Andrew is totally correct on his cost / performance criteria and advise. Tomorrow we may go and buy a FirePro 7800. If we get SW to perform with the ATI the same way it performs with the Quadro 4000; Then, where we want a step higher performance than with the gamer cards we may just get the FirePro 7800.

 

Another interesting discovery was our conclusion with all the rendering crashes. The crashes was the trigger to the video card investigation. These were not the result of the gamer video card as we had been advised by 2 tech support guys. Immediately after the Quadro was installed we noticed that the crashes persisted. The log created by Win 7 said it was a hard disk transfer rate caused by a setting on the shadow overclock settings at the BIOS. The motherboard was returned to the original settings (no overclocking) and the mini-dump crashes stopped right away.

 

Just for testing purposes, after re-doing the bios, we re-installed the old gamer card 4870 ($400.00) and it worked beautiful on rendering just as the Quadro 4000 ($800.00). Same speed and same quality. On another computer we have a gamer card, the 4870 X2 ($500.00) with 2GB Vram. We think this one is even faster than the Quadro. This 4870 X2 is an over all more responsive card, the Explorer seems to be faster and so as the AutoCAD.

 

The big discovery for us is SolidWORKS. For this reason we will keep the Quadro on the machine where we are mainly using the SolidWORKS program. The difference is substantial enough to make us think that PNY and Nvidia Quadro 4000 didn't fool us this time..... Hi hi hi hi

 

Thanks

Elliot

 

Interesting, I hadn't seen that sort of crash before but I guess it makes sense. Video cards have nothing to do with rendering but it's true that tech support people will blame anything on an unlisted video card.

 

If you like the Radeon 4000 cards you should see the 5000 All the models are faster than the 4000 ones they appear to correspond to, and use way less power. I don't know enough about SW to tell you what's going to be faster in it, the Quadro or the FirePro.

 

Andrew,

I can't really afford a Quadro 5000.

For 2070$ I can afford a SLI Quadro 4000. (not sure if it will be stronger or give any benefit, but it sounds impressive )

 

I don't use SW, so I'm not concurred about it.

 

What does scares me a little bit is Elliot's results when comparing Quadro 4000 with the HD4870.

That's a hell of a result - exactly the same?

How can it be? How can an old HD4870 beat a Quadro 4000 in performance/price in 3D MAX & AUTOCAD?

 

Elliot,

Are you sure?

Can you please run this 3Ds Max file tell me what is the average FPS on each card?

It is very important to me if you could help =)

This test file I found at Evermotion's forums. I can't find the right thread, but I found only the download link.

http://www.2shared.com/file/4916332/27c6b026/City01-V1d.html

 

Also,

Please note your MAX and AUTOCAD versions

Did you installed MaxTreme Performance driver for the Quadro 4000?

Because without it the Quadro is pointless.

In Autocad 2008 the Quadro FX1700 gave me a much better result than the 8800GT.

The project was still barely 5FPS with the 1700, but the 8800GT didnt even moved.

In 2009 - both Quadro and 8800GT performed exactly the same.

Edited December 31, 2010 by Panibor

[AJLynn]

When I said the 5000, I meant the Radeon 5000 series - though I'm sure the Quadro 5000 is very nice as well.

 

Anyway. Elliot's observations make some sense. Both that Radeon and that Quadro are actually quite fast. When we're talking about viewport performance in Max with high end cards from the last couple of years, we're comparing a Bugatti to a Zonda to a McLaren to an Enzo etc. Unless you really load the things to the point where they almost can't handle it, their performance differences are very difficult to perceive.

 

It also makes sense that there would be some times when a Radeon 4870 would outperform a Quadro 4000. A Quadro 4000 is a GF100 with 256 cores at 475MHz. This is actually a considerably slower GPU than any of the Geforce GF100 based cards - the slowest of which is the GTX 465, which has 352 cores at 607MHz. If that Quadro were running game benchmarks in Direct3D its performance would be very close to the regular 4870, and not nearly as fast as the 4870x2. In 3D apps, the better drivers will usually give a Quadro a substantial improvement, but remember that in Max we're still working in Direct3D and there are still going to be situations where the GPU power alone is determinative.

 

There are also situations where one company's drivers just flat out work better with some program and their cards are much faster than the competition. For example, combining a Geforce with certain versions of Revit gives you so many glitches many people consider it completely unusable, and a Radeon is so good at the shaded OpenGL mode that Cinema4D uses in Cinebench 11.5 that my i5-760 box with a Radeon 5750 (those are very modestly priced parts) is one of the highest OpenGL scores on cbscores.com - faster than a Geforce 480 on a 4.5GHz OC'ed i7, Quadro 5000 on an OC'ed dual-six Xeon, etc. This is not to say that a midrange Radeon is magical or anything, just that each of these cards has its strengths and weaknesses.

[Elliot]

Ilya

 

we are not very technical on this end, we are no even good at rendering. We are a mechanical engineering firm doing BIM and using our models on 3DS Max. This way the mechanical contractors - installers can understand better.

 

We took your file and on the Vray 2001 Demo it took 4.4s to render with the I7-980. On Mental Ray it took about the same. On the 3 year old laptop it took 12s with a Quadro 1600, on the I-7 965 with the Radeon 4870 it took 6s.

 

We are using

3DS Max 2011

Motherboard ASUS Rampage II Extreme I7-965 12 gb

Motherboard ASUS Rampage III Extreme I7-980 24 gb

SATA Raid II (Not overclocked) on boths systems

 

We are not very technical, we just feel there is no justification to have a few seconds more of speed. Our models are very clumsy and big. They are models for piping and structural support of devices inside the hospitals. They have many polygons. We see more or less the same amount of rendering speeds. Perhaps the Quadro 4000 is just a tiny little bit faster. We can not justify buy 28 Quadros for our computers. Perhaps we can buy 1 or 2 to save a few seconds.

 

If you look back at our archives on CG Architect you will see that over the years we have had this same conversations on a continuous basis. The reason is because these manufacturers keep tempting us with the very complex wording on terms that we are not very sure to understand. What do they mean....? All I know is that no matter what we get, it will be obsolete in 18 months. That' why I like the gamer cards, just throw them away. How can I not feel guilty about throwing away the Quadro 5800 FX for which we paid over 3 thousand dollars. These 5800FX never outperformed the 4870 X2.

 

We are confused too. We see no justification in saving a few seconds. Our good modeling guys are so good that once they have the 3D model done they don't need to render that many times. They already know how to model correctly and perhaps they need just a few render times to get it fine tuned. Why do we need all these super-fast cards..... I don't still know. The young kids at the office think I am the old grumpy man looking at the bottom line.

 

On this times of economic hardships when there is 60% less work available....... when for the available projects the CEO of these clients are looking at the bottom number...... How can we justify buying all these cards...... What I tell the young kids at the office is that all these close analysis (preached by Andrew) of cost versus performance is what could save the bottom line at the office and keep us open for business.

 

We should all go back to the manufacturers and tell them we will buy their fluff if they show us tangible speed and quality gains in the order of 50% or more.....! Hi hi hi hi

 

Regards Happy New 2011

Elliot

Edited December 31, 2010 by Elliot

[Superkames]

@Panibor : tested with that file , the lowest fps (Smooth+ highlight + Egde Faces) was about 5.6 fps , and about 6.3 fps (AMD performance plugins) , a I7 might be better than my AMD 1055T.

 

TIME: 67 secs/500 frames

Video CARD: Gigabyte HD4850

CPU: AMD 1055T@3.5ghz

SO: Win 7 Ultimate x64

MAX Version: 3ds max 2011 x64

System Driver: Catalyst 10.12

Max Driver: Direct X9

Screen Resolution: 1680*1050

RAM: 4GB(2*2gb) DDR2 @ 1000mhz

 

TIME: 58 secs/500 frames

Video CARD: Gigabyte HD4850@FireproV8700

CPU: AMD 1055T@3.5ghz

SO: Win 7 Ultimate x64

MAX Version: 3ds max 2011 x64

System Driver: Catalyst 10.12

Max Driver: AMD performance plugins

Screen Resolution: 1680*1050

RAM: 4GB(2*2gb) DDR2 @ 1000mhz

 

Could you please help me to test with my file in this thread..

Edited January 1, 2011 by Superkames