need advice on temporary replacement GFX card?

[nickdk]

Hello everyone,

 

I'm currently using two watercooled gtx580's in my rig, but there's some problems with the hardware so I need to get a new GFX card that I can use for a period, what should I buy?

The work is sketchup and 3dsmax modeling.

I prefer something that isn't too noisy/hot and not too expensive since this will only be used as backup gfx card.

I don't do much GPU rendering so the primary concern is that it is fast in the application environment. I'm not up to speed on what's on the marked for us 3d viz people, so if anyone can recommend me a card please do so

 

Regards

Nick

[AJLynn]

Two water cooled 580's? Please tell me that you also do GPU rendering or game on that, because you've got such overkill if this is just for Max and Sketchup normal use.

 

What kind of money do you want to spend on this? Is it just while you wait for your vendor to send the cards back? If so, unless you work on really complex models you can use something like this Radeon or this Geforce card and it will be more than enough.

[nickdk]

thank you for the reply Andrew :-)

 

When i created the machine I thought I would spend more time doing GPU based work but it hasn't worked out so well. I do use it for gaming, but it's quite rare.

I'm willing to spend 500$ or so on this replacement card.

I have had some issues with the GTX cards and I would like have a backup card that I can plugin if something serious happens.

So I don't think my requirements are that high, i just need artifact free view ports and fair speed

[Tommy L]

Wow, you must have money to burn. I put a GTX580 in my machine, and havent thought about it since. A backup? If it goes down Ill run to the store and buy a new one.

[nickdk]

I just wanted to know if there any good backup cards on the market that don't produce so much heat and noise and still have decent power?

[AJLynn]

Okay, if you don't do GPU rendering and you don't game heavily there's no reason to have those two Geforce cards. Put one in another machine, sell them on eBay, whatever. The money is better spent on beer. If you were able to fully utilize those GPUs, which Max will not do, they'd be burning more than 600W under load.

 

Now, you want a video card that costs up to $500 and isn't crazy, and it sounds like it shouldn't be a Geforce? I have two suggestions: FirePro V5900 (which is what I'd recommend to any 3D artist with a $500 budget who doesn't care about CUDA) or, to be more reasonable, a Radeon 7850. The 7850 is as powerful as a Geforce GTX 570, but costs less and uses half the power. That's 130W less under load.

[nickdk]

Thank you Andrew,

 

I have nothing against nvidia, I don't know if I need CUDA, I do use Vray RT once in a while but if ATI works just as good then it's fine