GTX or Quadro?

[junglee]

Material Editor: lag is a major complain for many users. I believe is totally CPU bount = no GPU has much to do with it.

Even 2P systems have issues with the material editor, I don't know even if the process of rendering the little thumbnail previews is multithreaded or not...

 

Viewport: If it wasn't for the 2014 changes that I have no experience with, I would say to you fair and straight that I'd doubt that you will see much of an improvement outside compute getting any GTX over your 660. 770s, 780s and Titans included.

 

Even with Quadros, it totally depends on model and scene complexity but was mostly a driver thing, as Quadros never had "magic" hardware...the contrary, most of them were slower than equally priced GTX (consumer cards) by a large margin.

 

I don't know whether "fixing" the viewport for GTX cards "broke" Quadros with 2014, and at the same time allowed similar performance tiering than that you would see with games etc, where a 780 is indeed much faster than a 770, and a 770 notably faster than a 660.

I also don't know what kind of models you have and if 4GB will make any difference over the 2GB. In my case, having a 670 4GB, I have never seen memory allocation bigger than 1.4GB for viewports. I have pushed pass that only with modded games and when rendering with VRay RT GPU.

And that is memory allocation, usually a generous amount "above" what the application really needs (think of it Photoshop scratch disk or RAM limit - it gets X amount allocated for exclusive use if it needs to, doesn't mean it uses it every time you launch the app and edit small images).

 

Your case might be different, and super large textures or w/e situation might benefit you going 4GB...I don't have the resources or time to actually test all those scenarios and come up with a more educated opinion at the moment, but I would not expect even close to 50% performance increase going 770 4GB over your current 660. I would probably suggest you sticking with the 660 and accept the nature of the "beast" and its limitations.

 

So I've tested my new computer and found few things.

 

My computer came with faulty RAM and it was reading only 8GB instead of 16GB and I noticed SUBSTANTIAL lag in viewport operation/any commands that I do in 3ds max. FYI my old computer has i-7 2.6Ghz with 24gb Ram with 1GB GTX 550ti.

 

I never knew RAM could affect this much for normal 3ds max operation...

 

And GTX660 1.5GB in a new computer makes viewport response whole lot faster than 550ti. I constantly get 20~30FPS in shaded mode with about 8 mil polygon partly revit based model where I used to get 2~3 FPS with GTX 550ti. But then, lack of memory slows the whole thing once I try to pull any commands.

 

And the other model where it has about 16 mil polygon with full lighting set up also came back with at least 15~20FPS faster than the old one.

Although it's almost as fast or sometimes faster than Quadro 4000 that I use from work PC, I think performance itself is not linear as Quadro. It's little bumpy and gets faster/slower time to time. Maybe it's lack of RAM and might get better once I replace the motherboard.

 

Either way, faster CPU/subpar GPU made my working experience whole lot nicer.

I'll report back once I get more time with this new set up.

[unrinoceronte]

So I've tested my new computer and found few things.

 

..... I constantly get 20~30FPS in shaded mode with about 8 mil polygon partly revit based model where I used to get 2~3 FPS with GTX 550ti. ...

 

Hi Jung Lee, as a side subject, and just out of curiosity, how do you measure the "20~30FPS" thing of your GPU? is that a software, or is it included in 3ds max? I am interested in trying it out on my GPU...

[Dimitris Tolios]

Hi Jung Lee, as a side subject, and just out of curiosity, how do you measure the "20~30FPS" thing of your GPU? is that a software, or is it included in 3ds max? I am interested in trying it out on my GPU...

 

Just press 7 (the number 7 on your keyboard) or go to Views>xView>Show Statistics

[unrinoceronte]

Thank you, " show statistics " did the trick!

[djgraphics]

I am someone that is building a computer for the first time. My only real need for improvement over my cheap laptop is render speed. I really dislike using the CPU and am curious about GPU rendering. The view port has never been an issue.

 

I have read so many articles and my head is spinning. I was about to buy a GTX770. Then read that is is crippled so that Quadros could be marketed. Then I just read that the K2000 also is crippled.

 

What should I do as a first time GPU user that is wanting much faster final renders? I just bought an i7 and am currently using an i3 CPU. Hopefully that helps some. These CUDA Cores sounds really interesting, but everyone seems to have differing opinions onn if they work or not. My budget is about $450.

 

Thanks!

[Krisztian Gulyas]

With a good quadro you"ll get good viewport performance over many polygons. With a fast GTX you'll get shorter render times.

It is good the GPU has to have enough memory so the whole scene fits in that (or the gpu cant render it).

I haven't used gpu for rendering so far but I think it has some limitations compared to cpu rendering based on thing I've read about this topic.

If you want to use you gpu for rendering, then buy one with at least 3GB of ram for $400-$450

...or you can buy a nice water cooler for $80-$150 and crank that i7 up, and buy a graphics card for $300-$350 (for example a gtx 670 which is still good enough). You'll have a good gpu for "smaller scenes" and a good cpu for every scene.

[Zdravko Barisic]

I will tell the words of friend of mine, in short, it is like next:

5000 houses, 1000s of proxies, 100s of roads, etc...10s of multiscatter.... the scene was about 1GB /without proxy/

so...the only graphic card, which could OPEN the file, was Quadro 4000, with GTX680-770, the opening file itself, was about 20mins, and then...NOTHING! you can do NOTHING! simple...everything is frozen.

Quadro 4000 was the only card who could even open the scene.

....

But thats is very special scenario of workflow, you can work for years, and do not have scene like that, or even whole life, for most of the workflows, GTXQuadro is about 85-90100.

Years ago, in the time of GF4 and Quadro 980XGL, is was 15-25100, I remember that times vey well, still!

[AJLynn]

If you're like most of the people here a Geforce 770 is more than enough power. If you do projects like the one Zdravko described, get a Quadro, but for most arch vis work a midrange Geforce or Radeon is fine.

[kraken]

Hi you all. Which GPU wood you recommend for 3ds Max scenes with 200-260 mln polys. My budget is about 1000$.

[paneli]

I recently bought a new rig which was identical to my previous one (almost) and put a GTX 780 instead of a Quadro 4000.

 

As I work In Max 2014 - IMO the Quadro 4000 is garbage. Scenes that it barely opens the GTX 780 loads in a blink of an eye.

[Dimitris Tolios]

I recently bought a new rig which was identical to my previous one (almost) and put a GTX 780 instead of a Quadro 4000.

 

As I work In Max 2014 - IMO the Quadro 4000 is garbage. Scenes that it barely opens the GTX 780 loads in a blink of an eye.

 

3DS Max 2014 uses a very aggressive adaptive degradation routine that speeds things up.

At least with my Titan, models with 100M polys or more, very fast drop to

 

I did not have the patience to switch to a Quadro 4000 which I do have @ hand, but my latest rig itteration does make GPU swaps a hassle.

 

If degradation is just as bad with the Quadro, indeed there is no benefit in 3DS Max.

But if the Quadro drivers allow it to go further without the graphics being proxied, then...

[joelmcwilliam]

Nice rig.

 

I bet you overclocked the shit out of it.

[Andrew1]

wow nice rig, what is the big deal with water cooling I see in your case you got more fans than my conventional cooled Antec 900 has,

my system cpu sits idle at between 27-29 c, what cpu do you have in there, what speed is it running and what temps if you don't mind me asking.

I just assembled my new system , but haven't overclocked it yet, just observing how it performs on default 3.4 ghz speeds...

[unrinoceronte]

I did not have the patience to switch to a Quadro 4000 which I do have @ hand, but my latest rig itteration does make GPU swaps a hassle.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]50169[/ATTACH]

 

I do not get this Rig... am i blind or where is the PSU? ...besides that, did you Disasembled the GPU to attach a watercooler to it? Why so many fans... Or are you in the process of building it? Would be cool to see all your specs if it is your New baby...

 

Isnt it risky to have the HDDs in the bottom, in case there is a Spill of water coolant in your system? , and what are those many packed slim white cables that are on the middle right of the Mobo?

 

That FOOBOX already looks like a PRO-Brand... i would happily buy one of those!!

[AJLynn]

Interesting. I see you've got power coming through slots in the back plane. Is that one side of a cube type case, where the PSU and drives are on the other side? I can see how that would improve access and cooling - in my case (10 year old Lian-Li PC60 series) even with SATA the cables going to the drives clutter things up.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Javier, the case is the Corsair 540 AIR. Google it. It is very cool.

Room for E-ATX board with 4x dual slot GPUs (this is a GTX Titan "wearing" the XSPC block), and as you can see

The PSU sits on the other compartment of the 540 AIR, and in my case so is the pump, cabling etc.

 

The case can fit a combination of radiators, In my case a 360mm up front and a 240mm on the top, both in push pull (fans on either side of the rad).

That's a total of 11 fans, 10x 120mm for the rads + the rear 140 exhaust). The idea is that all these fans can push a lot of air through the rads and out of the case without the need of high RPM.

 

The CPU is 3930K and I've been doing 5,0GHz on it in the 60s (oC). It ended up holding a 4.7GHz for 24/7, as the Voltages needed to be a bit high to maintain the 5, and speed differences where very small (this is already a 1.5GHz overclock over the normal 3.2). In these speeds, the 3930K already pulls upwards of 300W. Along with the Titan pushing numbers at 100% and 1250MHz, the whole system is pulling 670W off the wall (at least that's what my Kill-A-Watt says).

 

The photo is of the build being incomplete, but it is only because I was too busy lately to take pictures of the finished rig...is actually identical, with a little piece of tubing (and a few compresion 90 deg fittings) added to complete the loop on the upper left corner (if you see the 240 rad has its inlet "open" in the pic).

[unrinoceronte]

Noted... I will do some research in those components...they got my attention....I like how clean it looks with that XSPC water cooler. 1.5 overclock is almost 50%, that is VERY significant...

[jurajpollak]

Hello, new here but wanted to put my insight and experience, down.

 

I am an architect and do extensive modelling in Microstation, Rhino and Max and we went through Quadro cards as well as GTX.

Let me tell you for me and I can recommend to anyone doing CAD is GTX all the way!

 

We started with quadro 600 through quadro 2000 and 4000, and now I spec computers without graphics from our supplier and get GTX cards separatelly.

We now have GTX 660s, one 680, 760 and 770...

 

They work MUCH better than any quadro we had. Performance is great, twisting models around either wireframe or shaded...

 

The quadro 4000 is/was roughly the same price than the gtx 680. But the quadro does not live up to the gtx at all. On paper probably, but real use? No way.

Perhaps the new K6000 is great and as it is ''designed'' for pro use then that one I could believe works well. But hey is is 4 times the price of the 780TI!!!

 

So for anyone not willing to pay £4000 for a graphic card I say GTX all the way for CAD. The GTX 660 goes for £140, how much quadro power will that buy you?

 

Real Architect's experience here, and you can believe me forget Quadro. Overpriced and performance and lifetime advantages over GTX ore on paper only.

 

Oh not to mention, any high end graphics will outperform the rest of your system. You need tons of ram for what we do at least 16-24GB, you need fast SSDs and working from your computer not from the network server.

 

Hope this helps someone to decide... Cheers

Edited December 13, 2013 by jurajpollak

[RyderSK]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]50169[/ATTACH]

 

 

 

I shake my head when I see these type of builds but it's still very impressive. But what I really like, how clean you made it, colors, etc. Definitely far from the red Leds and BlingBling of most overclockers build. Very very impressive..

 

Edit: Would it be far fetched if you made a post on your blog with this and how much does the cooling system cost and how much time does it take to set it up ?

Edited December 13, 2013 by RyderSK

[Dimitris Tolios]

I shake my head when I see these type of builds but it's still very impressive. But what I really like, how clean you made it, colors, etc. Definitely far from the red Leds and BlingBling of most overclockers build. Very very impressive..

 

Edit: Would it be far fetched if you made a post on your blog with this and how much does the cooling system cost and how much time does it take to set it up ?

 

It is not far fetched...I just had some family issues "invade" my personal space and time (i.e. host the inlaws for a couple of months) so personal projects were postponed a bit, as weekends are Mr. Tour-Guide.

 

At least the thing is up and running without issues the last few months.

 

I could write walls and walls of text for WC, but lets say that you can get perfectly fine open loop kits with 240mm rads starting $140 or so (all of my loop is XSPC based, I like their Raystorm waterblock, and are relatively great price/performance)

Those usually beat the CLCs, mainly due to components allowing for much better waterflow (almost always much bigger/less restrictive tubing, better/bigger/highly optimized waterblocks, stronger - but not noisier really - pumps).

 

Technically you can go open loop with $140-150 for the basic CPU loop, and add a GPU block (full cover, includes RAM and VRM cooling usually) in the $70~100 range ontop of it. The rest are eye-candy, with the exception of more expensive pumps once you start adding multiple blocks/rads that will start chocking the basic (still 2-3x the flow of CLC block embedded pumps) included in starter kits.

 

Rule of thumb is 120mm of rad area per component. Others say 100W of heat to be removed per 120mm of Rad space.

In reality it is all about what DT you want (component/ambient). A stock s2011 hex with a GTX 760/770 will do fine on 2x120mm rad space.

A heavily clocked 3930/4930 might need a 240mm by itself, even more (excess of 250W).

 

Long story-short, my loop cost was in the $350-380 range (current prices, retail), including compression fittings, 10x fans, a pretty expensive Titan waterblock + backplate and the big pump, but it could be 90-95% of the cooling performance spending $100-150 less.

 

Setup time was a lazy weekend. Planning time, and waiting for parts in the mail, fishing discounts, etc, was around a month. Was my 1st loop in ages, and I was one of the very early adopters to get the 540 Air case, so the loop examples for it were not that many.

Should take less than half the planning if I was to do it again in a more conventional case.

Edited December 13, 2013 by dtolios

[RyderSK]

Much thanks Dimitris. 400 dollars, that's hardly that expensive for all that. I thought 800-1000.

 

Well, I'll see if I'll have weak moment next year.

[Zdravko Barisic]

Any news on GTXQuadro battle front?

[kevin miller]

Juraj,

 

I am curious what you meant by "I shake my head at these builds" comment. I am thinking of completing a new build so I am trying to learn as much as I can since I am no computer expert. I thought this discussion was really good although maybe a little above my head.

[RyderSK]

Juraj,

 

I am curious what you meant by "I shake my head at these builds" comment.

 

The comment was only intended at Dimitris's computer, but there's nothing to look further into :- ) The only point was that I consider such builds to be bit unnecessary luxury, hinting at the custom water cooling loop and special case (heh and maybe his Titan GTX). Really, just snide remark, since I build my computers slightly more utilitarian (but still with the mostly rather expensive parts), but his build did get my inner nerdy part slightly jealous. And as he wrote above, it actually wasn't even much expensive at all.

[kevin miller]

I kind of thought that is what you meant. Since I understand the point, I am curious to how much of a performance gain there is to such builds. I am thinking of building a second workstation. My first one was based on an I7 2600K 3.4 overclocked to 4.5. I have 16 gigs of 1600 speed ram with a ATI firepro GL7800 video card. I have a 128 gig SSD and 2 1 terabyte barracudas. I run regular air cooling but I have hit temps above 80 degrees C when doing renderings that last longer than 3 hours. I've actually topped out at 93 degrees which concerns me. Part of me feels the processor was not quite seated correctly with thermal paste but I've left it go since I normally run between 35-50 doing normal 3D stuff with quick renderings. Plus, the unit has run quite stable and pretty hard over the last 3 years.

 

I've done some research and many say that jumping from my current I7 to the new extreme I7 is not worth the money. I am willing to jump if I am realizing around a 20% gain in rendering speed with vray or vray RT but I have not read anywhere that this is yet the case. I did hear the next Intel chip release could be worth it if it hits 8 cores and utilizes the new ram coming out. So my thoughts are at this point center around probably to keep using my current config and wait until early 2015 to build new again.

 

I am curious what you opinion would be.