Advice on Increasing my System Performance

[yourfather]

Hello,

 

I have the following system listed below. Does anyone have some advice on how to increase this systems ability to handle "ViewPort" rendering with "Realistic" mode selected?

 

I have a very basic room, walls, ceiling, floor and some furniture. I then added a clients product (imported a STEP file from the original engineering 3D file). The scene is lit with a daylight system.

 

If i turn on "Realistic" in the viewport, the system crawls. I use Realistic in the viewport because i want to get an idea of the shadows and light.

 

P.S. I render with Mental Ray but will probably switch to Vray in 2014 (maybe)

 

 

My System:

Dell Workstation

Xeon processor 6 core

32 Gigs of ram

Quaddro K4000

750 Watt Power Supply

1 Terabyte 7200 rpm hard drive

 

 

Edit: Im reading some other threads about viewport performance. It looks like the Quaddro k4000s aren't really that great and I should buy a gtx. But having a gtx and Quaddro k4000 might cause driver conflicts? Is there a simple solution? Im not that great with hardware and software trouble shooting.

Edited December 23, 2013 by yourfather

[Dimitris Tolios]

Software used?

Version?

Polygon count before and after the STEP import?

 

When you say realistic you mean just the viewport engine, right?

If you are trying iray or another real time progressive rendering engine for preview/active-shade mode with a single card - quadro or not - viewport response performance suffers as the GPU is pushed hard by the RT engine in the active-shade window.

 

The K4000 is bad for GPGPU, yes, but for viewports something has to be really wrong for a GTX to be faster. Just as good (or just as bad) with the new degradation engines in 3DS Max 2014 etc, yes, but better?

Edited December 23, 2013 by dtolios

[yourfather]

Hi Dimitris,

 

I will search on how to check the polygon count.

 

These are engineering files I'm importing from STEP files and have all the motors, screws etc. I convert the models to editable ploys and delete as much geometry as i can, but they are still complex models.

 

I am using 3Ds max 2013 and Mental Ray. The system becomes very unresponsive while using the material editor and just clicking around the interface. I would like to use the "Realistic" option in the viewport but it isn't possible. I am using mental ray in the viewport. I think i should change this to "default scan line".

[Francisco Penaloza]

Viewport in Max 2013 was very bad, with the latest release 2014 you finally can see some advance with nitrus system.

Having said that, check your drivers, try to select the one that are Autodesk certified, no the latest from NVidia, look for the 3dsMax 2013 certified.

Other than that depending of the size of your scene will be your performance, honestly I never use realistic for the same reason, way to slow for large scenes, if you are modeling A object or a few elements it works fine.

 

If you switch to VRay you won't get the same viewport options, Nitrus is designed with Mental Ray in mind so switching to VRay is not the solution, it wont affect your viewport performance at all.

[yourfather]

Thank you,

 

Unfortunately, 3ds max doesn't have a certified driver for the K4000. I shouldn't have bought that card. I thought I did enough research. Live and learn I guess.

 

Thanks again for the info.

[numerobis]

Pixomondo says the K4000 works fine and is fast...

http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/pixomondo-quadro-case-study-uk.html

 

maybe you should ask them for a driver.

 

You should contact autodesk or nvidia - there must be a driver for max 2013 (if pixomondo started feb 2013 )

 

Or you could try the driver for max 2014:

http://www.nvidia.de/object/quadro-certified-drivers.html#partner_id=11&application_id=310&page=driverSelected

[Zdravko Barisic]

Thank you,

 

Unfortunately, 3ds max doesn't have a certified driver for the K4000. I shouldn't have bought that card. I thought I did enough research. Live and learn I guess.

 

Thanks again for the info.

 

For some reason, since MAX 2011, nVIDIA stop working on MAXtreme drivers...very said, I remember quite well!

[elegantyang]

These are engineering files I'm importing from STEP files and have all the motors, screws etc. I convert the models to editable ploys and delete as much geometry as i can, but they are still complex models.