Need advice on video card purchase

[nailuj]

Hi,

 

I'm about to buy a new P4/2.6ghz PC for work use (Autocad, ArchiCad, 3DS, SketchUp, Photoshop, and occasional simple animation rendering) and am having trouble selecting an appropriate video card. Could someone please help ?

 

I don't have a big budget - people have recommended me the lower-range of Quadro4's but I was wondering if the GeForce FX's (which are newer but cheaper here) could be used instead ?

 

I'm not extremely tech savvy, so some straight forward advice from all you experts would be really appreciated, thank you very much.

 

Cheers !

Julian

[bigcahunak]

Hi,

I'll try to make it short...

Accept for 3ds you mentioned, you won't have any problem with any of the other mentioned programs.

Truth is you won't have any problem at all, as I work with all of them on a GF2 GTS.

But, in 3ds if you are going to be working on huge files with millions of polys, you might run into slow orbiting of the model, but thats about all. For most architectural work with low poly count models, any FX based card is an "overkill".

Just FYI, I'm getting a new machine next week and in the best scenario, my vid card is going to be an FX 5200.

Good luck.

[doimus]

Hi, Julian

 

Yes, you can use "ordinary" Geforce card for your work... in fact, with some tweaking you can turn it into a Quadro! :angecool:

 

All you need is a small freeware tool called RivaTuner and with few clicks and one driver reinstallation you can make yor system think there's a pro-card inside. I'm using GF2 in this configuration for some time now and couldn't be more satisfied... Fact is, you don't get performance equal to Quadro, but stability and image quality are drastically improved.

 

One more thing:

You should consider one of the Geforce4 cards instead of FX, as they produce much less heat and noise wich is more important in working environment than pure performance...