Can ATI Radeons run OpenGL professional 3D softwares?

[WalkingDead]

In particularly Softimage 3.8 sp1 and XSI under Windows 2000 or NT4. Maybe upgrade later to 3D Studio Max, Lightwave 6 or Maya 3. Also any version of the ATI Radeons has digital output? I'm thinking about getting a LCD flatpanel.

I'm using ELSA Gloria II right now which is using the nVidia Quadro chips. It's very fast but too damn expensive, Gloria III will costs over $1000, and the 2D image quality in far inferior to that any ATI cards I had used. I need 2D quality to do Photoshop, Painter & Illustrator.

 

[Rent]

A 64mb DDR DVI Radeon is in the works, if not done already. I have no clue about how to get it.

Yes, it should run your Professional 3d Software. I've seen it run Bryce4 in Win2k, but otherwise I do not know if 3DSMax will run.

 

[Noriaki]

Of course it will
I don't know how it will compare in speed to the GloriaII though.

A 32MB DDR Radeon retail has DVI-output I think, and so does the All-in-Wonder.

The 64MB doesn't because it has Vivo instead unfortunately.

 

[Rigoletto]

The T&L unit is disappointing in comparison with NVIDIA. Like half as fast at most. Over at Tom's or Ace's hardware.

 

[BenSkywalker]

"In particularly Softimage 3.8 sp1 and XSI under Windows 2000 or NT4. Maybe upgrade later to 3D Studio Max, Lightwave 6 or Maya 3."

It should run 3DSM and Lightwave fine as far as stability, they don't tend to be too particular like Maya and SI. Image quality is another concern, the Radeon is extremely poor at 3D image quality.

Excessive pixel popping, inaccurate Z buffer(polygon flickering), dropped polygons, not to mention it is slow, quite a bit slower then the GF1 SDR in pro 3D applications. BTW- I definately wouldn't consider moving to Lightwave or 3DSM an upgrade from Softimage, Maya is arguable(only talking about final output).

"I'm thinking about getting a LCD flatpanel."
"and the 2D image quality in far inferior to that any ATI cards I had used."

Do you know anyone that can handle modding a board for you? Changing a GeForce based board into a Quadro only involves a simple resolder of a couple resistors. Even if you don't know anyone or wouldn't want to do it yourself, the GeForce based boards will still be much faster, and they have no problem with 2D image quality using DVI out. I would reccomend either the Hercules GeForce DDR or the Hercules Geforce2 Ultra, but not the Herc GF2, the way in which it handles DVI leaves it slightly lacking compared to the GF1 DDR or GF2U.

If you move to a digital LCD with a DVI GF based board I find it extremely unlikely you will be disappointed with the 2D quality, they are very impressive when paired together.

 

[WalkingDead]

Thanks BenSkywalker,

Upgrading to 3D Studio Max 3.1 or Lightwave 6 is a big upgrade for us because there are 4 or 5 versions difference between our Softimage 3.8 Sp1 and latest XSI version.

I think I'll take your suggestion on converting a GeForce2 based card with a digital LCD Flat Panel. Thanks again.

 

[dawks]

Dont know if it matters, but I run 3D Studio Max 3.1 on my TNT card with Detonator 5.32 with no problems at all. I am running WinMe.

I did not try in Win2K when I had it installed.. But im sure Softimage and 3D Studio run with a Geforce in Win2K.

---

Flat Panels.. ugh.. I guess its cool if you can charge it to your company.. But I would not buy one myself.. I'd prefer a highend Sony 24" Trinitron.. hehe..

 

[Modus]

BenSkywalker,

<<Image quality is another concern, the Radeon is extremely poor at 3D image quality. . . Excessive pixel popping, inaccurate Z buffer(polygon flickering), dropped polygons>>

Are you talking 3D image quality for gaming or for professional apps? Because I haven't seen a single reviewer state that the ATi 3D gaming image quality was anything less than stellar.

Modus

 

[BenSkywalker]

WalkingDead-

&quot;Upgrading to 3D Studio Max 3.1 or Lightwave 6 is a big upgrade for us because there are 4 or 5 versions difference between our Softimage 3.8 Sp1 and latest XSI version.&quot;

3DSM is at version 4.0 and Lightwave is at version 6.5. I haven't had any hands on time with either of those, but moving from 3.8sp1 to 3DSM 3.1 or Lightwave6 may leave you a bit disappointed. What are you using it for?

Modus-

&quot;Are you talking 3D image quality for gaming or for professional apps?&quot;

Look at the title of the thread

Seriously, this is an issue with mainly pro 3D apps. I have seen some minor issues in games, but nothing major and they are less and less common with driver updates it seems at least for games.

 

[EvilDonnyboy]

Ben is prolly talkin about Pro apps. Radeon is fine w/ consumer games.

Maybe this is related to &quot;hirearchial Z&quot; (don't know if i speled that write ), or the other &quot;hyper z&quot; stuff.

 

[Modus]

K, just making sure.

Modus

 

[WalkingDead]

BenSkywalker,

I work part-time for a university that teaches 3D apps. Those cheap bastard that are in charge of the money come up with this idea of buying GF2 MX for running Softimage, which also one of their bright ideas, instead of a professional 3D card. I just want to know if ATI Radeon is a better choice.

I'm not saying Softimage is a bad 3D package in current version. However our school has not upgraded for 4 or 5 version. Even the current version is too complex for beginners to learn plus very few places in the industry are using it nowaday. It still has a good rendering engine and the best animation but 3D Studio Max and Lightwave are better in everything else plus is much easier to learn. Maya is just as complicated as Softimage and costs way too much.

Softimage 3.8 has a miserable interface comparing to current 3DSM and Lightwave. The interface was designed by French Canandian engineers &amp; that's why is so crapy. Odd keyboard commands, buttons all over the place &amp; all in shortened names instead of icons. It took them couple updates to change undo/redo to Ctrl-Z instead of U-left mouse button &amp; right mouse button. There're many other interface junks like that in the whole app. Modelling is equally bad and the particle engine and rendering engine are separate programs. I use all 3 of those 3D programs (still learning Lightwave) &amp; I can get much more done with 3DSM &amp; Lightwave.

Oh yeah, the LCD flat panel is for my own personal use at home.

 

[Modus]

Hey, I hail from Montreal, Quebec. C'est pas gentile!

Modus

 

[WalkingDead]

Ops, don't mean to offending you. Sorry.

 

[Modus]

Heh, well technically I'm not French Canadian as both my parents are English-speaking of British and German descent. Still, I happen to know a very, very smart French Canadian computer engineer, though I'm sure he'd just laugh at your comment. I wasn't offended anyways.

Modus

 

[BenSkywalker]

&quot;It still has a good rendering engine and the best animation&quot;

Always my top two concerns, could be why I wouldn't consider moving to 3DSM or Lightwave an upgrade. I hear your point about the complexity of the applications, are you teaching general 3D visualization? In terms of interface, I think Caligari has them all whipped, though you can't do all the things you can in the others. Clearly if you are interested in teaching an application for useage(ie an animation studio looking for a person trained in xx application) then you wouldn't want to use tS, but it does do quite nicely for teaching the basic principles of 3D visualization.

&quot;Those cheap bastard that are in charge of the money come up with this idea of buying GF2 MX for running Softimage, which also one of their bright ideas, instead of a professional 3D card. I just want to know if ATI Radeon is a better choice.&quot;

I think you will find that the GF2MX does quite a bit better in relation to pro boards then you are thinking. The GF2MX is certified for SoftImage, the SGI NT based workstations are not. The only boards that I can think of, besides nVidia(everything since the TNT2 using nV reference drivers) that has been certified to SI are several 3DLabs offerings, one E&amp;S board(Tornado IIRC properly) and the FireGL. ATi has never had a board certified, their OpenGL ICD is quite bad. BTW- You can mod the GF2MX to a QuadroMX the same as you can a GF2 to a Quadro2.

For Lightwave I would expect the Radeon to do quite nicely, the Mac market is still very important for LW, I think that they would take the time to make sure it will run properly on ATi boards.

3DSM has never been very picky about boards, at least nothing like Maya or SI, and the Radeon should do quite nicely there, though with heavy geometry loads the GF based boards are likely to be much faster.

For pricing- what kind of deal are you getting on 3DSM or Lightwave? Avid has a deal going on right now where you can get the latest SoftImage for ~$500 for educational purposes(students, schools and teachers). IME, Discreet has charged twice that for 3DSM educational licenses though I'm not sure what Newtek gets(never even looked).

&quot;I just want to know if ATI Radeon is a better choice.&quot;

I would say no. Sorry if I went somewhat off topic, it gets boring arguing over which vid card can run what game 2FPS faster

 

[Charon8]

&quot;BTW- You can mod the GF2MX to a QuadroMX the same as you can a GF2 to a Quadro2.&quot;

Also, consider that if all you want is enabling hardware anti-aliased wire frame, you could enable it with a little registry patch! No soldering needed, so cool!

You can find a file that do the job here: http://www.nvitalia.it/files/nv15alines.zip

Bye!

 

[WalkingDead]

Charon8

Thanks for the patch. Does it works with both the GF2 and GF2 MX? Your guy are so great, looks like I maybe going to use that $100 of $1000 coupon.

 

[WalkingDead]

BenSkywalker,

I'm not the one that's teaching the 3D class. I'm the tech guy &amp; I don't want them to bother me and feel sorry for the students. In fact the lady that usually teaches the class bail-out and we had hard time finding a qualified Softimage instructor. Most of the people we interviewed works with 3DSM or Lightwave. In fact, just about all the intern wanted or job wanted ads related to 3D apps we received had asked for 3DSM or Lightwave experiences. We're only teaching basic stuff like modeling and some animation. Nothing really advance that the other 2 package can't handel. If I teach the 3D class, I'll give out alot of F ; because many of the students are not 3D material. Hell, some of them even Bryce is too much for them. :Q

3D Studio Max &amp; Lightwave works even with my old ATI Rage Fury. Softimage &amp; Maya are very picky about just anything. I tried Lightwave 6 on a Mac G3 and it crashes alot. However, that may have to do with basic config (128mb &amp; ATI Rage with 16mb) of that G3.

As for upgrade price, we can have per copy of full Softimage XSI x for $280-$290, full Lightwave 6x for just under $600, full 3D Studio Max x for $800 +/- and basic Maya 3x for $1599 &amp; the full package for over twice of that . Those are educational price.

 

[Charon8]

Yes, to my knowledge the registry setting works for all the GeForce line of products.

Bye!

 

[Shockwave]

Yes it will. i use 3D Studio Max 3.0 with no probs, well one prob. I need a faster processor, render times arent up to snuff on my 800 T-Bird....

 

[WalkingDead]

Thanks for the input Shockwave,

I'm having the same problems even with my Celeron 633@1063. I'm building a 1 gig+ AMD T-Brid machine now. It's only short of a CPU. Damn, I missed the Onvia deal by few hours.