Question Do video cards play much of a role in the performance you get out of 3DS Max?

[CHADBOGA]

Hi there folks.

I am recommending some computer parts to a friend who is putting together a system for his teenage son who will be using 3DS Max, as the main bit of software they have to use for college and I am wondering if the GPU plays much of a role here?

My friend was thinking of going with a Radeon 5600XT and I am wondering if he could get away with a card that was less powerful, like a RX570 and if it makes much difference if the GPU has 4gb of ram vs 6gb or 8gb of ram on it?

 

[Stuka87]

Autodesk has a list of certified cards. But none of them are desktop gaming cards, which should be expected.

The list is here: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/sites/default/files/file_downloads/3dsmax2021_GFX_ResultsJune2020.pdf

There are different render options that can be chosen. Some are CPU only, some utilize the GPU. A machine for rendering is not something you can build cheap really.

 

[blckgrffn]

In the cases where I wanted a card for specific 3D tasks like these and the focus wasn't gaming (but you know, can still do that a little) I'd go back in time for a generation two older, usually Quadro because it seems like their software support is just... better. And their integration with professional applications is more widespread.

Nothing against the AMD professional cards, really.

Also, those cards are usually old enough to be cycling out of business lease computers and aren't super competitive against current gen cards for gaming so they've depreciated a lot.

AutoDesk 3ds Max 2017 GeForce GPU Performance

Video cards often get a ton of reviews and benchmarks, but unfortunately for content creators (and other professionals), it is almost impossible to find any non-gaming benchmarks. In this article we will be looking at a number of video cards from the NVIDIA GeForce product line to see how they...

www.pugetsystems.com

Looks like a nice GeForce card could be a safe initial investment, but cores & ram should help on the CPU rendering side a lot.

3ds Max 2021 CPU Roundup: Intel vs AMD

The release of 3ds Max 2021, as well as new CPUs from Intel and AMD, it was time for a new round of hardware testing. This was also a great opportunity to begin building a new benchmark suite to test many of the common actions within 3ds Max such as modeling, simulations and rendering. There has...

www.pugetsystems.com

Sure sounds like a 16 core Zen 3 CPU would be a solid investment.

 

[gorobei]

i havent touched 3dsmax for 15 years(i was primarliy maya and lightwave/modo), but at the time they had added the option for the realtime viewport displays to use either openGL or directX.

viewport pan/zoom/orbiting is the predominant action when getting around in a scene. for a student just starting to learn the package there is no reason for them to be working with huge polycount scenes with gi realtime lighting effects on the preview viewport. modeling rigging animation texture and basic camera setup come first, render wrangling is the last thing to worry about. setting up proper render layers and element passes for compositing is more important than orbiting the preview camera with all the bells and whistles on.

a rx5600/5700 or 1660 card should cut it until they are rendering their grad projects, and for that they can pay for an online render farm. by that time better consumer gpus will be out so there is no rush.

quadro and firepro drivers are better for working with wireframes and vertices.

 

[JustMe21]

Most reviewers don't benchmark professional applications with gamer cards, but if you do happen to have one or both of those, download SPECviewperf 2020 from www.spec.org. It has a 3DS Max benchmark test, among others. The benchmark is under the Graphics and Workstation Performance section.

Here are some results for gaming cards from SPECviewperf 2020

Test Driving SPECviewperf 2020: A Look At The Latest In Workstation GPU Benchmarks

www.anandtech.com

and some for SPECviewperf 13

XFX AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT Update and Review

Our AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT review shows the performance we are seeing and updates as to where we are on application and driver support

www.servethehome.com