Maya - 7900GT/X vs lower spec Quadro cards

augiem

Senior member
Dec 20, 1999
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Can anyone tell me which would run faster in Maya:

A new 7900GT/GTX or a QuadroFX 4000 / 3400 / FX1500

I do a lot of 3D work in Maya that requires a LOT of texturing, specifically building game levels. I'm upgrading to a Conroe E6600 system soon and I want to get a good card, but I have no idea the performance differences in Maya with a Quadro vs a gaming card.

I'm wondering if the raw speed of the 7900GT or GTX would trump the Quadro benefits on these two slower cards. Or even if someone can point me to a comparison of Quadros with gaming cards in Maya, I'd appreciate it. An older FX4000(softmod) or FX3400 / 3450 class card isn't out of my price range totally, and neither is the Quadro 1500 (slower, but newer GPU) but I'd really have to know it was worth it over the GTX to spend the $$$ (specifically in Maya).

Thanks,

Augie
 

gsellis

Diamond Member
Dec 4, 2003
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What does Autodesk say?

I looked it up for you

There are many cards based on GeForce GPU chipsets. Nvidia and Autodesk do not recommend these cards for use with Maya as you may experience various refresh, display and stability problems and inadequate performance. We suggest you choose from Nvidia's workstation cards instead, such as the Quadro families which are much better suited to high-end 3D packages such as Maya.

If you find that quote near the bottom, you can open the PDF from nVidia that goes into the detail.
 

Lord Banshee

Golden Member
Sep 8, 2004
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Maya tends to have graphical artifacts with gamer cards in certain parts of the program.. Like the paint effect. This is do to the Drivers on the gamer cards do not enable hardware overlays.

If you are going to be using maya to make money professionally and you can afford i would get a QuadroFX 1500, it is basicly a 7900GT with slowr clocks and only 16 pixel piplelines instead of 24 and only 6 vertex pipelines instead of 8.

IF you plan on using this computer for only for maya and not for professional work i hear the AGP 6800's always unlock to quadros. My 6800NU doesn't have problems with it ;)

Now if you are going to game and not use this computer purely for maya i would get the 7900GT. The will be 80-90% as fast in Maya but you will have to live with the artifacts.

*note* i do not use maya (have tried it) but most of my answers are from reading on www.cgtalk.com.

hope this helps.

is it helps I use Rhino3D, AutoCAD, and Unigraphics with my 7800GT.
 

wwswimming

Banned
Jan 21, 2006
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i've used both the ATI Fire GL and the generic nVidia & ATI video cards, for Max and engineering 3D programs.

the generic cards have worked just as well for large, "industrial-strength" geometries.
 

augiem

Senior member
Dec 20, 1999
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Originally posted by: Lord Banshee
IF you plan on using this computer for only for maya and not for professional work i hear the AGP 6800's always unlock to quadros. My 6800NU doesn't have problems with it ;)

Now if you are going to game and not use this computer purely for maya i would get the 7900GT. The will be 80-90% as fast in Maya but you will have to live with the artifacts.

I tried softmodding my 5900 Ultra card but got no performance gains in Maya or the SpecViewPerf 9 maya benchmark. I also did not notice any improvement in the artifacting... though I'm not totally sure what qualifies as artifacting or not. I did see improvements in the UNGX score though. (70% better average UNGX, but up to 600% on some of the individual scores)

Maya scores were not so good:
(5900 Ultra) maya-02 Weighted Geometric Mean: 9.680, 12.11, 10.99, 10.25 (4 runs)
(5900U ->QFX3000 softmod) maya-02 Weighted Geometric Mean: 9.721, 9.944, 10.96 (3 runs)
My system: P4 northwood 3.3 GHz, 3 GB RAM @ stock rate, WinXP Pro

According to those numbers, I get no benefit or rather a performance LOSS going from 5900U to Quadro.

I started another thread asking people to post Spec 9 maya results for their highend gaming cards. Hopefully I'll get a few. Would you mind running the SpecViewPerf 9 maya benchmark on your Softquadro? (you can get it at www.spec.org) And if I ask realllllly nicely could you possibly post a score for your card in 6800 Ultra mode (non-quadro)? :)