NEED: High Quality Graphics Card for Fast 3D Rendering

[xani]

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to ask what is the best quality PCI video card for 3D graphics rendering. Ive recently upgraded to a P4 3.2G processor with 1G of RAM. Ive been told the NVIDIA quadro video cards are good, but im not sure which one to get. My budget is around the $600-800AU. I already got a ATI Radeon 9600 XTG AGP video card, so i would rather get a PCI video card purely to run 3D Studio Max.

Any ideas?

Thanks!!

 

[Cerb]

There's no such animal.
PCI is crap for a video card that is going to do any 3D work. If you have an AGP slot, you want an AGP card. If not, get a new mobo.

 

[MDE]

Do you mean PCI Express (PCI-E)?

 

[yhelothar]

He does have an AGP slot, as he stated he has a 9600XT..
Get just get the fastest quadro fx, and sell your 9600XT... the quadro fx will still run as fast as a geforcefx 5900 for games, which will smoke your 9600xt.

 

[TStep]

Someone here just had a post in the last week on flashing a 5800U into the equivalent Quadro card. This is probably a $125 solution that should play games very well. I can't seem to find the thread though. Just try googling 5800U quadro flash for details.

 

[TStep]

Sorry it was a driver patch and HERE is the thread.

 

[Curley]

If you are going to do any video encoding, the new Nvidia Card 6800 GT/Ultra has a hardware encoding chip built right into the card.

This will take at least 30% of the work off the cpu and considerably speed up your rendering.

Adobe is very excited about the programmable video features in these new NVIDIA GPUs. Many Adobe customers have already been enjoying the power of NVIDIA GPUs to create sophisticated 3D animations for the past year. Our future products will take even more advantage of the new capabilities being unveiled in these GPUs,? said David Trescot, senior director, Digital Video Products at Adobe.

GeForce 6800 GPUs have a programmable video processing engine that delivers stunning high-definition video playback. Featuring support for MPEG encode and decode, as well as support for Windows Media Video 9 (WMV9), the GeForce 6800 delivers an amazing video experience when used with the Microsoft® Windows® Media Center Edition operating system. The GeForce 6800 also enables high-quality video playback on any window size, and has an integrated TV-encoder for direct-to-TV playback.

The extra features of the 6800 series puts this card ahead of the Radeon. These new cards are revolutionary when it comes the Digital Streaming and Editing.

 

[Lawranch]

Rendering depends on your CPU/Memory. A fast video card will help your real time previews and playback.

 

[kylebisme]

exactly. your current setup should be respectable for 3dsmax. if you want faster rendering get a faster cpu or two and maybe some more ram if you do big scenes.

 

[Curley]

I misunderstood. Everytime I think of rendering, I think to the Digital Video transitions rendering and forget about the real 3d rendering, i.e. Maya, 3D Studio Max.