Please recomend 3d accelerator: 5870 or 6970M

[Skykiler]

Hi all!

Which card is better in Maya's Viewport 2.0 Enhancements performance - Radeon 5870 or Radeon 6970M?
All advices are welcome!

 

[Red Hawk]

Wait, are both of these mobile versions, or only the 6970?

A full desktop 5870 has 1600 shaders with a clock speed of 850 MHz. The Mobility Radeon 6970 only has 960 shaders clocked at 680 MHz.

In terms of raw power, then desktop 5870 should blow away the 6970m. The 6970m would be much more power efficient, though.

 

[Skykiler]

These cards are build in Mac Pro (5870) and iMac (6970M). Due to AMD's specifications, 6970M supports OpenGL 4.1, while 5870 supports OpenGL 3.2. Or this info isn't refreshed? So: will support ot higher OpenGL version give better performance?

 

[Red Hawk]

The 5870 does not support OpenGL 4.1. If you want to be able to use that, then your only option here is the 6970m. I would advise looking for a desktop card rather than a stripped-down mobile card, though. Something like a desktop Radeon HD 6870, while not as good as the 5870 (confusing, I know, but that's just AMD's naming) would be significantly better than the 6970m.

 

[Skykiler]

Wow... Unfortunately iMac cannot be ordered with different videocard. So I have to ask Autodesk is support of OpenGL 4.1 more important in Viewport 2.0 performance than almost twice higher number of units in 5870?

 

[Red Hawk]

That's right, I forgot, iMacs come with mobile versions of graphics cards.

I really don't know much about Macs or the software in question. The system requirements only mention a "qualified hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics card", without indicating the version. All I know is that you would get much more raw performance out of the desktop 5870 than the mobility 6970. I'm sure the software would still work well with OpenGL 3.2, but might have a few less features than if you used 4.1. It's really up to you -- look up the features of OpenGL 3.2 compared to 4.1 and decide if the features are worth the performance hit of dropping to a 6970m.

 

[Skykiler]

OK! While there is question only for fast and almost accurate preview, so massive hardware power of 5870 must be better... If there is some artefacts in preview, so these frames can be rendered in reasonable low resolution and to be checked for artefacts in pre-final product! Am I right?