I am looking for a video card for the purpose of use on 3ds Max / 3d modeling. What kind of video card should I get? Workstation or gaming card? What are the differences? Is video card effect a lot in performance on doing 3d modeling?
Video Card for 3ds Max
- Thread starter YueHong
- Start date
For 3D modeling it's good to get a workstation card like nVidia Quadro FX or ATi FireGL with lots of memory mainly to be able to process very large textures. These cards are good if you work with detailed high-poly models with lots of objects etc ... They will just "accelerate" the viewports while you work.
For 3D rendering you'd want a fast multicore cpu and ram, the video card wont have a lot of effect on rendering performance if any.
For 3D rendering you'd want a fast multicore cpu and ram, the video card wont have a lot of effect on rendering performance if any.
sgrinavi
Diamond Member
- Jul 31, 2007
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Hey,
That's my gig too; if you decide to go the budget route the ATI 3870 cards perform about 2.5 times better in Max than the Nvida 8800 series of cards and, if you are running 32 bit, you can softmod them to a fireGL to, again, double the performance.
I have had pleny of professional workstation cards and, in the past, have not found them to be worth the cash. The current generation of nvida quadro cards are supposed to be an order of magnitude better than their predecessors, but I can not speak from experience.
That's my gig too; if you decide to go the budget route the ATI 3870 cards perform about 2.5 times better in Max than the Nvida 8800 series of cards and, if you are running 32 bit, you can softmod them to a fireGL to, again, double the performance.
I have had pleny of professional workstation cards and, in the past, have not found them to be worth the cash. The current generation of nvida quadro cards are supposed to be an order of magnitude better than their predecessors, but I can not speak from experience.
If you are doing this work for money, i.e. your job, than i would take qbfx advice and get a workstation card.
If you are just doing it for fun or a hobby there is no reason why you can't start witha great gamer card like what sgrinavi and BassBomb as suggested.
Also 3dsmax works wonderful with DirectX viewports, which pretty much gives the gamer(and workstation) cards a very new acceleration compared to opengl on the gamer card.
If you are just doing it for fun or a hobby there is no reason why you can't start witha great gamer card like what sgrinavi and BassBomb as suggested.
Also 3dsmax works wonderful with DirectX viewports, which pretty much gives the gamer(and workstation) cards a very new acceleration compared to opengl on the gamer card.
The amount of hardware acceleration that you need will vary depending on the complexity of the projects you are working on.
I designed a small-to-medium sized commuter rail station using a 9700Pro modded to a FireGL card. By the end of the project, my wireframe brought my computer to a crawl; I was getting maybe 1fps. I also had a great deal of trouble working on residential projects in 3D if there was considerable detail in the model.
The 3870 sounds like a good bet to me.
If you're doing something super high-end you'll want more. When I was doing hospital design work, the 3D guy there had an absolutely rediculous rig, more powerful than anything I had ever seen. It was worth at least $10,000 in hardware alone, plus of course the software costs (at least another $10,000). The lack of salary in architecture more than made up for it though.
I designed a small-to-medium sized commuter rail station using a 9700Pro modded to a FireGL card. By the end of the project, my wireframe brought my computer to a crawl; I was getting maybe 1fps. I also had a great deal of trouble working on residential projects in 3D if there was considerable detail in the model.
The 3870 sounds like a good bet to me.
If you're doing something super high-end you'll want more. When I was doing hospital design work, the 3D guy there had an absolutely rediculous rig, more powerful than anything I had ever seen. It was worth at least $10,000 in hardware alone, plus of course the software costs (at least another $10,000). The lack of salary in architecture more than made up for it though.
sgrinavi
Diamond Member
- Jul 31, 2007
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Originally posted by: SickBeast
It was worth at least $10,000 in hardware alone, plus of course the software costs (at least another $10,000). The lack of salary in architecture more than made up for it though.
LOL..
No, there is not a lot of money in main-stream architecture work, everyone wants the best but has no clue what it takes to get there. I have always worked in special segments or directly for owners and it's been good to me.
I have had several of those 10k workstations back in the day when we were running 3dstudio (not MAX) on dual xeon workstations, 15k rpm scsii raid and a $3500 wildcat card. (We used a dozen SGIs as our rendering farm ) -- I still have my 2 processor dual core xeons @3.4 with an 3400 quadro card sitting in my office -- to tell you the truth, I get better performance from my q6600 system with a 3870 card . Extensive use proxy objects and external references has helped a great deal.....
In all fairness I am sure the current gen workstaion cards are leaps and bounds better that the old, but have not been able to justify the cost in the past 12 months.
Thanks for all your replies. The video card is going to be used for 3d modeling and animation only, no gaming. So, if I am going to get a workstation card, what model would you recommend? Is low end workstation card works better then high end gaming card?
BlueAcolyte
Platinum Member
- Nov 19, 2007
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Thats works only in 32-bit OS's and ATI cards mostly. Nvidia cards have not been modifiable since 6800 series.
Also this was already discussed with post #3
Modelworks
Lifer
- Feb 22, 2007
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I have used lots of different cards with 3dsmax.
3ds has the option of using either direct3d or opengl in viewports.
I found under vista that opengl works better than direct3d.
If you go with an nvidia card you can use gelato which is a renderer for scenes that will use the gpu and cpu to calculate the render, speeding up render times.
If your going to be doing game development then I recommend getting a card like the 8x00, 9x00 series. It will allow you to view dx shaders and textures in the viewports.
The memory on the card is important also. Textures can be huge in 3ds and you need to store those in the cards memory for fast scene updates. So cards with 256mb or less are not ideal. If you use such cards you will find that when you go to rotate a scene there will be a pause as the textures are swapped out to the card.
I would go for a 9600GT card with 512mb ram , its not too much money and will work fine.
The reason I do not recommend ati is because you lose the possibility of using gelato.
Quadro cards are great but don't do much for 3ds performance.
If you were using Maya then I would go with a quadro card since it has some features that only work with the quadro cards.
3ds has the option of using either direct3d or opengl in viewports.
I found under vista that opengl works better than direct3d.
If you go with an nvidia card you can use gelato which is a renderer for scenes that will use the gpu and cpu to calculate the render, speeding up render times.
If your going to be doing game development then I recommend getting a card like the 8x00, 9x00 series. It will allow you to view dx shaders and textures in the viewports.
The memory on the card is important also. Textures can be huge in 3ds and you need to store those in the cards memory for fast scene updates. So cards with 256mb or less are not ideal. If you use such cards you will find that when you go to rotate a scene there will be a pause as the textures are swapped out to the card.
I would go for a 9600GT card with 512mb ram , its not too much money and will work fine.
The reason I do not recommend ati is because you lose the possibility of using gelato.
Quadro cards are great but don't do much for 3ds performance.
If you were using Maya then I would go with a quadro card since it has some features that only work with the quadro cards.
How serious are you about modeling. If its your job and you work for Pixar, then you might be able to pick up some wildcat realizm 800 card for a decent price since they stopped making cards, they used to be THE best until creative bought them and shut them down. If you're an amateur, don't waste money on an expensive pro card. I have several times and unless you can actually benefit from the throughput, don't bother. You can get a entry level Quadro FX 560 for about $150 with the 3dsmax drivers it will run at about 80% of the $2000+ cards.
Here's a link to a review.
Here's a link to a review.
sgrinavi
Diamond Member
- Jul 31, 2007
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Rendering times used to be a huge consideration, but with the advent of $200 quads it's not such a big deal anymore. The modeling speed gained with ATI solution returns the best $/buck - hell, it's $150.
Just a thought, how about one of each? Would Gelato still work?
OP, you really need to determine your workload.
When I was doing architectural stuff, 90% of it was 2D, which can be done just fine on integrated graphics.
As a general reccomendation, I agree with sgrinavi's advice; get a 3870. The professional drivers will give you a nice boost if the mod is simple enough (usually either a bios flash or else a hacked driver install).
Whatever you do, make sure to go with a quad-core CPU. The Q6600 looks good at $189.
When I was doing architectural stuff, 90% of it was 2D, which can be done just fine on integrated graphics.
As a general reccomendation, I agree with sgrinavi's advice; get a 3870. The professional drivers will give you a nice boost if the mod is simple enough (usually either a bios flash or else a hacked driver install).
Whatever you do, make sure to go with a quad-core CPU. The Q6600 looks good at $189.
Modelworks
Lifer
- Feb 22, 2007
- 16,240
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Gelato will only work with a nvida gpu, its a nvidia product.
http://www.nvidia.com/page/gz_home.html
Modelworks
Lifer
- Feb 22, 2007
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It will run on the nvidia card if both are installed.
Gelato can be heavily scripted if you want to , so you can specify things like gpu used for the calculations, etc.
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