What video card is best for 3-d rendering?

[babyg722]

my brother is looking to buy a new video card, he does 3d digital graphic editing. i tried to read some stuff on anand's vid card articles but didnt understand everything...

what card is the best for 3d rendering? geforce3? or is that for games. is there a difference for games vs professional 3d work?

please PM or reply. thanks

 

[gsaldivar]

Excellent question - i'm interested in the response to this. Please post in the thread instead of PM - others are interested in this I'm sure...

 

[gsaldivar]

Excellent question - i'm interested in the response to this. Please post in the thread instead of PM - others are interested in this I'm sure...

 

[dullard]

What is your budget? Ok, some of the prices are out of date, but this should help you with your choice. Here is what CAD users at Cadalyst found (higher test results are better):

3dLabs Wildcat II 5110: Best performance of any card currently available at $2000,
ATI Fire GL2, test result: 52.6 at $1200,
ELSA GLoria III, test result: 38.4 at $1200,
Oxygen GVX420, test result: 29.1 at $2500,
Oxygen GVX210, test result: 28.2 at $2000 (old price),
3dLabs Wildcat 4110, test result: 26.7 at $2200 (old price),
ELSA GLoria II, test result: 24.9 at $700 (old price),
ATI Fire GL1, test result: 23.8 at $700 (old price),
E&S Tornado 3000, test result: 19.2 at $1300 (old price),
ATI Radeon32, test result: 17.9 at $279,
Matrox G400, test result: 15.6 at $210 (old price).

GeForce3 is by far the fastest gaming card available. It isn?t the top when doing 3D rendering. A GeForce2 GTS would fit in somewhere around that Fire GL1.

Source, the only Professional/Gaming comparison I know of

Now if you say a GeForce3 is about double the speed of a GeForce2 GTS, it will reside in 3rd place on that list. Again this is a guess, but there aren?t many benchmarks of gaming cards when doing rendering. However the GeForce3 is quite a bargain at about $300.

 

[rubberneck]

Yes, there's a big difference between a card good for gaming and good for 3D rendering. I'm no expert but maybe I can at least get this thread started. In a nutshell, most gaming cards are designed for rapidly moving (high frame-rates), simple 3D objects (objects built from few triangles/polygons), so high fill-rate is very important and polygon throughput is less important. In 3D rendering, the opposite is true and polygon throughput is more important. Graphics cards are designed accordingly. Look at nVidia's Quadro cards...way better than a standard GeForce for rendering but no difference in gaming...b/c...the Quadro is fillrate limited at the same level the standard GeForce is.