3 hour test

[MarioRothenbuehler]

this is a simple 3 hour test i have done today... rendered with 8 old machines....




/.mario'

[kein_plan]

hi, can you share your test scene, that we can compare diffrent systems and gpus...?

[jujubee]

Very cool test scene. Would be great to know system specs.

[MarioRothenbuehler]

here is it...

vrayrt-gpu-test_2010.zip

works only with CPU.... material is not supportet by GPU rendering

/.mario'

[MarioRothenbuehler]

the machine specs are.... 8 x 2Ghz power.... so i think a new dual quadcore is much faster...

/.mario'

[Donald2B]

I adjusted the material to work with the GPU version...I let mine go for about 20min or so while I was in a meeting. Not too bad.

EDIT: I realized after I posted that I didn't include specs. This was on my main workstation with dual Intel Xeon 5355, 12GB RAM, GTX480 (Beta Drivers), Win7 x64.

[MarioRothenbuehler]

hi troy,
i have a off topic question
work your 3dsmax good with your GTX 480 (viewports) ? no graphic errors ? can you use the nvidea performance driver maxtreme with it like the quadro fx boards ?

[Donald2B]

@Mario: It depends on what I am working on. I have worked with Quadro cards for over 8 years and the GTX480 is the first "game" card I have tried to use in a production setting. For small scenes and simple tasks, it does just fine. When I start working on my large scale projects with large data sets, it is terrible. I have a three year old Quadro 4500 that will run circles around it in those large scenes. Contrary to popular belief on these forums, there are some very major differences between the Quadro and GTX line of cards. The GPUs are identical, but the rest of the cards are very different. There are also drivers developed to work for professional applications like Max, Maya, AutoCAD, etc...

So what does this mean for you? It depends on what type of work you do. If you are doing smaller product visualization, smaller arch viz scenes of a single house and generally smaller sized projects, the GTX480 will probably work just fine. Since it is Fermi based, it obviously works very well with the GPU accelerated software like VRayRT GPU. For me, I have been fighting this card every step of the way, due to very poor viewport performance with lots of wireframe data, sketchy drivers developed to improve performance in video games and in many cases create more problems for me than they solve. I tend to spend quite a bit of time wishing for new drivers to hopefully fix certain issues, only to finally get them and then it breaks something else. It is a great card, but I will DEFINITELY be going back to a Quadro 5000 as soon as my new workstation gets here. In my workflow and dealing with the large projects we work on, it handles everything with ease. They provide me with stability and consistent performance and I have the support of nVidia to help me work through any issues I may have with 3DS Max.

They are both good cards, but in my workflow they really show their differences. It just boils down to what you are looking for in a video card. I am ready to get rid of my 480 ASAP!

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Donald2B curiously... how does perform Quadro to GTX in GPU renders? Is it faster/slower? Also can u maybe stick 2x GTX in ur workstation and 1 Quadro for work ? I'm pretty sure that should work like a dream in ur case

[MarioRothenbuehler]

hi troy, thank you for your detaild feedback.... it's the same i note here.... @ work i have a old quadro fx 3700, @ home i switched last year from a quadro fx 3450 to the GTX 295, and in 3dsmax it was horror... bad driver support and only problems.... this is also my first experience with a game card.... i used like you quadro fx cards for many many years..... so i switch back like you to a 5000 or 6000 quadro in a few months....

ps. my biggest 3dsmax max scene is 450MB big very painfull with the GTX 295

/.mario'