Dual GTX 580 v's Quadro 4000

[The White Balance]

Hi All,

Hopefully someone can shed some light on this, We are looking into upgrading a couple of work stations and more importantly upgrading to Vray 2.0 (which is long overdue in our studio).

However I am getting mixed feedback on the Dual GTX 570 or 580 set up as apposed to the Quadro Fermi 4000.

I have a supplier at a major vis hardware specialist saying that the GTX cards are no good for max viewports and display graphics. But on the other hand the Fermi cards are soooooo expensive for CUDA core comparison.

Any advice from users of either setup would be much appreciated??

Cheers

Matt

[Neilg]

Your supplier is trying to make money.
GTX cards are fine for max, and usually as good as quadro's twice the price. (And you can softmod them to get quadro drivers running on them) For the price difference I don't think i'd ever touch a workstation card.

[rivoli]

agree, gtx cards are totally fine even for heavy viewport work. it's always been the case with max and gaming cards.
as long as vray rt goes, in case you haven't seen it already, you may want to have a look here:

http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...U-benchmarks#2

[Nicinus]

With the disclaimer that I don't have a Quadro myself, I think the question is more complicated. Most people giving the advice that there is no difference don't seem to have worked with Quadros. I think it is a question of personal preference, just like taste is. My limited experience of Quadro is that the viewport display is much smoother, less delays and has superior antialiasing, creating a very nice working environment. Financially they are a disaster however. Most of the technical differences seems to be in the driver, and you can't combine a Quadro with a Geforce for added Cuda cores, as the Quadro driver will sense this and shut it self off, basically transforming your Quadro into a Geforce. This part seems to be pure greed from Nvidia, they want their Quadro customers to pay for Tesla cards.

From what I understand there are no softmods for the current generation of Quadros.

[windrockwater]

The never-ending, foggy comparison of Quadro versus non-quadro! I have not had a very expensive Quadro card but have used a few up to the FX 1700/1800. I have also had many many Geforce cards. Right now i am using a GTX 470 and a lesser second Geforce card in my workstation. I am driving a Dell 30" (monster), a Dell 24" and two Dell 22". Yes that's four screens (its awesome). I don't do animation but i do some pretty large landscapes with lots of edges/faces. Its all worked pretty good for me. I can say that I agree with what others have said and the Quadro cards have smoother viewport responsiveness. My friends Dell workstation laptop with whatever Quadro video card is in that, does a noticeably nicer, smoother viewport (rotating objects for example). We did a A:B comparison.

With the money I saved (the gtx470 was 400$ or so) i can just keep upgrading geforce cards 3 or 4 times before i reach the cost of the insanely priced Quadro cards. Why are they so expensive? I think its a racket game. Also, if i bought the the Quadro card, i couldn't have bought the Dell 30" monitor. And its sweeeeeet. I've only dabbled in RT.

[kimgar]

i'm actually getting to pick one, think i'll go for the quadro and see about those smoother viewports. will nvidia actually discontinue the maxtreme drivers from from 2011 and onwards?
also having had a gtx295 before, hacked/softmodded to work with the adobe cs5 crap, it worked for a while, then premiere got all messed and editing had to be done through rdp and a renderfarm node, bah

hoping for speed and stability

[The White Balance]

Thanks for the feedback guys,

I think the chart says it all really! Will stick to my guns and go for the dual GTX cards.

[Neilg]

Most people giving the advice that there is no difference don't seem to have worked with Quadros.

I'm working with a quadro now and I was on a gaming card at my old job. While both would be 2-3 years old now, the quadro cost 4x as much and I really cant see anything i'm doing here that I couldn't do there.

Who works with AA turned on? Such a waste of power.

[windrockwater]

So are you saying that disabling AA in the video control panel is useful for performance? I never actual monkey with any of the Nvidia video driver settings. But you have me wondering if some simple disabling/enabling could give me a performance boost in Max/Vray. So can you recommend some changes? Right now for example "Anti aliasing-mode" is set to "application control" but could be turned off altogether. I know i can simply try some settings but thought you might have some direction...

[Neilg]

I mean within max itself - do you have AA on in the wireframe viewport? That slows it down quite a lot.

[tricky]

We have always had the same questions about ATI fireGL vs the gaming cards by ATI. We paid a lot of money for our fireGL cards, and it was a hard decision. We have sinced moved over to Nvidia GTX 480 jobbies which cost under £200. They are fine, and good enough for viewport display etc. The one issue we have though is accuracy in Autocad. With our firegl cards, the opengl accuracy when modelling in Autocad was spot on. With these new fangled gaming cards, if you select a long polyline, or large 3d object in Autocad, the lines 'jump'. Difficult to explain, but basically, the firegl cards were better in Autocad, but the gaming cards seem to be better in max.

I don't think that made any sense at all - its the end of a day!

[rivoli]

I'm working with a quadro now and I was on a gaming card at my old job. While both would be 2-3 years old now, the quadro cost 4x as much and I really cant see anything i'm doing here that I couldn't do there.

Who works with AA turned on? Such a waste of power.

same here. been working with quadro cards for a bit, went back to gaming cards, haven't experienced any major difference and I guess most viewport problems used to come from max itself. admittedly I never thought of working with AA on, with any of those cards. wouldn't be a real plus to me even if worked better with quadros though.

[simon123]

not sure if you have bought one have a 4000 card in the office and gtx at home, no difference even with rt!
drivers not so much of an issue any more. im on 2012

[3DMK]

[Hope this is not off-topic]
Not sure about RT but I just got a new ATI 6970 HD & it leaves the GTX 480 for dead in wireframe & shaded with edges modes. It's a bit slower in shading but I am always working mixed mode in the viewport so it has made a great improvement for me.

[Morne]

I'm running a new ATI 6990 for about a week now and it's great. Much more responsive than my old QuadroFX3500.