Upgrade time, advice on video card

[windrockwater]

I am doing my annual trickle down upgrade. My current workstation becomes part of the render farm. I am getting a new (used actually), dual quad core Xeon 3.0ghz Dell workstation with a SSD. I will swap some memory around to get 20gb. I run a dell 30" IPS monitor along with 3 other monitors. Right now, I am using a GTX470 for the 30" and a 9500 GT for the additional monitors. I am intersted in upgrading the primary video card.

My question is what people think is the new, best video card (non Quadro please!) to power 3dsmax 2012 with Vray 2 on the 30" monitor? Any suggestions would be appreciated. And i don't plan on buying the newest and most expensive card but something 1 or 2 notches down from the current king. Not sure what that would be or how much?

Ideas?

[Donald2B]

If you already have a 470, I wouldn't upgrade. You are not going to get that much more performance in Max by jumping up to an nVidia 5 series card. I just went from a GTX480 to a GTX 580 and I honestly can't tell a difference in Max at all. Now I do have a pretty noticeable difference in the games that I play. Short of that, there was a little bit better performance with VRayRT but it wasn't more than 10-15%.

So I would just stick with what you have and be happy. I would wait until the next gen nVidia/AMD cards come out and then re-evaluate your options.

[windrockwater]

makes sense to me (and my wallet)...

[flipside]

Hi!

I'm looking for a new graphics card too, for a new workstation. I'm especially looking for something that is fast with wireframe viewport. My current card is very quick when I use shaded viewports, but really sucks when I change to wireframe or toggle the edged faces option.

I work with powertranslators a lot to import rhino files into max, and it gets very slow in wireframe mode.

Should I look for specific data in video cards for faster wireframe viewports?

thanks

[Donald2B]

flipside: Sounds like you need a video card that can hardware accelerate the wireframe. The only cards that can do that are the professional cards from nVidia and I think AMD can do it also, not positive. We are working with more and more data from Solidworks, Pro-E, Catia, Inventor and Rhino and usually objects come in as Body objects, which are already kind of slow compared to an Editable Poly. I have a nVidia GTX 580 and it is garbage for this kind of work. I almost always have to use a machine with at least a Quadro4000 to work with the model with any type of efficiency. I am also aware of all the viewport performance issues with panning and orbiting so I am already using those work-arounds, but it is still very painful.

Granted, the models I am working with are fairly complex and usually well over 20million polys when converted. I will be getting a Quadro5000 to do some testing with over the next couple of weeks, but right now, the game cards just aren't cutting it for us. I find them to be slow and clunky with almost all the work I do. Unfortunately for me, I don't see the performance that many claim to get with the game cards, so it must be with the models that we work with here. "Modding" a video cards' drivers and all that stuff is not worth the time and hassle to get running stable. I just need something that works all the time.

I haven't looked into the FireGL line of cards or whether they still make them. After a couple of bad experiences with them, I went nVidia and never looked back. I know this is a LOT of rambling and hope that something from this helps some.

As a side note: The Quadro FX4500 in my other workstation is at least 4-5 years old. It still performs better with the engineering models than the GTX580.

[flipside]

Ok thanks, at least I know now that the 580 will have the same issues.

I wonder about the viewport performance issues and workarounds? I have been away from forums for the past 2 years so I am running a bit behind I know I played with many of the max display driver settings, but it made things worse and I don't know how to revert back now For example lighting in my viewport is constanly getting very bright and I have to click the 'illuminate with default lights' over and over again. Sometimes in wireframe mode objects appear solid color etc...

I didn't want to do much testing because when getting a new workstation I will upgrade max too, have a new card etc so didn't want to waste time playing with all the settings.

What are body objects? Is this something similar to powertranslators brep objects? You simply get a nurbs model inside max of which you can still adjust the meshing quality.

I don't want to spend loads of money on a video card for wireframes in max, to then realise it sucks in every other app (like after effects, photoshop, rhino, etc...)

One other thing, the models in rhino in wireframe mode is also quite slow, but not nearly as slow as in max, and there is also not such a big difference between wireframe vs shaded mode.

[Donald2B]

Viewport performance issues with 2010/2011/2012 when orbiting or panning in a viewport with the mouse + alt shortcuts, Max is basically doing a hit test when it doesn't need to. Major performance problem for me when working on very complex models. The workaround is to use the pan and orbit buttons in the lower right hand corner. Or assign them to a shortcut key. I assigned pan to a shortcut key and then I can use the alt+mm to orbit without the delay.

Very bright viewport is due to working with very bright lights. Switch viewport lighting to standard lights in the viewport configuration area.

My current workstation doesn't have the nPower software, but my old one does. Body objects are very similar to the BRep objects from nPower, only not as powerful. The nitrous viewport in Max2012 has some major performance issues with the Body objects...so you may want to revert back to using the DirectX drivers for the viewports.

I have Rhino, Maya, Max 2009-2012, Adobe CS5.5, Nuke 6.3, AutoCAD, Inventor, Revit and some other misc apps on my old workstation with the QuadroFX4500 and all is well. Plus with the newer Quadro cards you can enable the hardware acceleration in the Adobe products. Right now, I am ready to throw this GTX580 out the window and just get the Quadro5000. The amount of time I will save not dealing with video card issues greatly out weights the high cost of the Quadro. IMHO.

[renderfarmer]

I have to agree with Troy: Quadros are the way to go for engineering. NPower translator in Max 2012 and Solidworks 2011 is my bread and butter. While my GTX 590 is twice as fast as my Quadro 4000 in a shaded viewport, the Quadro 4000 is 3 times faster with viewport wireframes.