Quadro 2000,4000 vs GTX 580 3gb

[trajic]

We recently just compared a Quadro 2000,4000 (Didn't even bother to test the 5000 as we are not willing to pay for 100 of those for our machines) and a GTX 580 3gb in Revit 2012, Max 2012, AutoCAD 2012, Sketchup 8.0, Rhino 4 and Lumion. Interesting to see that the GTX 580 and Quadro's performed almost fps per fps in Max 2012 with Nitrous on. We tested the time to switch viewports, refreshing with degradation and animated viewports. All 3 cards seemed to be identical in those regards, but where the speed change was with the GTX with the realtime nitrous shader rendering shadows/lights much more quickly as was to be expected. We did not even test Max 2012 for realtime against the cards as a previous chart that VLado did sums that up.

Revit was interesting as the cards, (heck, even my quadro mobile 880 on my HP), performed almost identical to one another. Revit has a totally different viewport display read going on it seems.

We will now be explaining to IT to stop listening to Autodesk/Nvidia and HP on what they think are "the best video cards for our work as an Architecture firm" on expensive workstations. The laptops we buy are very underpowered but they felt that since a quadro 880m/1000m was in them it was going to perform better than a gaming setup, HP was nice enough to inform them of that. Our desktops are being config'd with Quadro 1800s as well which we didn't even test against but seeing the 2000 was on par with the GTX 580 for price we went that route on testing.

At the end of the day, we feel (having 900 employees) that GTX is the way to go price/performance wise with the platforms we use on a daily basis and with realtime in mind for future work.

If anyone has other opinions or has done some similar testing on 2012 products please let me know.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Umh... if u going to ask nvidia/intel/hp/boxxx/or any other bran for bussiness sollutions they will always give u some rubish useless piece of hardware 2x more expensive than u should pay...

Get custom builds u will save tons of money...

PC specialist - will make u laptop so powerful it will reach Workstation performance.
EVGA SR 2 - will give u 60% more out of ur hardware for 50% + less price.

Trust in old good geeks and not companies !

About quatro vs nvidia - as far as I know the rear difference is when u have an engineering products - loads of wire polygons and so on - then there ''is'' difference...

Good luck on ur buy !: )

[chriserskine]

did you test the quadro's and gtx in wireframe mode?

and also in directx rather nitrous?

[trajic]

We tried heavy wireframe models in CAD and Max and still did not see a noticable difference. We also tried in directx but again not a huge change. I am all for the custom companies, but when a large company is buying loads of machines, to them it is easier for IT to have another large corporation handle the account/problems/solutions/recommendations etc... I totally see the value though in the 2 companies you mentioned. We have looked into Boxx as well, but for being able to find a solid workstation that can be used for a production/designer/planner/viz guy is tough when we have hundreds of mouths to feed. They want to be able to have a standard set of machines for 90% of everyone which seems unrealistic. That is why if we can beef them up a bit and remove the quadro's I think we would be in good shape performance/cost wise. They are ordering all HP Z400's at the moment and a few z800's. We spends close to a Million/year is hardware and recycle every 3 years. Being stuck with something only mediocre is poop when a year comes around.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Uh wuw o.o

What is ur per machine ££ allowance ? If I may ask

And who u advise for - pixar ILM weta? :O

[trajic]

About $2,000 per workstation and an average of $2,000 per laptop. We have 3 grades of laptops which causes the price to increase or decrease depending on the setup. That is with almost 30% "special rate" discount that HP gives us for buying in such bulk. We used to have a Dell contract for years but as of last year switched.

I'm just a designer that the head's of the firm (large firm) have asked to "look into" how we buy hardware and is it the best use of configs we are getting. For years some of us have been telling IT we are purchasing overly expensive hardware with minimal performance gains. We finally called HP and they sent us about 4 workstation cards to test against the GTX 580.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Uh...
2000$ no idea hows that compared to 2000£ but any way - u can get a pretty strong workstation for that cash.

Which exact model do u guys pick from DELL ?

[trajic]

The Dell's from the past years were 5400's (Quadcore Xeon's not hyperthreaded) with Quadro 1700's I believe. The new HPs are mostly z400's with hyperthreaded 6 cores with Quadro 1800's. They are paying alot of the Xeon chipsets and the expensive Quadro cards.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Xeons for 2-4 years live spam is a joke. Tell them to get themself a 6 core i7 or better. W8 2 months and get 8 core third series intels....

The gpu u already know about... I'll have a look alter at the z400 ones u guys buys see what else u overpay for