Comparing Quadro to Geforce video cards

[windrockwater]

In case anyone is interested, the New York City Max Usergroup website has posted this review comparing video cards:

http://www.nyc3d.org/3dwp/PortfolioI...s-quadro-5000/

A little confusing on the viewport performance however:

While test results of wireframe viewport performance were essentially even between the cards...

Comments?

[filip]

finally some up to date benchmark comparing often discussed cards.
does anybody here use quadro fx 5000?
if yes could you tell me your fps in shaded wireframe, box 20/20/20cm and 20x20x20 boxes.

[windrockwater]

I have a GTX580 now that i use and have a quadro 5000 on the way. I would be happy to provide any tests. I dont have any experience with testing other than informal observation. But i can tell you i hate my viewport lag!

[filip]

we are working in large scenes, usually thousands of objects,
now we considering buying gtx580 or quadro 5000 with new workpc,
just wondering how big difference can expect comparing to our old gpus...

so just rough informative test,
replicate the scene,
try to orbit or pan the scene and send your fps...

ta

[instinct]

For us scenes like that never reflect realworld performance. Things like Vertex Normal data, a real scene hierarchy and lots of helpers greatly affect performance.

For the original Topic, you can not get a certified system without getting Quadros. We had a case with GTX 285, and i7 that would not work in wireframe mode. We have machines with the same gfx card, same proc and just a slightly different board. No matter what we did not get them to work.

Regards,
Thorsten

[super gnu]

its nice to see some tests showing the quadros offering some kind of performance advantage to justify their price tag. even if its certain the geforce is handicapped deliberately rather than the quadro actually being better.

however can someone please tell me what the whole "certified drivers" business means? ive used both quadros and geforces over the years, and ive had viewport issues with both of them at different times.

what exactly does the quadro give me? do i have a hotline number to nvidia or autodesk who will send an engineer to fix the problem, or write an updated driver for me? id hope so for the price you pay.

i hear it repeated so often in defence of the quadros that you pay for the certification, but so far, for me, over 15 years in the 3d business, ive not noticed any more reliability from that fact. both quadros and geforce seem to have the occasional hissy fit.

[windrockwater]

My eagerness to figure out a good video card is because my Max viewport issues are predictable. What i mean is that i now know that when one of my arch-viz models gets to be about roughly 100mb file size (with a building, a terrain, landscape plants, etc.) it really starts to slow down the FPS to a crawl (0.1 FPS etc.). Working on just the building is usually no problem and I can orbit around the viewport just fine. But after adding plants, cars, etc. the viewport becomes almost unusable with huge lags in commands and viewing. I make it work by diligently using the 'display as box' option on almost everything and that helps. I also use Xref Objects for the plants or vrayproxies. All of these things help but not enough to get rid of the awful lagging. It is my mission in life to figure out if I am doing something wrong, or if i need better hardware, or, if this is just how things are. I cannot believe that this is normal however as I know people work on giant scenes. My scenes are not huge but they usually have a decent amount of plants, etc. Always interested in advice!

[chriserskine]

have you tried using xref scenes and turn off or don't display what your not using at the moment?
you can split out your site/building/cars and if building is big split that up to multiple scenes. and then just have what you need turned on.
also if you set up a master file that only has lights, cameras in it thens its really quick to send of net renders. 300kb file vs 100mb or more.

[chriserskine]

have you tried using xref scenes and turn off or don't display what your not using at the moment?
you can split out your site/building/cars and if building is big split that up to multiple scenes. and then just have what you need turned on.
also if you set up a master file that only has lights, cameras in it thens its really quick to send of net renders. 300kb file vs 100mb or more.

[stellwagenc]

finally some up to date benchmark comparing often discussed cards.
does anybody here use quadro fx 5000?
if yes could you tell me your fps in shaded wireframe, box 20/20/20cm and 20x20x20 boxes.

That's not a good benchmark. Max had some problems with a lot of objects. Attach all boxes to one object an the viewport is very fast.

I have a Quadro 3000M

not attached: 3 fps
attached: 200 fps

[filip]

stellwagenc: yeah I know attached is faster, but in real, I often use many instanced objects, I dont want to attach...
there was interesting results as well in max2012 nitrous - on quadro 3800 I got 30fps,
but if open scene where is more houses, multiscatters, cars etc. direct 3d driver performs a lot better than nitrous 30fps vs 1.7fps

windrockwater: did you get your quadro 5000 finally? good experience?

F

[windrockwater]

I may get the card today. Will open a few scenes to check FPS check before i swap cards.

Are there any recommendations on what to do as a 'benchmark' for typical Max-Vray archviz use?

I consider myself a standard, basic, archviz stills user. No animation and fairly basic understanding and use of 3d (Vray materials, etc.). Again, I use alot of plants (Xref Objects and also Vray Proxies).

[windrockwater]

By the way, my last scene that I worked on has 7 million polys, 15 million verts. I select the main terrain mesh, then orbit around and get anywhere from 0.5 to 12 FPS with most every other mesh set to Display as Box....
When it happens to be 12+/- FPS its usable. When its 1 FPS its un-usable!

[filip]

for benchmark try this one please, http://forums.cgarchitect.com/70703-...benchmark.html
f

[windrockwater]

Alright so I just took out my GTX 580 and Geforce 9500 GT and replaced them with a Quadro 5000 for my primary 30" monitor and a Quadro NVS 290 for my two side monitors. I see a little better FPS when orbiting my latest scene using Nitrous. Its now about 6-7 FPS. It was under 1 FPS before. This is just a quick informal comment. Keep in mind the 30" is a high resolution LCD so that is tough on a video card.

I will post more real-world comments after I put this to the test on my next project. I am hopeful to see a marked improvement (but also dubious).