Graphics card question!

[Neilg]

New workstations on the cards, but we're a bit stuck when it comes to graphics cards. Currently on ATI fireGL 5300's

We were going to go with a fireGL7300, but ive heard good things about the 8800GTX and if its worth it, we're prepared to move over.

Price matters a bit, but performance wins so it depends on the gap. Reliability and drivers need to be bang on too. We wont be playing any games on these - the reason I drifted towards the 8800 is just because of how powerful it's supposed to be.

Anyone got any first hand experience using both? Ive been searching for benchmarks but I cant find any that compare workstation cards to gaming ones. Failing that, any other cards to reccomend between that price range?

[pailhead]

I'm not sure if buying an expensive gaming card is worth it if you won't be gaming at all. I don't know about 8800s, but when comparing all sorts of gaming cards, different generations, different price range i came to a conclusion that it's all more or less the same and that if you want fast feedback and fluent viewport work flow, you need a fast CPU.

I'd rather buy any Quadro for the price of the 8800gtx. But these are just my two cents.

[Blitterswitch]

Personally I have never been blown away by the workstation cards, at the moment I have 2x quadro 4400's in machine I think running in sli and they aint significantly quicker than the nVidia 7900 gs in my laptop or the Ati x1950pro in my home workstation.
As far as my understanding goes, the workstation cards are all about 'reliability' and driver certification with not only microsoft but also autodesk et al.
I will never willingly spec a workstation card for my computers when I can get a screaming games card which will produce the same or better results for often more than half the cost of a workstation card.

[DaForce]

"workstation" cards are a waste of time and money if you ask me, especially the ATI range.
And then the price difference between Quadro and a Geforce is huge and the performance increase is negligable.. if any. They do excel in certain areas but thats still a minoirty of what you will use in your work flow.
Get a mid to high end gaming card and put the saved money into more cpu power or something. Or a pub crawl or something useful hahaha

I personally would never buy a workstation card.

[pailhead]

I like the maxtreme drivers so i'd be content with a low range quadro, just for the driver support.

But otherwise, i don't think that you need a card that's worth more than $100 when you do 3d.

'Workstation' cards only make sense in a VFX enviroment, when you can get a turnaround in 6 months or so when they get outdated by cheap gaming cards.

[werticus]

there is definitely a case for having a card with 512mb+ ram

try having auto cad files open, photo shop, max etc on a 256mb card and its slow down city as it caches memory over the slow bus.


however as far as pushing pixels its pretty easy to destroy any card - its not like you wont be using the 'hide' or 'isolate' functions in max!

I've owned x1900's, 7800gtx modded to a quatro and im looking at a x2900xt or 8800 soon, but mostly for games i dont expect maxing to be significantly better.

[DaForce]

Apparently its possible to mod a 8800 into a quadro now

[werticus]

do go on....

[Neilg]

Apparently its possible to mod a 8800 into a quadro now

Hello!

How does modding work, is it hardware or a driver thing? If its pure software, its an option for us, and i'd imagine it'd sell it to us fairly well.

Thanks for the verdict guys

[DaForce]

Yeah the mod is all software based
But AFAIK it voids all warranty.

Just tracking down the info for you now.

Some info on it here.
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=220942 decent % increase in max performance.. have to use D3D tho.

Just trying to track down proper instructions. I think its the same as before tho.. abit of tweaking in rivatuner then just install the maxtreme drivers.
Gah i have to head home now.. you chaps have a search.. cant be too hard to find proper instrusctions, might well be enough on the link above anyway.

[Blitterswitch]

I am looking into this soft modding of the graphics card at the moment actually. As it turns out, the nVidia 7900gs in my dell laptop is soft modible to the 7900gtx!

I am holding off doing it for the moment because I am more than happy with the performance but will consider doing it in a few months.

Not bad though!

Does anyone know of any hacks for the ATI x1950pro?

[GeoPal]

Back on the subject...I have Quadro fx 3400. Wanted to buy 8800 gts or gtx, We bought one gts for the office with core2duo 6600, 2Gb ram. My CPU is athlon 4400+ dualcore. In Max 8 I opened a 600K polies tree, and the 8800 gts was choking. D3D, OpenGL, didn't matter that much. I tried opening it with my old quadro, and it was just fine, moving Ok for that size, all leaves displayed /maxtreme drivers/. Don't know guys, I was just puzzled, hard to beleive. Either hell of optimized drivers, or there is something wrong with the 8800gts setup

[DaForce]

How long ago was this? what drivers were you running with the 8800?

[teabag]

i have no problems with 8800 whatsoever ...running the latest drivers

pailhead:

i don't think that you need a card that's worth more than $100 when you do 3d.

...come on.... r u being serious? can u tell me which cards under $100 would u actually go for?

[percydaman]

i have no problems with 8800 whatsoever ...running the latest drivers

pailhead:

i don't think that you need a card that's worth more than $100 when you do 3d.

...come on.... r u being serious? can u tell me which cards under $100 would u actually go for?

its a bit of an oversimplification, but i understand his underlying premise. Cards much more then 100 bucks are for games, they have all those pixel shaders and all that jazz that aren't really used by those in the arch vis field, which might be what he was pointing his comment at. I frankly just need a card that is stellar and handling polys and some textures. But I have to pay extra for all those 'extraneous' features.