3ds Max 2010 Performance driver - Finally!

[andrewjohn81]

I just installed the latest graphics driver from later novemeber and it installed the performance driver (use to be called Maxtreme drivers).

I did a quick search and didn't see any other posts about it. Sorry if there were.

For those of you that have Quadro cards though. If you load up those drivers as your display mode you can now have tons of wireframes or tons of shaded stuff (or both) and navigate around nice and smoothly.

It sucked before because OpenGL worked awesome for wireframe, and D3D worked awesome for shaded mode. But Neither worked very well at All for the other.
The new drivers fix that. It's the best of both worlds.

[glorybound]

3dMax 2010

Cool, but it isn't working with 3ds Max Design 2010

[andrewjohn81]

works fine here, but it's 2010 x64 on XP.
it's the 191.66 drivers that had it built in. The 191.00 didn't.

Not sure if it makes a difference also, but we're running max 2010 sp1

[andrewjohn81]

Try this...if it didn't work.

In start menu, go to Nvidia > performance driver > performance driver installer.


I just installed it on another machine and it didn't automatically pick it up.

[glorybound]

MAX Design

Do you have 3DS MAX design or 3DS MAX?

[trick]

...I did a quick search...

http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...ghlight=nvidia

[stellwagenc]

i think, its only avalible with nvidia quadro cards any many 3d max users, use geforce cards.

last week i updated my fx 1800 an see, that maxtreme is ready - i'm very happy

[andrewjohn81]

Yes, this is Only for Quadro users. It's why we pay all that extra stupid money. It'd be worth it if they kept on top of things and came out with the drivers in a reasonable amount of time.

[raymarcher]

Somebody has any idea when they will release the max performance drivers for max 2011?

[flino2004]

Yes, this is Only for Quadro users. It's why we pay all that extra stupid money. It'd be worth it if they kept on top of things and came out with the drivers in a reasonable amount of time.

I was stupid, this is why i'm not using quadro anymore...I haven't seen any big difference, geforces have more cores specially for the new GPU renderings!!...but I would buy Tesla cards to become an stupid again!!....everything is changing so fast that it's very difficult to see if for us the extra money that we pay for hardware is making sense...and when you think that you did a good investment something come up cheaper and faster what you paid.
I'm not buying 5k or more workstations any more....I paid $1,600 for my 23" Apple cinema and now they are $800 or less....etc.

[add101]

i was just wondering- what graphics mode do you use in 3ds max with a Quadro card? OpenGL or Direct3d?
I find files can slow down a lot with wireframe/lines/shapes in image. For now i just use the workaround of turning visibility of shapes/CAD off as much as possible when navigating (and remember to turn on again when rendering images with renderable splines!!!).

I'm keen to look into quadro cards in the future, but a GTX480 (or two) look tempting as well

[mike_kennedy]

For Max I have found game cards to be faster until your files get huge and the extra ram in some quadros can help, but with 1 gigs pretty much standard in good game cards now........
My ATI has 1 gig and runs circles around the 5000 series Quadros we had at my last job. Max won't use the second card in SLI or Crossfire mode as far as I know...not sure if that changed....

[Donald2B]

@add101: If you use the performance driver, it is now based on DirectX. Under certain circumstances, working with OpenGL can provide more stability, especially when working with NURBs, but DirectX will provide the best performance with the more current builds.

@Mike: I agree with you. If you are using smaller files and nothing overly complex. A "game" card will work just fine and in some instances, will be faster. In most cases, the RAM on the video card has little impact unless you are using LOTS of large textures or are GPU rendering.

When you get into larger more complex scenes, and lots of line data from CAD, my GTX480 is junk! While the Quadro and game cards use the same GPU, the cards themselves are very different. The Quadro cards have hardware acceleration for wireframes and edge faces which can provide a HUGE performance boost with very heavy scenes. The drivers are pretty significant too. To all those people who think drivers don't matter, I am constantly looking for a decent driver for my GTX480 and have yet to find one that works well with Max and Win7 64bit.

So in the interim, I am using a 3yr old quadro card and it will run circles around my GTX480, due to the "differences" between the game/quadro cards. It sucks to have to pay a major premium, but for what I do, it is almost required. Now not all people will fit in that category, so your experience may vary. If you are uncertain, try to find a place that doesn't charge a restocking fee so you can try out the various different cards from nVidia and ATi. I know that I tried a couple of cards out for our new workstations and was really surprised how my results differed greatly between reviews I read and the files that I typically work with.

Just remember that I am just one person that tends to work with really, really large file sets and performance/stability are the most important. If I can't get that with a game card, I am more than willing to pay for the Quadro.