Has anyone tried the new GTX 480 or 470 nvidia cards in max?

[davision]

Now that the Fermi-cards are out -- has anybody plunked down the cash and tried one out inside max. I'm curious as to their viewport performance primarily. Are they speedy -- or are the drivers choking them?

[SteveC]

I have a GTX 470 on order, which is due to be delivered mid April, fingers crossed, I went for that one because it seemed to
be the better option price/performance wise and by the sounds of it is easily overclockable if needed. Both cards seem to suffer
from large power consumption, but again the 470 is better on this than the 480. I'll keep you up to date once I get hold of it.

steve

[vlado]

We should getting a GTX 480 by the end of April too...

Best regards,
Vlado

[jujubee]

Is it even worth plugging one of these into an older socket 771 motherboard that only supports DDR2? What's the latest, cheapest, and greatest rigs out there now?

[davision]

Now that these nvidia cards are out in full force -- can anyone provide insight as to how they operate in Max? Wondering if they're worth it (even though they are hotter than a blast furnace) -- or if Quadro or an ATI solution would be a better bet.

[Donald2B]

I am using a GTX480 right now and it sux! Granted I am coming from a Quadro FX4500 which ran flawlessly!
Obviously with a game card, I lost wireframe hardware acceleration which was a huge impact on projects with lots of vray proxies, cad line data and wireframe viewports.
I don't think that the drivers are quite were they need to be yet. Don't get me wrong, this card works great with video games, but just doesn't seem to perform that well. I have lots of residual artifacts after closing applications, especially Photoshop CS3.

I am really torn right now. I spent $500 on a game card that really doesn't help me much when inside of max and the drivers really aren't that great. The Quadro is certified by Autodesk and it has always worked flawlessly for me. Max9-2011 all versions just worked.

I guess at the end of the day, my large dataset projects filled with tons of vray proxies, just make the 480 crawl. I don't have that problem at all with a 3yr old quadro card. It still moves around the viewports fluidly. I am going to give the 480 a couple more months to see if the drivers mature some more, but right now, I would much rather have my Quadro card back.

Current System Specs:
Boxx Workstation
Dual X5355 Quad Core Xeons
8GB Ram
GTX 480
300GB Velociraptor 10K Sata HDD

[tammo]

Did you try turning off "Backface cull" on all objects?
That makes my nvidia gaming card superfast.

If there is a single object with backface cull on in the viewport it is getting slow again.

[Donald2B]

Did you try turning off "Backface cull" on all objects?

Yeah, I have been using that "trick" since max went to DirectX instead of OpenGL. It definitely does help improve things. I was just disappointed by the fact that a Quadro card more than 3years old, and probably at least 3 nVidia generations old, can still whoop the crap out of their new flagship game card.

At the end of the day, I feel like I have to work around the limitations of the video card instead of being productive. I never had these issues prior. The $1500 price difference between the two cards was a motivational factor, but over the course of several years, that number is pretty insignificant if it impacts my productivity.

SIDE NOTE: I should have stated this earlier, but forgot to mention it, I am running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit. I get completely different results when using windows XP. It is definitely better in XP, but XP is getting long in the tooth and many of the other applications I run work much better in Win7.

Now if I could just get the best of all these worlds into one magical place. LOL

[vlado]

I have to agree with Troy as far as viewport performance goes. The 480's we have appear to be slowish in some scenes which are not that heavy at all (but they are fine for other scenes... go figure). This is on Windows Vista by the way. The cards are great for running OpenCL and CUDA, obviously, and I can only say good things in that regard.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Donald2B]

I have to agree with Troy as far as viewport performance goes. The 480's we have appear to be slowish in some scenes which are not that heavy at all (but they are fine for other scenes... go figure). This is on Windows Vista by the way. The cards are great for running OpenCL and CUDA, obviously, and I can only say good things in that regard.

Yeah, they are great performers in many other areas, and I didn't mean to imply that they weren't VERY powerful cards.

I don't know how many people use Nuke, but I have been having LOTS of issues with resizing windows inside nuke. Things just stop responding and general craziness starts. My hope is that with the next couple of driver releases, that things will start falling into place and things will get back to normal.

[davision]

Besides the price difference there is one other thing about Quadros that REALLY angers me. It seems like no one remembers this - but when Max 2010 came out -- or maybe it was the version before it -- nvidia DID NOT update the Maxtreme (Performance) Drivers for months and months. At one point someone posted on a message board that they'd gotten an email reply from nvidia which said they were discontinuing "maxtreme" or any type of specialized 3ds max support for Quadro.

Then maybe 6-8 months (can't remember) after the latest Max version had came out, nvidia finally provided maxtreme drivers. It was complete BS. Quadro buyers pay an enormous premium for an item whose hardware is virtually identical to the gaming cards. With the quadro, we are supposedly paying for the specialized software -- but nvidia delivered it VERY late in this particular (recent) instance.

That experience made me very wary of Quadros (and nvidia).

By the way Vlado -- what the heck are you doing with Windows Vista? Windows 7 is vastly superior. Either go back to XP or jump ahead. As a cutting edge software developer you really have to let Vista go -- it's a lemon. Try selecting and deleting more than 20 files at time (like animation frames for instance) in Vista. Takes about an hour.

[Donald2B]

The quadro line is much more than just specialized drivers for applications, like MAXtreme and the PowerDraft (?) stuff for AutoCAD. While the hardware is similar to a game card, there are still some major differences that make a HUGE impact to my workflow. Also, the quadro line uses a custom driver developed for maximum performance with the major 3D/CAD applications! Even without using the MAXtreme drivers for Max, the Quadro is running circles around this BRAND NEW GTX480, the flagship of the current nVidia lineup.

I know that I am NOT the norm as far as workstations go and having used Quadro cards almost exclusively, after trying out the professional line of ATi cards. I just feel like that now I have gone with the "Game" card, the driver updates are all about getting more performance out of COD2, BC2 or Metro 2033. I don't care about my game performance, I want great performance inside of Max first and then worry about the other stuff later. I just feel like I wasted $500 on a card that can't even beat a 3yr old Quadro card. So my first foray into using a game card to do professional work, is turning into a major disappointment.

I do hope that over the next couple of months things change, but nvidia could care less how well their 480 works in Max when most people want Maximum FPS in their games. Just a completely different market and target for the drivers.

On a side note. The average life span for a game card in our studio is about 10-12 months MAX! In comparison, the Quadro cards usually have at least a 3 yr life span. At that point, there really is not much of a price difference. Just a different way at looking at the price difference between the two.