Video Card?

[Buck]

So it's time for me to upgrade my video card (then shortly after, I'll upgrade my processor probably to a dual opteron) and along with the video card I will be adding another gig of DDR400 RAM as well. I will continue to be be running dual monitors, all of these cards are capable of this I believe.

I don't play any games on my machine, it's strictly a 3d/graphics machine.
I'm looking for raw performance in 3dMax viewports when dealing with high poly scenes/objects.

I have asked around and tried to do as much on-line research as I can, and I have narrowed it down to these 4 cards. Everyone I ask seems to have a different opinion/experience, so I'm asking around here as well to see if I can get some more opinions/experiences.

• Nvidia Geforce 7800 (AGP?)
  Nvidia Quadro FX 1400 (PCI Express)
  FireGL X3 (AGP)
  FireGL V7100 (PCI Express)

All are about the same price range of $750.USD with the exception of the Nvidia 7800 being about $600.USD.


Does anyone have experience with any of these cards? Which one would be yall reccomendation? Again, no games are involved here, and all of these are within my price range. Are there any other cards I should consider for around this price?

Thanks!

[DaForce]

FYI the 7800GTX is PCI Express only.
Its a damn fast games card, but no idea about 3d stuff yet as im only getting around to reinstalling max after a OS reinstall yesterday.

Are their any 3d viewport benchmarks of the other 3 cards that i can use to compare my 7800 with to help you with your decision?

[Buck]

On ATI's website, they have a bench mark chart that gives the Fire GL X3 a 35.25, and the Fire GL V7100 at 36.45 on a "3dsmax-03" portion of a "Viewperf 8.0" test. Pentium 3.4, no ram specs listed. Their MSRP prices seem to be extremely high, New Egg has these items for about $300 less.



http://www.ati.com/products/workstation/benchmarks.html


there is the link, if it's any thing to compair to?

[DaForce]

Cool well I will track down viewperf tonight and try it out. Atleast that will give you something to compare with.And im sure I/we can track down similar test with the other cards as well.

[Buck]

I'll do the same, on my current setup. Thanks for your help!

[DaForce]

Good idea

No problem

[Buck]

eh... I found it... but it's like 450 megs!? Surely this is not a benchmark file? Well, I'll download it and see.

http://www.spec.org/gpc/downloadindex.html

[DaForce]

Yeah thats it. Basically i think its so large cause it contains lots of max scene...etc... not sure to be honest. But i will download it now as well.

Thanks

[Buck]

My system got:

---------- SUM_RESULTS\3DSMAX\SUMMARY.TXT
3dsmax-03 Weighted Geometric Mean = 4.319

[DaForce]

what is your system?

[Buck]

P4 2.8g with H/T, 1 gig of DDR400 Ram, and a Nvidia Ti4600 128mb

[Buck]

a little bump for anyone with info/experience with any of these cards

[meanadam]

Here is my story... about 4 or 5 years ago i spent $1050 on a 128 mb Graphics card. Then a couple of years later $800 for the same in 256mb.... you can see where I am going here.

$47 - 256 mb ATI, GEforce, whatever.

Video Card only effects your screen "space" - not rendering.

[Buck]

Here is my story... about 4 or 5 years ago i spent $1050 on a 128 mb Graphics card. Then a couple of years later $800 for the same in 256mb.... you can see where I am going here.

$47 - 256 mb ATI, GEforce, whatever.

Video Card only effects your screen "space" - not rendering.

Thanks for sharing

I realize that video card only deals with viewport speed, thats all I'm going after

[DaForce]

Damn it, I completely forgot about this.

Sorry mate, will run those tests tonight.