PC upgrade

[tyl]

I have a little cash to spend on an upgrade of my PC. Anyone would have a suggestion?

HP66000 - Windows XP 64bit
2 Xeon Quadcore 2.66Ghz
Quadro FX 3700
4MB Ram (I guess it's a little low...)

heavy polygonal scenes are slow to work on and 3dmax frequently freezes for a few seconds. I have frequent alerts for low virtual memory.

Thank you for your help!

[robdeja]

I have been finding Win7 managing memory a little better and giving me faster rendering times on some scenes, so I would suggest going with that.
Also, I would ditch the expensive QuadroFX and get a decent gaming card - use the cash you save to put into buying as much ram as you can (16gb is ideal).
I have a selection of machines here, some with quadros and some without and the Quadros aren't any more stable when working on the same scenes, they are just a lot slower and I have a lot more glitches with them in all the other software we use.

This is just my opinion of course.

[GLASS-CANVAS]

Whilst Ram is cheaper than petrol I'd buy as much as possible. As Robdeja says, 16GB is a good amount. Win7x64 is also a good idea, but better yet is buying a solid state hard drive for your system and applications. I recently bought an Intel X-25M 160GB SSD and the difference it's made is like night and day. Personally I would say the Quadro is fine for now.

[Morbid Angel]

you have to think ahead, will quadro give you fast gpu rendering on RT? rt will be the future rendering power, might aswell account for that. There is no real reason to get a quadro.

[tyl]

Interesting thought Dmitry... what would you suggest?

Thank you for all your comments!

tyl

[cecofuli]

IMO?

2x I720 @ 4.0 Ghz
2x good air cooler (thermalright venomous is the BEST)
2x 12 GB RAM
2x 470 GTX (if you need GPU power) or one 470 GTX and VGA fanless for the second PC

An I think you have the same price as your Workstation, but with a lot power (2x) and more flexybility.
Right now the GPU renderers are too young (octane, VRay-RT GPU, Indigo etc... ) Next years will be the better.
So, there are no reason to buy the best VGA in the market, with 4-6 GB RAM etc... because at the end most of us use the CPU to render.
And the quadro? MMmmm... 3ds max with DX and a GTX 285 is very smooth. Why I must buy an expensive Quadro?

[Morbid Angel]

That's exactly my thoughts...

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

1 question, is it gona be workstation or render farm ? And what is it for ? Modeling/texturing/lighting/animation etc etc?

Quatro is good for modelers, and high VIEWPORT FPS. From what I have learned.

[cecofuli]

Quadro is too expensive and maxtreme are not so good driver.
I remember my good old M90 laptop with Quadro 2500. I'm waiting 6 months for maxtreme and, after the release, I use again directX (not maxtreme)
Matreme cause in my 3ds max viewport artifacts.
So, GF 7900 GTX, 9800 GTX, 470 GTX etc...
I prefer change my VGA every 10-12 month for 300 euro.

470 GTX (1.3 GB VRAM - 448 cuda)= < 300 euro
Quadro 3800 (1 GB VRAM - 192 cuda)= > 1.000 euro (3x GTX 470)
Quadro 4800 (1.5 GB VRAM - 192 cuda)= > 1.700 euro (6x GTX 470)
Quadro 5800 (4 GB VRAM - 240 cuda)= > 2.800 euro (10x GTX 470)

If with Quadro 5800 you have 10X viewport performance (2800/300 euro), ok. we can think to buy it, but I remember some old benck, and this is not true.

Obviously, If you have a lot of money, you can change a high end Quadro every years.
But the reselling is not good. After one years, your Quadro loose 1/2 - 2/3 of the original price due to the performance of the new Nvidia gaming card.
Different question if you use an optimized application for openGL. But,luckily, 3ds Max work very well with 300 euro gaming card

Here an interesting thread

LINK

Conclusion?

10 or 20% performance Gain isn’t worth 10 times the price of a normal

This is 3ds max. In other apps, I don't know.

[voltron7]

I have a quadro and a GTX8800 and the GTX has outperformed the quadro hands down in all situations, after 2 years.
my .02 I do use the quadro machine more, though since it has 8GB RAM vs 4...big difference, too.
I had learned quadro were originally intended for CAD type stuff and 3ds max is based on games, so it makes sense to use a gaming card for 3ds max, IMO...

[Morbid Angel]

yep...this has been discussed before number of times. I personally have worked on quadros and geforces in many cases they yield similar results. There was never a case where I had to say "damn i wish i had a quadro right now", but i had said many times that i wish i had a gefoce (when i had a quadro)

[infotech]

For those who had the opportunity to test out both Quadro's and GeForce cards ... which display graphics modes do you end up using for each card?

I am still trying to figure out if there are any unique benefits choosing between OpenGL and Direct3D graphics modes in Max.

I have had nothing but reduced performance and some instability when trying to use OpenGL with GeForce cards in the past.

And is this the reason the reason why they charge premium prices for Quadros ... due to their full compliance with OpenGL.

Still not seeing what is the benefits between these two API's in Max.

[Morbid Angel]

for max there is no benefit in open gl, max has been developing support for direct x for a long time, and its the way its headed. For maya its another story, where maya is mostly written to support open gl. The biggest difference I noticed was when handling large vertex sets. Quadro did a much better job in that then gforce. Also working in dual displays, having uv editor open on a second display was way too taxing for either of the cards. But there are certain settings that made both work.

[beestee]

I have a little cash to spend on an upgrade of my PC. Anyone would have a suggestion?

HP66000 - Windows XP 64bit
2 Xeon Quadcore 2.66Ghz
Quadro FX 3700
4MB Ram (I guess it's a little low...)

heavy polygonal scenes are slow to work on and 3dmax frequently freezes for a few seconds. I have frequent alerts for low virtual memory.

Thank you for your help!

About MAX freezing, the only time MAX should freeze without prompting would be during autosave...perhaps your autosave increment is not set long enough. I have mine set to 30 mins, I think the default is 5 mins. Basically the balance here depends on how much work you are willing to occasionaly lose and have to re-do.

Also, you mentioned the frequent "low virtual memory" alerts...this does indicate that your RAM is too low for whatever is currently being run on that machine. You might think that to solve that issue, you should just get more RAM. This would most likely fix at least part of your problem, and it does seem a little necessary, but it may not be the root of your problem.

I would first try to weed out any unnecessary programs that are using up your RAM by running in the background and uninstall them. If your machine is old and cluttered, a clean install of the OS and necessary programs may be the superior option. There are also guides available online for tweaking OS performance, in your case Win XP 64. Find a few and see if there are some things that you might want to try out.

I would also look into which graphics drivers are available for your video card and try a few out to see if any work better with your overall setup. Guru3d has a driver cleaner utility that can aid in removing all traces of previous graphics driver installs, might be worth a shot since the traces that are left behind by a typical over-install can hurt video performance in some cases.

In my opinion, you should see what kind of mileage you can get with your current hardware by removing the software variables as much as possible out of the equation first. This way you will have a better assessment of where your hardware currently stands and the direction you need to go with your upgrade purchases.

A lot of what you could do hardware wise depends on your budget. It sounds like you might not yet have enough budget to build a new machine, so for now I would say that you won't go wrong with adding more RAM and doing a re-assessment.

[Smalerbi]

I’m currently running a Quadro FX 4600 under a XP64 OS. For the longest time I was using my FX4600 with Max 8 and a 32bit OS with the midterm driver. It ran like a fine tuned Ferrari. Now that I upgraded to Max 2010 and using there so called performance drivers, it performs like a 1960 VW micro-bus going up hill in a headwind. Not only that but I, but I just love the scene jumping around in the orthographic view port every time I select the object or select a command. It seems at one point, Nvidia Quadro where at the top of the heap, now they are at bottom of trash can. Just my two cents. I have no idea what the hottest card on the market is at the moment.

Scott