Best cheap GPU for 3ds Max

[windowlicker]

..I can easily deal with scenes that have tens of millions of polygons.

The number of polygons isn't the only thing that sets the framerate in Max. The number of objects is actually more important. A scene with one object with 10 million polygons will have a lot better performance than a scene with a million objects with 10 polygons each.
I often have to deal with models from Revit or Autocad which aren't that heavy polygon wise, but have thousands of objects. Merging them all into one object speeds up things a lot, but that isn't a very good solution. My experience with the Quadro 2000 is that it isn't a very good card for Max. Or Photoshop. Or overall. DEFINITELY not worth the price.

[trixian]

I'll chime in here as I have done in similar threads earlier.
I have had a range of cards, Quadros and gamer cards (though all from Nvidia), over the years, and I have yet to come across a Quadro that performs as well as a gamer card.
As far as I am concerned, they are a scam aimed at the rather slow minded corporate folks, as they seemingly don't seem to mind dishing out 20k (norwegian crowns) for these cards.
What really worries me is this close and cosy relationship between AD and Nvidia. This is most likely really bad for the majority of max-users, as I would not be surprised if they later on completely exclude the gamer cards from working with 3dsmax.

I never buy the cheapest gamer cards though, but go for the sweet spot which usually is the 2nd one down from the top models, like the 580 (was) when I bought it.

Here at work, my Quadro 5000 is very much inferior to my 580 at home (both in 3dsmax design 2012). The workstation I had before my current, originally came with a Quadro 4000 from back in 2008, and I later on changed the Quadro for a geforce 470, and it was incredible the performance increase it gave.
On some projects its so bad I often work from home on my models if they are anywhere close to complex. I then render them here at work so all the slaves help in when everything is set up.
I still haven't tried 2013 at home, but seeing as people have noticed it has issues with non-Quadro cards, I might not. 2013 here at work is slightly slower than 2012 for viewport navigation, but seems snappier when it comes to opening and closing windows (VFB for example).

[GLASS-CANVAS]

Thought I'd give a quick update on my recent purchase. I've just finished putting together a new workstation for the office, which I would characterise as mid-range. It doesn't have dual processors, but does have a 6-core i7, 32GB ram, SSD, so it's reasonably quick.
For the first time I went with a gaming card over a Quadro, and as suggested went for the 2GB GTX680. I haven't fully benchmarked it, or done anything too scientific, but I have compared a typical arch-vis scene in Max on an identical workstation, except for it having a Quadro 2000 GPU. This is a working model with a few million polys and a decent number of 3000px square textures. These two graphic cards cost almost exactly the same here in the UK

The Max viewport - Nitrous 2013 - is about 80% as fast on the GTX680 as the Q2000, so a small advantage to Quadro. Viewport texture quality is pretty much identical as far as I can make out
V-Ray RT on the GTX680 is at least 5 times faster than the Q2000! Plus the card has twice as much memory (2GB vs 1GB) so can do RT on larger scenes.

Therefore I think I have chosen well with the GTX680. It's a little bit slower in the viewport but massively faster in RT. Thanks to everyone for their advice.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Thought I'd give a quick update on my recent purchase. I've just finished putting together a new workstation for the office, which I would characterise as mid-range. It doesn't have dual processors, but does have a 6-core i7, 32GB ram, SSD, so it's reasonably quick.
For the first time I went with a gaming card over a Quadro, and as suggested went for the 2GB GTX680. I haven't fully benchmarked it, or done anything too scientific, but I have compared a typical arch-vis scene in Max on an identical workstation, except for it having a Quadro 2000 GPU. This is a working model with a few million polys and a decent number of 3000px square textures. These two graphic cards cost almost exactly the same here in the UK

The Max viewport - Nitrous 2013 - is about 80% as fast on the GTX680 as the Q2000, so a small advantage to Quadro. Viewport texture quality is pretty much identical as far as I can make out
V-Ray RT on the GTX680 is at least 5 times faster than the Q2000! Plus the card has twice as much memory (2GB vs 1GB) so can do RT on larger scenes.

Therefore I think I have chosen well with the GTX680. It's a little bit slower in the viewport but massively faster in RT. Thanks to everyone for their advice.

Why didnt u buy 4gb gtx? :/

congratz on the rig, I build one just like that on last friday. Will let it bake for a month before I OC it to 4.5 ghz.

[GLASS-CANVAS]

Why didnt u buy 4gb gtx? :/

It was an extra £100 which I didn't have. The budget was stretched as it was.

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

awww right... true budget is a "£%"£ch...

Glad u got it working, u planning on OCing that babe?

[GLASS-CANVAS]

I wasn't planning on overclocking it as it needs to be 100% reliable. All my recent attempts at OCing i7s have proved to be fairly crash-prone so I've kind of given up trying.