What the diff between pro & game cards?

[CgFX]

When you bought or will buy Maya you should have gotten or been pointed to the list of supported hardware to run it on. Quadro and FireGL are on that list.

Maya isn't cheap so you would be wise to run it on what they will provide you support on.

There are other stability and performance reasons that are all over this board's recent history so you can search for those.

[Zeio]

Look, I don't care about the whole 'supported' thing. I use Quadro cards at school and I use a Geforce4 ti4600 128mb at home. Yes, there is a slight difference when doing certain things, but by no means is a gaming card inadequate for getting work done. I would save yourself the cash and buy extra RAM etc., but thats just my honest opinion being a student and watching my budget.

-Zeio

[MimikOctopus]

Depends on your next step. Are you going straight into studio work? If so it won't matter much as the studio will provide hardware and software to you. Are you going freelance? If so your config will be a bigger issue. I recently got a good freelance hookup and the client was concerned about my facilities. I spit off my config and it scored me the job, my work spoke for the rest. Basically it comes down to: if you are working for a studio and just doing your thing on your own time, buy what you feel comfortable with. If the school you went to had computers much better than your home machine find out what they had in em and work from there. Don't buy what you won't need, and do your thing. Now if you expect to remain independant: Make sure your workstation is able to handle last minute stuff. If you do freelance work there is a chance (a big one it seems :| ) that something will go wrong at the last second and you have to make quick changes. Do you wanna lose a job over system specs? nope you sure don't. Then again a good plan can make up for that but being able to render something out fast gives you more time to make sure there isn't problems. For example do you want a week long job to be 5 days work and 2 rendering or 6 days work and 1 or less to render? I do stills so its not a huge factor but when my clients screw up I still try to make deadline and make us both look good. I'm almost rambling now so summery: get the fastest stuff you don't have to replace quickly and move down.

[Aries326]

Thx guys for the info... all good comments & suggestions but I think If I can get away with it Ill go for the less expensive gaming card & spend on some more ram. And as advised by the ramblings of a pro(thx), Im gonna try to build a pc with some muscle....

-Dual Xeon 3.06GHz(not sure of intel pc yet but it sounds good)
-Antec 550 Watt Power Supply
-ASUS 875P Chipset for Dual Intel Xeon CPU, "PC-DL Deluxe"
-2 gbs Corsair XMS Extreme Memory with Platinum Silver Heat Spreader
-Seagate 160GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive(or 74 mg raptor?)
--(9800 pro video card? rivatuner+9500pro=fire gl x1=$:)$)

And as for me Im gonna try to get whatever job I can find cause Ive kinda grown accustomed to living indoors... :) Thx for the help

[3Dfx_Sage]

warning- Maya gets along fine with ATi cards.... occasionally

It would be much safer to get an nVidia card if you plan on using Maya. That, or be able to test the system out and make sure everything is working fine before actually purchasing an ATi- problems seem to occur randomly, ie some systems have very bad problems and some have none.

[Zeio]

I would have to agree with 3dfx_Sage.. I have had very few problems using a GF4 ti4600, but a friend of mine has an ATI card (dont remember exactly the model, i think its radeon 9600) and experiences numerous problems in maya and max.
Also, I haven't heard many great things about the new Geforce FX cards, so from what I have heard, I would stay away from them and just get the solid geforce 4s, NOT MX though.

-Zeio

[daalex]

really, if you're going to buy a workstation with dual xeons etc. it's simply ridiculous to not throw in a decent pro card. you can have one of the mid-level pro cards for not much more than the radeon 9800 would set you back.
why spend thousands of bucks on that PC and leave arguably the most important component of the system underpowered?
if you're ever going to use fluids, loads of particles, the artisan tools or paintFx, stay away from gaming boards.

[3Dfx_Sage]

I agree with Daalex. My prefference would be the good ol' Quadro4 980XGL. You might want a QuadroFX 1100 but I would still go with a 980.

[CgFX]

Originally posted by 3Dfx_Sage
I agree with Daalex. My prefference would be the good ol' Quadro4 980XGL. You might want a QuadroFX 1100 but I would still go with a 980.
Why would you not want to take advantage of the massive leap forward in precision? (not to mention the increase in performance)

[nobrain]

now back to his original question? still vaguely unanswered... is a pro board good for 3d games.

[3Dfx_Sage]

Originally posted by CgFX
Why would you not want to take advantage of the massive leap forward in precision? (not to mention the increase in performance)
because I dont trust nVidia's FX drivers, I want real trilinear filtering and not that blurred bilinear crap. because the DX8 shader performance of the 980 is above that of the FX 1100, and the 1100 is far too slow in DX9 apps (without using cheats) which would force me to use a DX8 path. because the geometry power and fill rate are less than that of the 980. Because the FX chips are broken.

[3Dfx_Sage]

Originally posted by nobrain
now back to his original question? still vaguely unanswered... is a pro board good for 3d games.
my answer to that would be that the 980XGL is. The newer FireGL line is fantastic for games, but horrible for pro apps at the moment so I'm not considering it. If you were to get a QuadroFX the only one that is decent for games would be the 3000 and even then you're overpaying for an underperforming product (as far as games go, but even for pro apps it won't do much more than a 980XGL)

[Aries326]

if you're ever going to use fluids, loads of particles, the artisan tools or paintFx, stay away from gaming boards.


I normally dont use fluids or particles that much but what originally lead me to the query of "Why spend on a pro card if a game card will do?" was that I currently own a 9500pro that I unlocked using rivatuner to be a fire Gl X1. As far as using it for animation & modeling, even texturing the 9500pro acted fine & so I didnt really notice any major benefits to the x1 so I couldnt really see why I should buy one of the newer pro cards. But after the posts by you guys I think I need to really mess with maya some more.

[3Dfx_Sage]

Originally posted by Aries326
As far as using it for animation & modeling, even texturing the 9500pro acted fine
if it's doing what you want it to do then there's no reason to upgrade. If/when you do have problems with it that's when you should upgrade. If it's not broken, don't fix it.

[LecturerAlan]

Hi guys

Just had to say that I have just brought the Quadro Fx 1100 and to be honest after spending 700 uk pounds sterling, I am not impressed at all.

I use Lightwave for my pro work and to be completly honest my old "prosumer" card, Gainward 128 mb 4400. worked just fine, so unless something really radical happens to the card soon, such as an amazing driver update , then I will be sending the puppy back.

I have a 'old' system 2x2.2 Xeons 1 gb rdrams etc and I was really looking for a suitable Card to augment my system.

Guess I'll have to keep looking.

If any one has any bright ideas on how to get the most out of my"pro" card I will literally be all ears.

LeccyAlan

[leif3d]

What I did was buy a Albatron GF fx 5900 (non-ultra) and softquadro'd it to a Quadro Fx 3000 ....It'll cost ypu about $210-$230 at newegg.com

so in the end you will have a fully working quadro fx 3000 for 200+ dollars...not a bad deal huh?

here are the links to do it....

for softquadro explanation:

http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=66886

for video card:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-170-037&catalog=48&manufactory=BROWSE&depa=1

lgood luck :thumbsup:

[3Dfx_Sage]

I wouldn't do that. it doesnt really work quite right (if at all) on the FX's.

[CgFX]

Originally posted by 3Dfx_Sage
because the DX8 shader performance of the 980 is above that of the FX 1100, and the 1100 is far too slow in DX9 apps (without using cheats) which would force me to use a DX8 path. because the geometry power and fill rate are less than that of the 980. Because the FX chips are broken.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong.

If viewperf does one thing it shows geo perf and the geo perf of a 980 doesn't even touch that of a 1100.

FX broken? New FireGL's 4 bit subpixel precsion is the cornerstone of broken in my world of workstation graphics.

You consistantly overreact that the FX series is so slow when game benchmarks shows that 5700 vs. 9600 and 5950 vs. 9800 are actaully valid arguememts to have w.r.t. which is faster.

[3Dfx_Sage]

Originally posted by CgFX If viewperf does one thing it shows geo perf and the geo perf of a 980 doesn't even touch that of a 1100.
you can see just how optimised nVidia's drivers are for that benchmark by looking at how well the FX 500 performs.

FX broken? New FireGL's 4 bit subpixel precsion is the cornerstone of broken in my world of workstation graphics.
please tell me what problems FireGL's 4 bit subpixel precision has caused you. As for the FX being broken it's simple- the chip can't even handle all DX9 functions, it's real-world featureset does not match up to it's paper featureset. It takes a rediculous ammount of time to code things for the FX series unless you just simply revert to DX8.1

You consistantly overreact that the FX series is so slow when game benchmarks shows that 5700 vs. 9600 and 5950 vs. 9800 are actaully valid arguememts to have w.r.t. which is faster.
Which game benchmarks? Games based on the Quake3 engine? I want to see some DX9 benchmarks where the FX is close to comarable Radeons, and where it hasn't already been well established that nVidia is app-specific shader replacement.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.