Best max graphics card?

[Surly Bird]

If HL2 is on your list as well as Max, everything I've read suggests you should go with an ATI card as Valve has favoured them all along during development.

http://www.ati.com/products/radeonx800/index.html

Pick one that's in your budget, I suppose.

Honestly, though, I'd hold off and wait 'til HL2 comes out and the various websites out there give benchmarks on the spectrum of video cards and how they perform with the game. NVidia may have something that's just as good and it might be cheaper. It's always better to wait and see.

Hope this helps.

[capone_adam]

Thanks, max is more important for me then half life 2. If theres not a card that works well with both then I would go for a card which did well with max but not with half life 2. In this case, what card is best for max?

[treed]

Well, don't forget about the 6800 GT and Ultra cards. Those are just as powerful as the latest radeon cards or even better in some situations. And I hear that they work really good in max.

[Hazdaz]

When it comes to MAX (or any 3D app), I would lean toward Nvidia. Even if their HW isn't the fastest (and that is debatable), their drivers have always been much better, in my opinion.

Ati is probably better for gaming, but I honestly can care less about PC games, so my interest will always be in what is faster in professional apps.

I woudl also HIGHLY recommend you find out what vid-card is in your PC... it might not be as bad as you think it is, and thus making an upgrade a big waste of money if all your going to get is a marginally faster card.

[Daniell]

nVidia for me... TNT with 16mb at first then GeForce256DDR then GeForce3 and now GeForce5900... Always with official drivers, never had problems with OpenGL in Max.
Maybe sometimes worse than Ati in games (D3D) but I think more stable drivers, expecially in OpenGL.

Daniel.

[Surly Bird]

I've always gone with NVidia for home too. I'm way behind the times. I'm running a GeForce 4 TI 4600. Ran Doom 3 just fine. It did't look as pretty as a new card, but it still looked good. Funny thing is, at work, we used the GeForce 5800 FX cards and they had a lot of problems with Shader Model 2.0 (ran 1.0 just fine). We later learned from NVidia that model was the first implementation of a SM 2.0 card and they didn't get it quite right. So we switched to a Radeon 9800 and it runs everything just fine.

I doubt it'll make much difference with HL2 which new card you get. Somethings may look marginally better or give you a better frame rate in certain scenarios, but the inverse might be true with a different game like Doom 3. If Max is the main concern, I'd stick with NVidia, too.

[depleteD]

Hey,

I know for HL2 Ati is favored over nvidida.
But now in max 7 ati now favored as well for that real time shadeing ect. u need a firegl card tho.
ATi is also native on pci express

Ive always had a nvidia card always been impressed. And the higher quadros can get pretty nutz, but the maxtreme drivers are horrible. So bad. But u can like ahve 2 million polys in a viewport before u notice a decrease in performance. Those are expensive tho.

[BrianHarbauer]

Ooooo. What a touchy subject so close to all of our hearts.... "Sigh"

My first video card was a 16mb ati all-in-wonder. Beautiful solid card. I think can do grafics just as good as nVidia's low low end mx-440. (64mb agp) Tho recently i bought for my computer a NVidia 5900FX 128, -beautiful. At work we got a computer with ati 9800 pro. Personally, the NVidia works far supurior with max. Definatly.

Recently i was thumbing my way through one of the issues of Computer Graphics World, (Love that magazine) And so happend to notice that 3d labs was not out of the race either. They're very IN the race, with a 640mb pci Express realizm card. Holy snot. This thing is a beast. So, i'm already thinking about my next machine i will build, i think i'll save up and get this heck of a card. Give it a run and see how it goes. Here's the link.

http://www.3dlabs.com/products/family.asp?fami=9http://www.cgtalk.com/images/icons/icon13.gifhttp://www.cgtalk.com/images/icons/icon11.gif

[Hamburger]

I'm using a Radeon 9800 pro here, it's very fast in the viewports and a lot less laggy than my mates FX Quattro card. The only problem with the 9800 Pro is that the AA really sucksin Max, I've got it at 16x and yet it looks like it's off.

[Mark Patterson]

Id just read a G-card review and find out whats the fastest card for your money right now.
It changes pretty much every month.

Personnaly speaking i run a crappy 5600 NV, I can still play all games thanks to twin xeon CPU's and 2GB of ram.

Veiwports seem to be able to push about 1mill of polygons with not much problem, and i run some very complex scenes.

But in all honesty I always moan about render times - £300 for me gos on a new CPU :)

[capone_adam]

Thanks all...seems that nvidia is getting mentioned the most. Maybe I should just buy the most expensive one I can afford with my budget and hope for the best. But as some say...might not be worth it if my pc is not up to it. No idea whats in my machine, better write it down tonight and post it here tomorrow:shrug:

[feverinlove]

I have a RADEON 9800 PRO. Its very good I am working with 3dsmax and I can play DOom 3 at high details :)

[Mark Patterson]

I was just reading a popular PC magazine here in the UK - they build a PC (no monitor) and show u how and where to buy the parts for £470 that can run Doom 3, farcry, rome total war - all on near enough top settings.

I would read some reviews on G-cards myself as its changing every week - most £300 cards will be more then enough either way - its CPU power to reduce render time tho.

[robinb]

Just been trying the max 7 demo with my Radeon 9600 and the real time direct x display works pretty well. Apparently it requires pixel shader 2.0 to work, so whatever card you get, make sure it supports ps2.0 if you want to use the in-viewport display of direct x shaders. It's plenty fast and I haven't suffered any display problems (unlike Maya which seems to HATE ATI cards- don't buy ATI if you intend to use maya too).

Get a card with loads of vram if you want to display lots of high res textures. The mobility version on my laptop isn't much good with lots of high res textures- lots of disc grinding. I don't get a very fast frame rate in Doom3 either on the lowest texture setting. It will support textures up to 2048 in the viewports though which is good for template images.
BTW. The ability to automatically convert a standard material to a direct x shader and display it in the viewport straight away in max 7 is pretty neat. I've been after something to do that for ages.

[capone_adam]

sorry for delay, heres what I found out about my pc...

has a siluro graphics card (made by abit)
ATA133+RAID motherboard

No idea if these are good or not, does it sound dated?

[Hamburger]

Hmm never heard of that video card.

How much memory does it have 8mb, 16mb? You should be able to tell by right clicking the desktop then going to Properties>Settings>Advanced>Adapter and it'll probably tell you more about it in there. If it has 64 or 128mb plus memory it should be an OK card. But something tells me you should upgrade. :thumbsup:

[capone_adam]

Ah, weird...my card is actually a GEFORCE 2 MX 400, which I hear is a good card, right?...I also have 64MB...

can anyone tell me if this is good?, and what might be a personally useful purchase to further improve my pc for 3d applications.

[Surly Bird]

I hate to break it to you , but the MX line of GeForce cards aren't that hot. I'm using a GeForce 4 Ti 4600 (Abit Siluro version) and it was a good card in it's day. It's really showing it's age now, so I can only imagine your card won't be so hot in either Max or Half-Life 2. You'll probably be able to run them, but there'll be some compromises to get it going -- the experience with either Max or HL2 won't be too hot. The most problematic thing will be regarding Shader 2.0 (and soon Shader 3.0) technology, which I believe your card will not support.

When it comes to PC upgrades for 3D (and games) it all comes down to: Video Cards, the processor and RAM. The motherboard is also critically important too because all of those components have to work together on the board. Make sure the motherboard is designed to do what you need.

Honestly, if I were you, I'd save up and get a brand new rig. The problem with trying to piecemeal upgrade an old system is kind of a cart-before-the-horse problem. You buy a new video card only to discover your motherboard doesn't support it too well or not at all. Then you realize you have a chokepoint with your processor. So you want to upgrade that and the motherboard only supports a marginally faster processor. If you're going to spend the dough on a new processor you might as well get a really GOOD one, so your stuck. See, the thing is, all this stuff has to be thought out before you whip out your money for a purchase otherwise, you're wasting money.

In the end, one upgrade usually necessitates another one. I've pretty much abandoned the thought of upgrading a system bit by bit for this very reason. I usually wait and just build a new rig from scratch and try to max it out as much as possible (the highest CPU the motherboard will use, fill all the RAM slots with the maximum amount of RAM, etc.). Then I've got something that will last a few years and I'll avoid the upgrade quicksand.

I'd start by getting familiar with all the current hardware, so you can make a wise choice. A good place to start is

http://www.hardocp.com/

or

http://www.tomshardware.com/

or

http://www.anandtech.com/


It may seem confusing at first. Look for introductory articles that help explain the process. Ask more questions. Hold off on making snap purchases until you really know why you are buying something. More info is better.

Sorry, I'm not trying to lecture or preach. I just want to help and I hope this has helped you.

- Ronnie

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