Graphics Card do not affect renderspeed??

[Per-Anders]

that is correct, graphics cards have no impact on rendering in C4D (and i'm pretty sure they don't have any impact in vray either). graphics cards only affect the viewport camera movement.

the only render engines i can think of that take any advantage of graphics hardware are Mental Ray (though for shadow rendering only) and Gelato, which is Nvidia's render engine which of course uses pure graphics card power (though is still very buggy). i seem to recall some gpu enhanced photorealistic renderman project demoed back at siggraph's renderman user group meet (though maybe i'm confused on that, the meeting nearly drained my will to live shortly after draning my will to stay awake).

[Jeet]

hi...

Thats little strange but...thanks for replying...

regards

jeet.

[howzit]

im afraid graphics cards are mainly for driving your display. this can be important, in my case, for animation, i can better judge how it (camera movement) will look, it is still not real time feed back, but is better than a slow card.
Macintosh computers I read somewhere, utalise the graphics cards to aid computing power, but I read that a while ago and cannot be sure I am rembering correctly. If you are on a mac, you can try searching around on macosxhints.com. That is a good place to read up on the macintosh systems.

[moka.studio]

It really isn"t strange, your graphics card is driving the diplsay that you see.
So they make a difference for working with heavy scenes.
Before you upgrade, make sure you do some research, as higher prices don|t necessarily guarantee a significant increase in Display speed for C4d.
Actually, the Quatro/FireGl and similar high-end cards are overkill for C4d, as they don't seem to provide more speed than the GeForce/Radeon equivalents.
It varies from applicatio to application though.
Have a look at imashination.com"s database to compare display speed for different GPU's.
Note also that the display speed will be influenced also by the overall system's performance.

As mentioned by Sadie, there are some Harware rendering solutions that are being developed, but most are still in their infancy, or are based on proprietary hardware.

Most render engines do not use Harware Rendering.

[lllab]

" Thats little strange"

no not at all- this is reality of mainly all renderengines. also mentalray does not gain much. iguess it is more marketing thing.

gelato from nvidia changes this, and in the future it will certainly be that graphicards will play a role in some kind of realtime-rendering.

do a google search and you will see;-)

stefan

[vid2k2]

If you want ultrafast renders, then, see the threads on PC hardware configurations.
PC's are faster than Macs for this task. The number of processors, ram and fx cards
all contribute to display and render speeds. ie: the new mac quad is faster in renders
than an older model. And, xenons and opterons are spearheading the speed render limits.
Or, so I've been reading with great interest:)

Plugging along on my iMac :)

[hundredthirtyseven]

"Actually, the Quatro/FireGl and similar high-end cards are overkill for C4d, as they don't seem to provide more speed than the GeForce/Radeon equivalents."

This applies to almost everything. There are some things to note however:

1. Quadro/FireGl cards gain their plus power by having software specific drivers, but unfortunately these drivers are only available for Maya and Max users.

2. Geforce and Quadro/Radeon and FireGL cards have the same hardware. Sometimes the "pro" cards memory speed is about 2% faster, but that's all, really. So basically all these "pro" cards are nothing more than marketing bullshit. But of course the manufacturers think these cards can be sold to graphicians, because 99% of them know nothing about hardware. Also 99% percent of hardware dealers will tell any graphician that a Quadro/FireGL is much-much better. This is obviously a lie, they just want their money.

3. If you need higher speed for Max/Maya, you can easily turn your Geforce/Radeon card into a Quadro/FireGL by changing the driver. Use the software called Rivatuner.

4. Current high-end graphics card are so fast that even the fastest Athlon FX processors can't feed them with enough data. So I'd say that even a 6800 Geforce is almost an overkill even if you have an Athlon FX system. This is especially true if you have a slower system.

5. About 3Dlabs: The highly appriciated 3DLabs Wildcat Realizm 800 cards will deliver about 2700 Cinebench points. That is about the same speed you can get from a 100 Dollar Geforce 6600 card.

6. Apple's OpenGL is really bad. This means you can't get above 2000 Cinebench points no matter what card you have. So for Macs, almost every card above 200$ is an overkill.

7. My general advise: Take care of your money, don't be lame, take a look at imashination's site before you buy anything.

[mikeh64]

6. Apple's OpenGL is really bad. This means you can't get above 2000 Cinebench points no matter what card you have. So for Macs, almost every card above 200$ is an overkill.


why why why why......

would it cost Apple too much? (not good enough return on investement?)
can't be fixed due to current Apple OS/hardware issues? (ie., bigger issue than just OpenGL)
anything at all maxon can do to at least improve editor speed an Macs a bit?
does anyone know the truth?

[moka.studio]

2. Geforce and Quadro/Radeon and FireGL cards have the same hardware. Sometimes the "pro" cards memory speed is about 2% faster, but that's all, really. So basically all these "pro" cards are nothing more than marketing bullshit. But of course the manufacturers think these cards can be sold to graphicians, because 99% of them know nothing about hardware. Also 99% percent of hardware dealers will tell any graphician that a Quadro/FireGL is much-much better. This is obviously a lie, they just want their money.


Exactly.
The reason why I don|t like buying Ati btw, is that they have purposefully turned off their Dual Plane option in the software for the radeons, even the more expensive radeons, on the PC. It is reserved for the FireGl, or for the Mac Radeons.
That is a poor business practice.

As far as the hardware dealers telling "graphicians" that the FireGl-Quadro cards are much better, I would say it is because they often don't really know what they are talking about, and are just feeding the customer the bigger(more expensive) is bigger line ( which does not hurt them either of course)

[moka.studio]

why why why why......

would it cost Apple too much? (not good enough return on investement?)
can't be fixed due to current Apple OS/hardware issues? (ie., bigger issue than just OpenGL)
anything at all maxon can do to at least improve editor speed an Macs a bit?
does anyone know the truth?

there are a lot oof opinions as to why it is that poor.
macs do seem to have a poorer implementation of Open Gl than Pc's do.
However I have read that with other 3d software, such as modo, the differences in display performance are not as big between the 2 platforms. Can\t say for sure.

[Thalaxis]

Exactly.
The reason why I don|t like buying Ati btw, is that they have purposefully turned off their Dual Plane option in the software for the radeons, even the more expensive radeons, on the PC. It is reserved for the FireGl, or for the Mac Radeons.
That is a poor business practice.


It's stupid, and probably has a lot to do with ATI's near-zero penetration into the workstation market.

Also, the Quadros blow the doors off of the FireGL's in CAD applications where the priority is line-drawing -- in this niche 3DLabs is nVidia's primary (read: only) competitor, since 3DLabs absorbed Dynamic Pictures and Intense3D, Evans and Sutherland abandoned the market, Intel absorbed Real3D, and Number Nine folded.


As far as the hardware dealers telling "graphicians" that the FireGl-Quadro cards are much better, I would say it is because they often don't really know what they are talking about, and are just feeding the customer the bigger(more expensive) is bigger line ( which does not hurt them either of course)

I think what annoyed me the most about ATI is that even during periods when they had the edge in hardware, nVidia continued to lead in OpenGL performance. Sad.

Today of course, nVidia has the lead in hardware, and S3 is trying to break back into the biz with something that might actually cut the mustard (maybe -- I'm optimistic about having a bit more competition floating around), but the S3's history doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

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