radeon 9700 pro

[MCronin]

The Radeon 9700 is not, nor will it probably ever be certified by Alias Wavefront for Maya use. The latest hardware info on that page was posted well after the 9700 shipped. A|W only really recommennds you use Professional Cards with certified drivers, all of which are listed on the hardware page. From what little I've used a 9700, it seems to run Maya OK, but not any better than a GeForce 4, and there were a few annoying little display problems with older Radeon drivers. Your money would be better spent on a Fire GL, Quadro, Wildcat VP, or even a Geforce consumer card with modified drivers.

http://www.aliaswavefront.com/en/Community/Support/qualified_hardware/QUAL/maya_45_NT.html

[elvis]

remember folks that gaming cards do not have hardware acelleration for features like dual-sided texturing and lighting, >4 hardware lights and wireframe modes.

and exactly as MCronin mentioned, because of this they will never be certified by these companies.

if you've got the cash, then grab a pro card and read the benefits. if you're only a casual user and/or poor uni student, then grab the best card you can afford but know that it won't help in all circumstances.

your number 1 thing to check is to make sure the card you buy has solid stable drivers that support the 3d language and operating system of your choice. nvida and ati both have solid cards with good opengl and directx stability (especially now taht ati have done so much work on their drivers lately).

at a pinch, you could try to find yourself an older geforce1/2/3 and use the rivatuner utility to "softquadro" the card. i've used this in the past, and it works quite well. (not nearly as well as the real thing, of course, but better than a gaming card).

[dvornik]

Not sure about Maya but in max5 (as opposed to 4) pro card hardly gives you any performance advantages. We are using Quadro 2 and 4 here.

[Gyan]

Originally posted by elvis

at a pinch, you could try to find yourself an older geforce1/2/3 and use the rivatuner utility to "softquadro" the card. i've used this in the past, and it works quite well. (not nearly as well as the real thing, of course, but better than a gaming card).

SoftQuadro4 is out. I currently have a Ti4200 softquadroed to a Quadro 700XGL.

[elvis]

Originally posted by dvornik
Not sure about Maya but in max5 (as opposed to 4) pro card hardly gives you any performance advantages. We are using Quadro 2 and 4 here.

we model sporting stadia and olympic sites. at 6 million polygons and more, hardware wireframe accelleration makes a HUGE difference, i can tell you now.

[elvis]

Originally posted by Gyan
SoftQuadro4 is out. I currently have a Ti4200 softquadroed to a Quadro 700XGL.

i was under the impression that geforce4 cards would not see performance gains through soft quadro as nvidia wisened up and removed the features from the silicon in the gf4 family.

you can still "softquadro" the card, but it really is only a cosmetic difference in terms of the name windows gives it.

calling a spanner a hammer doesn't make it hit nails any better. :)

[Gyan]

Originally posted by elvis
i was under the impression that geforce4 cards would not see performance gains through soft quadro as nvidia wisened up and removed the features from the silicon in the gf4 family.

you can still "softquadro" the card, but it really is only a cosmetic difference in terms of the name windows gives it.


What you surmise is partially true. There are still a lot of features which have simply been driver-disabled.

http://nvworld.ru/docs/sq4e.html

Look at pages 2,3,4.

For me the relevant charts are the Ti4200 vs. 700XGL. At the very least, it doesn't hurt.

[GregHess]

Elvis,

It does make a performance difference...though nowhere near the old softquadro's did. Btw welcome to the forum :). It also induces some bugs here and there which can creep up into the viewport. (The redraw suddenly stopping, wiretear, etc).

Give it a try if you have a chance, I did and ended up uninstalling it.
:wavey:

[dvornik]

digit-life.com is down for me at the moment, but I'll give you a couple of links to their Russian site so you can look at the pictures :)

http://digit-life.ru/video/profcard/11-2002/profcards-11-2002-3dsmax5.shtml

http://digit-life.ru/video/profcard/09-2002/profcards-09-2002-svp.shtml

Again, my comment was about max 5.

[dvornik]

I haven't noticed if they are using maxtreme for Quadros. If they are - the picture is even worse for quadros cause maxtreme doesn't work for max 5 for most users - you can't see gizmos.

Their results are consistent with some limited SpecAPC bencmarks I ran here.

[elvis]

Originally posted by GregHess

Give it a try if you have a chance, I did and ended up uninstalling it.
:wavey:

i just read through the readme on the nvworld.ru website, and it seems very interesting. UGS performance is way down, but it has a LOT of heavy wireframe stuff going on there. the other spec tests are quite interesting.

i've only got max4 at home, but i'll give it a whirl with my geforce4ti4200 as well as specviewperf 6 and 7. migth have to wait until the weekend tho, but i'll post my results here.

can't test it in the office unfortunately, as we only have quadro4 and geforce2 cards, so there's no fair comparison. perhaps i might bring my ti4200 in? we'll see how we go.

and thanks for the welcome, greg! hopefully i can help a little in here without pushing my extreme bias too much! :p

[dvornik]

In max 4 Quadros had a decent advantage on Geforces in SpecAPC max. In max 5 it's just pathetic.

[GregHess]

Well since everyone has a bias, it tends to even itself out :).

My bias tends to go towards AMD, boxxtech, and Mushkin.

Oh and Heatsinks....BFC's Big @$!$! Coolers.

[ajitmenon]

I just 'soft qudro'ed my geforce 2 mx card and it works awesome now. Much higher screen res than before and I also downloaded a special Quadro driver from AW.

Thanks a lot for the links... i'd heard about 'softquad'ding cards before but didn't pay much attention before.

It did screw up my nVidia control panel... any idea on how to get that back?

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