VIdeo card recommendations?

[MiGa]

I'm planning to update too.
I think I'm going to buy a Geforce TI4600 or a Geforce FX 5600 (DX9 support).
The TI4600 is faster (if you want to play game too) but it doesn't have Dx9 support.

Also you should think about getting more RAM.

miga

[clusterfuq]

yeah, just spend 50quid on RAM and you'll be singing. 256 really isnt enough, especially with a p3. check out www.crucial.com, been good for me so far

[Silmar]

I just bought one of these http://www.leadtek.com.tw/3d_graphic/winfast_a280_td_myvivo_1.html

has dual output so max runs great with two screens. Watch the motherboard though I had to upgrade to support 8x

[tate242]

A couple of months ago I bought a Quadro 4 750 XL. I read a review on extremetech about it. Was rated best bang for the buck. Its quite a capable card. With Quadro FX boards released it seems vendors are trying to liquidate all Quadro 4 stock.

[sakuramboo]

if you have a little bit of money to spend, id get the ATI Radeon 9800. id wait a few months until the 256 meg version comes out. the 128 meg version is sold for about 400 dollars. the same price for the gforce FX. and the ATI puts it to shame.

[LOX]

thx for the advice, Ill take them under consideration. How much memory do u guys recommend.

[LOX]

how do u guys think a quadro 2 pro would run in 3dsmax 5?

[tate242]

It would probably run MAX just fine, BUT, the quadro is the same chipset as the geforce gaming card with a couple features turned on. I noticed that you are upgrading from a gf2 ti. It may not be worth it for a small performance increase.

[milqman]

i just bought a GF4 Ti4200 128mb 8x... its nice.

[elvis]

Originally posted by sakuramboo
if you have a little bit of money to spend, id get the ATI Radeon 9800. id wait a few months until the 256 meg version comes out. the 128 meg version is sold for about 400 dollars. the same price for the gforce FX. and the ATI puts it to shame.

you'll want to stay away from ATI cards for 3ds max. their openGL support is much poorer than nvidia's outside of any application that's not a game. check through the hardware forums for some more in-depth discussion on the same topic.

[lebada]

all you need to know:

GF 4 Ti4600-> okay but doesnt support DX9, not fastest
GF FX -> fast but speed isnt everything, you need ear plugs with this one...BIG ones might i add.
Radeon 9700 PRO/AIW->..best bang for the buck if you want high end cards...it supports DX 9 and is faster than all of nvidia's cards
Radeon 9800 PRo/AIW-> get the 256 mb version, supports DX 9 and is fastest of all cards.

Those are the so called gaming cards...then there's the other cards..like the quadro ir fire series...but they go up to a couple thousand bucks..which for students or just people who wanna try working..arent worth it all that much...specially if u also play games.

nevermind the card itself...the card isnt used much in rendering..so you MUST upgrade you processor first(well..maybe mobo first) and then take ram...512 at least..ddr333 would be the best now if you can't afford faster ram

[Enivob]

I don't understand why you think your graphics card is going to make you work?

@ work, I use a crappy old Matrox Millienium.

anyway, a P3 866 is probably only a 133Mhz bus. So your stuck there, its like throwing money away if your not going to upgrade the mother board.

I'm using a 733 w 256Mb, so my system is crappyer than yours, but I can still crank out stuff.

I see so many posts about the hardware and the software. Why don't you just make something.:airguitar

[boxcrash]

Yeah without a fast CPU/M Board and some ram your card will never perfom well enough, it will be bottlenecking across the buses.

The Radeon cards are fast for games and what not but I have still yet to see them perform at all in viewports or 3D applications. A board that runs games fast will not run 3D Authoring appz fast, this is not a gimmie here.

Also if you want to you can upgrade your card to a Quadro Pro by downloading SoftQuadro or RivaTuner 2.13 from
http://download.guru3d.com/ it will turn your card into a Quadro 2 card. All it is, is instruction from the drivers to the OS and card that say it is a Quadro resistor board in the Quadro boards anyhow, of course sometimes a couple more ram chips on the board.

I would wait for the new GeForce cards to come out which will have full Direct-X 9 support and many other very nice features.

You can buy a ATI card, but in my opinion and veryone I have ever used was crap for 3D creation and was not what I or anyone expected.:)

[Tex3D]

Originally posted by elvis
you'll want to stay away from ATI cards for 3ds max. their openGL support is much poorer than nvidia's outside of any application that's not a game. check through the hardware forums for some more in-depth discussion on the same topic.

I have to disagree, as far as my own personal experience goes. I upgraded from a GF2 to a Radeon 9000 (not even the 9800 Pro) and it works great in MAX. The box I put it in is a PIII 700 with 384 Ram and it worked a LOT better. The latest Catalyst drivers are pretty darned stable too.

I may be wrong, I may be right..Either way it's just my $.02 :thumbsup:

-Dave

[LOX]

Originally posted by Enivob
I don't understand why you think your graphics card is going to make you work?

@ work, I use a crappy old Matrox Millienium.

anyway, a P3 866 is probably only a 133Mhz bus. So your stuck there, its like throwing money away if your not going to upgrade the mother board.

I'm using a 733 w 256Mb, so my system is crappyer than yours, but I can still crank out stuff.

I see so many posts about the hardware and the software. Why don't you just make something.:airguitar

I dont think my graphics card is going to make me work. I want to move on to higher poly models, thats the only reason i want to upgrade my pc.

[tate242]

I used to have a matrox millenium, circa 1995. Even had it maxed out to 8MB. I didn't have the patience to work with it. :shrug: I buy expensive hardware because I enjoy the convienance of quality & speed while working with large poly sets.
LOX, have you looked into the Softquadro option? I forgot to mention the possibilty in my earlier posts. Might be enough to hold you off for a bit. Because it IS software, if will not damage your card. As far as memory, whatever maxes out first, your wallet or your motherboard is best. These programs can never get enough. Make sure you look over your Motherboard manual to see what is supported before ordering, and when you do order/ buy, I would recommend a name brand manufacturer. I used to BSOD so often when using generic memory. I always thought it was a software issue until I bought Crucial mem. Good luck!

Tate

[Linz]

well, my $.02 is go for a GeForce Ti (4200, 4600, whatever really) and use SoftQuadro to boost the speed. I know I'll probably get jumped on for suggesting this but It's worked brilliantly for me.

It's fairly straight forward and very reliable. You are in no way physically modifying the card either so your warranty is unaffected. I have a Quadro2 Pro which I used to think was excellent until I discovered the Quadro 'hack', I then realised what a rip-off the Quadro really was. My old Geforce 256 DDR was about the same speed as the Quadro once hacked.

I now use a 128MB 4600Ti with SoftQuadro and the standard Max OpenGL drivers. Although the Maxtreme drivers work fine I don't really need them as the card is sooo much faster just running as a quadro. I've informally benchmarked it against the standard 4600 setup and it can be 3-4 times faster in Max now.

I'd definitely recommend the memory upgrade as well though, that's why I think going for a cheaper GeForce card would be best - spend the extra cash on RAM. :)

[lebada]

arent the Ti4200 and the 9500 pro at the same price?*jumps him*....the 9500 has equal quality to the Ti4600...why wouldn't it be worth it? i think i saw the 9500 pro for around 260 bucks canadian...subtract 30% and u got the american value.

[boxcrash]

Originally posted by Linz
well, my $.02 is go for a GeForce Ti (4200, 4600, whatever really) and use SoftQuadro to boost the speed. I know I'll probably get jumped on for suggesting this but It's worked brilliantly for me.

No, I suggested it to for the money compared to oh lets say a Quadro....FX.... it is great.:)

Also if you run 2K or XP open your Task Manager(ctrl+alt+del\task manager) and have Max running also, TS Manag will be on top(which can be changed) and while it is select your viewport and then move around............oh say, center/roller click the mouse and Alt and do a 360 roll ball thingy. watch the CPU and ram, of course this does not monitor video card usage.

I say this because on another computer that is 1GHZ P3, 128mb SDR Ram with a Onboard Video Card, some-whatcha-who? brand with like 8mb of VRAM runs faster in the Max viewports then my P3 500MHZ Slot 1 Katmai(:hmm: ), 392mb SDR Ram, GeForce 2 MX 400 with Quadro 2 MXR enabled, Clocked to 245MHZ Core/370mhz Memory with a fan on the GPU and sinks on the ram and Peformance settings for Max in Quadro.

Now in that same box with the crap-ola onboard card I bet my GF 2 card would fly and let me clock higher, no bottlenecks, or less I should say.(it does run faster than my Matrox g400 Mill. 32mb Dual Head Max card did though, not much but it is noticeable.:) :eek:

[Linz]

Originally posted by Buggy166
arent the Ti4200 and the 9500 pro at the same price?*jumps him*....the 9500 has equal quality to the Ti4600...why wouldn't it be worth it? i think i saw the 9500 pro for around 260 bucks canadian...subtract 30% and u got the american value.

You could be right. However, with the SoftQuadro hack I really have boosted my 4600Ti to a Quadro4 900 XGL. The same hack could be applied to the 4200 and the results would be very similar.

check this out

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/3dsmax5.html

the 4600(900 XGL)/9700 is probably similar to a 4200(750 XGL)/9500 comparison but I may be completely wrong :shrug:

[Tex3D]

May I jump in here for a sec fellas?

I originally bought a Ti4200 and it absolutely trashed my system. Some older chipsets don't take kindly to 4x agp and above cards. The Radeon worked very well at the lower bus, and when I finally replaced the motherboard with a 2.2 ghz and cranked it up, that puppy really came to life.

If it's an older board, its something to think about. :hmm:

I guess that makes $.04 at this point :p

[elvis]

Originally posted by Tex3D
I have to disagree, as far as my own personal experience goes. I upgraded from a GF2 to a Radeon 9000 (not even the 9800 Pro) and it works great in MAX. The box I put it in is a PIII 700 with 384 Ram and it worked a LOT better. The latest Catalyst drivers are pretty darned stable too.

I may be wrong, I may be right..Either way it's just my $.02 :thumbsup:

-Dave

my own personal experiences have been the opposite of this. if you've managed to get an ATi card performing to an acceptable level in max, then i salute you. the firm i work for is 100% nvidia for production work. we have several test systems with various other hardware, but until we can guarantee the consistency and stability of ATI, we'll never use them for any work requiring decent openGL.

[boxcrash]

Originally posted by Tex3D
May I jump in here for a sec fellas?

TEX3D,
This may be off topic, but you look alot like my old boss(from the pictures of oneself post), Christian Hidalgo, tell me your not?!!:hmm: :D

[Tex3D]

Originally posted by boxcrash
TEX3D,
This may be off topic, but you look alot like my old boss(from the pictures of oneself post), Christian Hidalgo, tell me your not?!!:hmm: :D

YES I AM !! Now GET BACK TO WORK YOU BUM!!!

Just Kidding...No I'm not. LOL I just had to do that though.:buttrock:

-Dave

There are a bunch of big scary latino dudes that look like me though:D

[treed]

I once had a radeon 8500 64mb, and it kept crashing max like crazy because my scenes were to complex. After a little while I upgraded to a quadro 4 550 xgl. I got the latest drivers and it works like a charm. :applause:


treed

[boxcrash]

Originally posted by Tex3D
YES I AM !! Now GET BACK TO WORK YOU BUM!!!


lol, its all good. :thumbsup:
He was my boss about over a year ago, so I wondered or thought maybe you where related.:)

[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.