Sapphire 5850 and Maya experience

[warnold]

you do have in your Maya.env file the following settings ?

MAYA_GEFORCE_SKIP_OVERLAY=1
MAYA_NO_VERTEX_ARRAY_SELECT=1

[CKPinson]

Yes- didn't seem to help with the viewport freeze though. This was to fix overlay (as per white paper:popup menu, artisan paint and curser glitches)<- menu still glitched, viewport still freezes and don't use paint but in weights and it leaves a red trail and is very slow.
Had an ATI before this Geforce and it had pretty much the same issues but that was some time ago, however, my buddy's quadro has issues in Maya as well.

[BoostAbuse]

These issues you're seeing with the card are on your GeForce or the ATI? Grab a program called DriverSweep if you're getting BSOD after driver installs, occasionally drivers will root themselves somewhere and not get overwritten properly due to system restrictions so I always recommend people run DriverSweep and blast the old drivers before installing any new ones.

When your ATI card arrives let me know how it works for you and be sure to grab the latest 9.12 drivers from the ATI site as there's supposed to be a lot of fixes from the 9.10 + hotfix.

[wilzoon]

This post will be about my experience using my rig with Maya.
Current RIG:
i7 920
Asus p6t D V2
OCZ 1600 6GB DDR3
650 W PSU (worried about this since it's an older PCIEX PSU but we'll see)
current Video Card= Geforce 7600GS PCIE
Ordered Sapphire 5850 from Chiefvalue for $299 (free shipping)

Most annoying Issues with current card are:
Freezing viewport (happens frequently and often, have to space bar in and out to fix)
Poor dynamics and hi-poly display FPS very laggy to non-working
Poor shadow and hiquality realtime display
Wierd selection issues (inconsistant)

Most recently it doesn't take newer drivers, newer drivers=blue screen of DEATH!

By "current card" you mean the geforce 7600GS yer? So you havent tested out the ATI?

[CKPinson]

The issues I was speaking of as current card was/is my Geforce 7600GS not the Sapphire 5850 which I just checked on and is en route from Chief Value (Newegg affiliate I assuem because their packaging is the same ans says "Newegg"), should be here later this week.


@BoostAbuse: I didn't mess with drive sweeper because this was a complete new install on a new HDD and when I booted everything up prior to installing graphics drivers Win7 installed a generic driver (I am guessing here) for the vid card and it worked fine. I had issues with my old computer that this same thing happened so I was reluctant to install the Nvidia Drivers, well, when I install the new drivers from Nvidia's site that's when problems would happen so I found some really old ones from 3dguru and they worked but they were old (pre-physx etc) and lacked any desirable OGL. So I brokedown and decided once more to try the Nvidia drivers on my new computer but the same ol thing happened->BSOD! I booted into safe and unistalled the driver through Device Manager and rebooted just fine since. I've heard that this card can't function on the newer drivers even though Nvidia says it can due to Physx or some feature.

I will definately be testing the 5850 with Maya and PS (with GPU redraw on).

I had an older ATI 800x back in the agp days and it had less issues than my Geforce but it did have some issues such as: selecting multiple faces (front one and one behind it even with one click), weird selection glitches with edges faces and verts such as if you clicked off into space some would still be selected which would then screw up your modeling if you didn't see it.. and so on. I have higher expectations with my new card though.

[InfernalDarkness]

All of your 7600 issues sound identical to my own issues, which BoostAbuse helped me fix last summer. I use a 7950GT at home, so my high-poly performance and lighting/texture viewport performance will of course be slightly better, but the OTHER issues you're having are all related to your Nvidia per-application settings for Maya. I literally had those exact issues, and all were fixed by isolating and tweaking my Nvidia-Maya settings.

Here's what mine look like, that work with the 7950GT:
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/4516/nvidiamayaweb.jpg

Not to say that your new ATI card won't be better, but to make a fair comparison, you should give the 7600 another shot with its current issues. Hope this helps.

[CKPinson]

What about the driver update issue? Is this just that the newer drivers aren't compatible with my older card? Why does the card work fine until I install an Nvidia driver to it? I've been using the card for some time in Maya so I've managed to get by, that's usually the case with Maya anyway, just need more power. Wish they'd come out with a DX Ray Trace Render that worked good.

[InfernalDarkness]

I believe I'm using Win7 x64-specific drivers from the Nvidia site, 190.34. I'll check when I get home.

Those drivers should work with your card as well; our cards are from the same era.

[CKPinson]

Must be another issue then because these are what I installed.

[CKPinson]

Could just be a hardware issue- faulty card? Thought it was my old MOB PCI Slot but same thing with my new board.

[CKPinson]

Okay- got the card today, packaged nice (did UPS even though ppl say the abuse your stuff but had no obvious issues) and the card itself is more solid than any other I'ved seen or owned.

The card itself isn't has big as ppl made it seem but it is bigger than average and wider as well- 2 DVI, DP (Displayport that looks like a cross between an HDMI and a USB, not sure what to plug in that>? anyone>?) and of course the HDMI capable of sound (My HDTV is a 50" Pro Pany and has DVI, VGA and other ports but not Hdmi which wouldn't matter since I don't have the speakers for it, I use my receiver for that)...

appearently Geforce HDMI isn't capable of sound, didn't know but that's what my buddy said about his.

So I slapped the card in, takes to back slots for the video feeds and couldn't use my screwless clamps so I just screwed it down- doesn't budge. re-connected everything and presto, started right up and noticed Win7 patching registry- even displayed on my HDTV which wouldn't take my older Geforce due to HDCP so I was using the VGA for that.

Now I am installing the lastest drivers from AMD/ATI, didn't even bother with the disk. Next stop: tryout this Dirt2 game that came free for the heck of it then off to Maya to continue on Maya-

older card::: one strange minor issue I noticed using Maya with my Geforce yesterday was that mousing over the icons on the bottm menu bar of open folders/IE etc (where it pops up a mini display of what is open) the displays were all funky and twisted from Maya being open but were fine once I closed it.

By the way, using older 650W SLI ready PSU from BFGTech and so far no hitches.

PS. downloading Cat and Driver 9.12 (still the newest one)

[CKPinson]

Installed the drivers and everything booted back up fine- even my HDTV is working fine- have the options of using either as primary, extended view or mirror.
Connected the SPDIF (Optical audio) from my Motherboard to my receiver and played a movie from my media center on it and everything worked perfectly. I was surprised to learn that digital download movies are 2 ch (unless someone can confirm this) but had another video with 5.1 on there and it played back with 5.1.

Now I am launching Maya and will be messing around with it this evening.

PS, since I had to screens plugged in::: after reboot from drivers noticed my monitor was blank- turned on my HDTV and there was the boot screen, booted in and the extension appeared on my monitor, just had to restablish monitor as primary (or I suppose change the connections on the GPU, dunno).

[InfernalDarkness]

Eager to hear how this card performs in Maya, as I'll be getting a new GPU for work soon (I hope!) and don't really want to wait for the GF100 or buy another Quadro...

Also, DisplayPort is the new "standard" for video output, kinda going head to head with HDMI, minus the audio. Most new monitors feature DisplayPort inputs, and these can be split off or set up to output multiple monitors from one cable, as far as I know. I could be wrong.

[CKPinson]

So far so good- modeling in Maya, did some hair and working on getting the setup more complex- going to add wind, ncloth with collison to character and particles and run back a sim to see how it handles (this was impossible with my previous card as the playback was extremely laggy- could be a combo of my old CPU as well, not sure).

As far as the basics are concerned:
Viewport seems much more responsive then before and just as responsive of what I can recall from my buddy's firegl (forget which one it is exactly but I believe it is one of the 7xxx); however, not sure whether Dynamics lies on the GPU or the CPU or both but I assume both with the playback in the viewport being GPU primarily but the quicky seen I created seems to be more lagged then my buddy's however it's not the exact same seen, he has Dual Xeons and more RAM and again not sure what attributes to this function mostly. I created a variety of lights, Physical sun/sky, 30k poly head as collider, 30k poly plane as cloth, plane as surface- even added particles from the head mouth and gravity- ran same speed with/without particles- deleted the particles cuz they just didn't look right gushing from his mouth.

The viewport thus far as been very good and responsive- no major glitching, opened several windows and turned on High quality/lighting/shadows in viewport- created materials etc-
did see some minor things which I'll post the images for to show you, but again, they are very minor and update themselves correctly without having to exit, just by refreshing the menu, and no where near as glitchy as I've experienced. I will continue modeling and working on a project and will update. If there is something you want me to try then let me know and if I have the time I will. I am tired and probably forgetting some things so I will regroup (watch Burn Notice) and leave you with this...
This is the quick seen with Dynamics (Sun/Sky drowns out the lights:directional, 2point, spot, ambient)- the viewport was set to high quality, display shadows etc and playback was fairly smooth, again, not sure if this is a solely GPU operation...
http://features.cgsociety.org/newgallerycrits/g08/271408/271408_1264129033_large.jpg
This is a minor glitch I noticed (almost not worth mentioning because it easily goes away and doesn't effect performance), besides, I've seen this behavior with all other cards I've used.
http://features.cgsociety.org/newgallerycrits/g08/271408/271408_1264129077_large.jpg
Notice the sample is missing once you scroll down the material attirbutes (didn't notice this with other materials and am not sure if it'll duplicate in a different seen)http://features.cgsociety.org/newgallerycrits/g08/271408/271408_1264129121_large.jpg

[CKPinson]

PS- got Avatar the game free with my i7 920 and with this card cranked it to all ultra high etc settings and it actually made the game much much better- it looks really good- if I get a chance I'll post some comparison shots of that too for those of you who care, am currently DL'ing Dirt 2 which was free with my GPU. Curious to see the DX11 in action.

[InfernalDarkness]

Looks pretty nice so far! Daily use will bring out more or less errors, of course, but I'm glad it's working and am considering it for my workstation GPU upgrade next week too... Just for kicks, if nothing else I'll throw my garbage Quadro back in, if necessary, and take the ATI card home for gaming and personal artwork.


however, not sure whether Dynamics lies on the GPU or the CPU or both but I assume both with the playback in the viewport being GPU primarily but the quicky seen I created seems to be more lagged then my buddy's however it's not the exact same seen, he has Dual Xeons and more RAM and again not sure what attributes to this function mostly.

Dynamics calculation is done by the CPU(s) only, as far as I know. So long as your GPU can display the scene update fast enough, it should be fine, but I don't believe the GPU has any part in Dynamics math as of yet. That said, I also believe it's single-threaded still, as in 2009 on a quad-core only one core is doing any work, when updating Dynamics. So it comes down to core speed/bandwidth, as far as I know. If your buddy's Xeons were faster per-core, that would explain the difference I think.

[CKPinson]

That sounds about right- logically makes sense!


Of course you can still playback the dyanmic sim with little lag (alot less than before at least) so that's good- Realtime would be so much better :)

DL'd and installed Dirt2 since it was free and have to say that it's actually very cool, and I don't care for car games (especially with a keyboard), but you can definately see a HUGE difference between DX10 and DX11- hope they bring this method to 3D because it seems like it could make a big impact over Normal/Disp maps. Seen plugs for Maya but haven't looked too far into them.

[BoostAbuse]

Dynamics calculation is done by the CPU(s) only, as far as I know. So long as your GPU can display the scene update fast enough, it should be fine, but I don't believe the GPU has any part in Dynamics math as of yet.

Yep, dynamics is all CPU bound.

[goldilocks20]

The Sapphire HD 5850 does not disappoint. It's one step down the performance ladder and it gives the GTX285 a run for its money.
At its price point and level of performance its hard to argue against this card as a good upgrade choice from the 4XXX series if cost is a concern. You get great performance in current DX9/10/10.1 games as well as being the second DX11 card out to market. But with only 1 game out that is patched for DX11 that I know of, you will have to wait a little while longer to reap the benefits of this capability.

[CKPinson]

So far all is smooth on the Maya front- No issues thus far, have been modeling and previsualizing without a hitch- PS is running faster (More responsive) than before. Connected it to my Dell monitor via DVI/VGA adapter, My Pany Plasma via DVI and even my Samsung HD via HDMI all without a hitch. This card also output sound to my Samsung via the HDMI which was nice. I've also used to to port a couple of movies to my TV's via Media Center- worked very nice (HD Video was just as sharp as Bluray).


So far no crashes in Maya- also, this runs very quiet even under load- I can only hear my Powersupply fan. I'm really surprised that viewport performance has been as smooth and glitch-free has it has been.

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