Fermi GeForce Cards and OpenGL Performance

[aglick]

I don't know if folks can give helpful responses to "blanket" statements such as "On a side note, how well do modern AMD cards perform with 3d applications?"

You should probably be very specific when posing questions about GPUs-for-applications because the answer invariably is - "it depends".

In general, both NVDIA and AMD cards do a great job. But everybody's "mileage will vary" depending on specifics.

Assuming you are concerned about future GPU-based workflows, toolsets and plugins, might I suggest a little research on "OpenCL". This is very likely to be the next GPU computing standard for accelerating physics, fx, filters, renders, etc.

Cheers!

[julSan]

Thanks. I just needed to know if there are any major glitches with modern AMD cards. The only information I could get on them is from more than a year ago, and people were complaining about poor viewport performance and being unable to select meshes in Maya, though I hear they work well enough for blender. I'm wondering if there has been any improvement since then with the HD 6xxx cards and new drivers or if they're still in the realm of unusable.

[aglick]

Thanks. I just needed to know if there are any major glitches with modern AMD cards. The only information I could get on them is from more than a year ago, and people were complaining about poor viewport performance and being unable to select meshes in Maya, though I hear they work well enough for blender. I'm wondering if there has been any improvement since then with the HD 6xxx cards and new drivers or if they're still in the realm of unusable.

I've heard there is an issue with Maya's viewport/camera views slowing down when rotating/scaling/transforming large selections - (millions of polys). This is apparently due to a problem in the OPenGL implementation.

Not all cards/drivers apparently produce this behavior, and I don't think this is limited to ATI. I'm not sure the exact status on this...

The AMD/ATI HD and nvidia Geforce cards are not recommended for use with Maya by Autodesk by Autodesk, although many folks report that their HD 58xx/68xx/69xx Radeon cards and Geforce cards work great. (This may be because they don't realize they are working with "bugs" -or because they don't use the toolsets/modes that can be problematic under thee cards)

I think most people report good experiences using the Autodesk-certified FirePro and Quadro cards with Maya. Although, again, your mileage may vary. At least the FirePros and Quadros are "Guaranteed" to work with Maya, and you can get technical support assistance if you have problems or your money back...

[julSan]

Thanks. If other users are satisfied with their Radeon cards then I think it will be safer go with one of those. I'm reading a lot of bad things about the newer nvidia geforce cards when working with Blender and sometimes even with Maya and Max.

[CKPinson]

I've been using the ATI HD 5850 with Maya since it came out- Maya 2011 trial and now Maya 2012 Entertainment- I have to say that it performs very well, better than my previous cards with previous versions of Maya; however, I have come across one thing that seems to be some what minor. When creating Maya Hair, once I reach a certain level, I notice the screen flickers white. Don't know what exactly causes this and haven't dove into it because of A.Time and B. Maya doesn't crash so I live with it.

Had good experiences with it thus far but have been typically using polys under 1 mil. Will let you know when that changes.

[InfernalDarkness]

Rockin' a GTX460 here for Maya and Mudbox. It's a great card, worth every penny. You should see the stupidity of complex modeling you can push from Rhino on this thing, compared even to the 200 series. It's definitely a good budget option, now that the 500 series are here.

For scale, the performance of my GTX460 is at least double that of my previous card, the GTS250 (8800GT). And only slightly more expensive at my time of purchase; $220 vs. $175 for the GTS250... That's a pretty decent scale, price-per-performance.

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