A Quadro for Mudbox?

#6

just a note that if you’re on a Mac, get a Radeon 4870 - it’s literally 3X as fast as a Quadro FX 5600 in Mudbox in my experience. The Nvidia OS X drivers suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck and ATI’s are very good and don’t have any glitches in Maya either (a problem they used to have). Read my benchmarks here:

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/04/266ghz-8-core-mac-pro-review.ars/5](http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/04/266ghz-8-core-mac-pro-review.ars/5)

Mudbox is at the bottom

I bought the 5600 for $2000 but now I’m using a gaming card…

edit: I think that because Mudbox is so heavily bandwidth bound, I don’t think you’re going to see Quadro driver optimizations make up the difference. And you’d never want to enable realtime AA in Mudbox - that would be tossing out FPS for something you’d never see.

#7

Interesting stuff there, Dave. Thank you. :slight_smile:
Have you by chance done any benchmarks in those programs pitting the Quadros against the GeForce?

#8

Apparently Macs get the option of this new card in June :slight_smile:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_gtx_285_us.html

I find Mudbox a bit slow using an 8800 GT…that and I run out of gpu memory at high poly counts.

I am definitely considering upgrading to a 285,unless someone thinks the Ati 4870 would be better?

Macpro dual quad 3.2s - 16G ram. OSX 10.5.6

#9

I don’t think I would ever recommend to anyone to get any GT version card to run a program like MB. It’s too low end and if you want to design higher end models in a program such as MB you certainly need more power.

Do you need a Quadro? Who knows as I have personally never used one but I will get one as my next video card upgrade. At this point I do much more 3D work and far less gaming than I use to. I do have an 8800 Ultra which blows away anything I throw at it and MB runs fantastic. But I am curious as to how a top end Quadro will run compared to the 8800. I don’t know but I do want to compare it.

A lot of the reading I’ve done says that there is a noticeable difference with a Quadro but it’s gonna depend on your budget. If you’re a student then I would stick with what you have and not take a loan out to cover the cost if your unsure of the performance. These cards are more suited for professionals in the field than for us poor students. :frowning:

After graduation, get a job, make some money and then look at buying higher end parts for your PC. :wink:

#10

I did in OS X and there was barely any difference because of the absolutely crap Quadro drivers for OS X. The Quadros really are just smoke and mirrors until they get better OS X drivers. I used to shy away from ATI cards but I’m so much happier with this 4870 that it’s going to take a lot to get me back to Nvidia - but I’ll be testing snow leopard with the FX 5600 to see if it’s improved.

voltageme5 - there’s a difference between buying equipment that helps you work and buying equipment to convince you that you belong in your field. Blindly dropping bills on hardware without understanding how it works is pretty bad - Quadros are the same cards but with more VRAM than gamer cards and different drivers. If the drivers aren’t tuned for an application (Cinema 4D, Mudbox, Houdini, being untuned) then you will see ZERO benefit running the Quadro version of an Nvidia chipset with similar video memory. I should post the video of my 12-million poly Mudbox model that I’m working on - It’s about 4x faster on the 4870 512 MB ($150) than a 1.5 GB Quadro FX 5600 ($2500) because of the difference in drivers. It’s not as bad in Windows but if you read above, someone confirms that since there’s no optimization for Mudbox, a Quadro is a bad choice (look at the memory bandwidth of those two cards and you’ll see why this is the case). But hey, if you’re looking for some extra shit for your sigwanking, go for it.

#11

These days there is practically very little difference between quadro’s and high end gaming cards regarding hardware and architecture.The drivers are what make the big difference.
A good option is to use a good gaming card and softmod it with quadro forceware drivers and then using something like GPU-Z you can switch back and forth between drivers depending on whether you’re in a 3D app or a game engine.

#12

I’ve read about soft modding a GeForce to be able to use Quadro drivers, but this is the first I’ve seen someone say you can switch back and forth between the drivers. You mean you can do that in real time, without rebooting? I’ve been tempted to try it just out of curiosity, but figured it was more hassle than it was worth.

#13

No go on the Quadro soft mod for a GTX 275, it seems. Unless I’m missing something, it looks as though the recent Quadros are still at 65 nm technology, while the GTX is at 55nm. I’m assuming that would prevent it from working. I could very well be missing something though, as there are a whole lot of Quadro drivers to sort through. Far more than I would have ever guessed.
I did find a compatible Quadro driver for an 8800GTS though, maybe I’ll give that try just for fun. I don’t really have any disillusions it would make much of a difference, but I like messing with stuff. :wink:

#14

Who’s blindly dropping money on hardware without understanding how it works?

And WTF is sigwanking?

#15

I basically bought a whole new workstation for mudbox 2, and the videocard was a big choice. After a bunch of testing I went with a nVidia Geforce GTX 280 1GB. I have a quadro at work, and when I run mudbox at home or at work, I really feel no difference. The quardo is probably a touch faster, but not enough to be noticable. However, the price is where you’ll find the big difference :slight_smile: I’d vote for the cheaper card.

  • Neil
#16

you basically said that you’d buy a Quadro because it was a more serious card when everyone in this thread with experience with the Quadros is saying that they aren’t worth the cost for Mudbox.

Sigwanking is this:

Mac Pro 4.44144 GHz | 123 Gigglebytes of RAMs
Porsche Ballster
Dual Dachshund puppies with golden flea collers

#17

You must have missed the part where I said that I’ve done a lot of reading, aka research, into the Quadro. Just because you may not have hands on experience with a component it certainly shouldn’t prevent you from purchasing it. But at the price of some of these Quadros you should certainly do your homework. Also, keep in mind, there is a huge price gap between a high end Quadro which is $3000+ and a low end one which is about the cost of a low end gaming card. If I were to buy a Quadro it would not be for just MB. I use a variety of software packages that would benefit from a Quadro.

As far as “sigwanking”, the way you describe it is no different then many of the artists on this very board who post how long it took them to do a piece of artwork like they are bragging that it takes mere minutes for them to create a masterpiece.

But getting back to the original topic here. Until you get out into the field and would utilize some of the key features, which seem to escape many of the posters here, of a Quadro, I would stick with what you have for now.

#18

lol - I’ve art directed magazines and put my work in them. Does that qualify as being “in the field”?

Anyway, if you want to buy a Quadro FX 5600, I’ll sell it to you for an easy $1500. It’s sitting on my shelf unused.

#19

“in the field” was not directed at you but rather the original poster, which why I referenced getting back to the original topic.

#20

Well thanks again, guys.
My new GTX 275 is doing quite well with Mudbox 2009, as well as with Maya 2009 and Photoshop CS4. And a few other older 3D and 2D programs I’ve used for a while.
And of course it just rips through all my games, so I’m definitely happy about that.

I’ll definitely not be getting a Quadro, any time soon at least. Hopefully by the time I’m actually working in the industry things will have changed and the line between the high end workstation hardware and consumer hardware will be more blurred, more in line. At least that’s my prediction. :slight_smile:

#21

ya, I’d bet that 90% of Autodesk’s paying customers are probably running their apps on gaming cards. Anyway, Mudbox relies heavily on gaming-style tech (normal maps, fake occlusion, DOF, etc) for its realism. I think I’ve resigned myself to getting the fastest gaming video card every six months since it could always be faster. That said, it performs amazingly well with my 12-million poly scene and a Radeon 4870 and OS X.

#23

heh - I’d like to see what “lightning fast” means at that polycount. I can’t get there because the Mac version of MB is 32-bit for now.

#24

Damn.
I didn’t even know EVGA made a 2 GB GTX 285. When I was shopping, all I came across was the 1 GB version. And that one is only $150 more than what I paid.
Now that I’ve seen that I might have to take advantage of their 90 day step-up plan. :wink: