10 replies to this topic

[icaro]

Have master licence and will install H12 soon.

Would like to hear recommendation from any actually using H12 beta now.
buying new pc.

choice between quadra 4000  or GEForce 580 with 3GB of RAM. will use win7 and linux.

[ranxerox]

interesting discussion here:

http://www.sidefx.co...t=graphics card

-ranxx

icaro, on 07 November 2011 - 02:46 PM, said:

Have master licence and will install H12 soon.

Would like to hear recommendation from any actually using H12 beta now.
buying new pc.

choice between quadra 4000  or GEForce 580 with 3GB of RAM. will use win7 and linux.

[lukeiamyourfather]

icaro, on 07 November 2011 - 02:46 PM, said:

Have master licence and will install H12 soon.

Would like to hear recommendation from any actually using H12 beta now.
buying new pc.

choice between quadra 4000  or GEForce 580 with 3GB of RAM. will use win7 and linux.

At work I tested a Quadro 4000 and at home I tested a Radeon 6970. The Radeon was faster than the Quadro 4000 for Pyro simulations using OpenCL by a fair amount. Being a gaming card the Radeon has other minor issues in the viewport though. Not sure if the GeForce would have issues in the viewport or not but it would definitely out perform the Quadro 4000 for OpenCL. The higher end Quadro cards have larger memory (like 6GB on the Quadro 6000) but the lower end Quadros don't bring much to the table for OpenCL use.

[icaro]

thanks for info

bought a GEForce 580 with 3GB of RAM for trying out! sure want one Quadro 6000, quadra 4000 with tesla 2075 and  NVIDIA Maximus if it works later will be intressting option.
loking at dual xeon 5650 with ssd disk also, is it wise to put licence server on ssd disk? loking att intel ssd for stability?

Edited by icaro, 15 November 2011 - 05:24 PM.

[malexander]

lukeiamyourfather, on 08 November 2011 - 03:12 AM, said:

At work I tested a Quadro 4000 and at home I tested a Radeon 6970. The Radeon was faster than the Quadro 4000 for Pyro simulations using OpenCL by a fair amount. Being a gaming card the Radeon has other minor issues in the viewport though. Not sure if the GeForce would have issues in the viewport or not but it would definitely out perform the Quadro 4000 for OpenCL. The higher end Quadro cards have larger memory (like 6GB on the Quadro 6000) but the lower end Quadros don't bring much to the table for OpenCL use.

The Quadro 4000 has 256 shaders, but they're clocked at a mere 450MHz. To compare, the GEForce GTS 450 has 192 shaders @ 783Mhz, while the GTX460 has 336 shaders @ 675MHz. I'm guessing this is partially because the Quadro 4000 has a single-slot cooling solution, and partially because Quadros need to be clocked a bit lower because of their uncapped geometry processing rates. GEForces have their FP64 rates, triangle setup and geometry processing capped, probably to reach those high clocks within their thermal headroom, which is more beneficial for games.

The Quadro 2000 has fewer shaders (192, 25% less), but it's clocked much higher (625MHz, 40% faster). Its main detriment is its 1GB of memory, which isn't going to be enough for anything but very small sims (128^3).

The 4000's 2GB memory makes it an adequate card for OpenCL, though the fan revs up like a jet turbine after a few seconds of heavy computation.

Unfortunately the prices for the Quadro 5000 and 6000 rival most workstations, otherwise they'd be great cards to recommend for both graphics and computation.

[lukeiamyourfather]

icaro, on 15 November 2011 - 05:12 PM, said:

...also, is it wise to put licence server on ssd disk? loking att intel ssd for stability?

The license server will be no more or less stable on a SSD than a hard disk. If reliability is a concern then a good quality RAID 1 controller and two hard disks would be a good option. Add a hot spare to the controller and it could rebuild after a failed disk without interrupting normal activity or even rebooting.

[jim c]

Does anyone know if an ATI Radeon HD 5870 would be a reasonable upgrade? I currently have nvidia 8800gt. I went and bought a nvidia gtx 560 (coudn't afford the quadro 4000), but I'm not sure if it's going to work on my Mac Pro.

[malexander]

The 560 won't work in a Mac pro. Only certified Mac cards will run in a Mac. The 5870 should be a fairly decent improvement over the 8800, especially with its 1GB of VRAM vs. the 8800's 512MB.


ps - don't buy a Quadro 4000 from Apple. You can find it elsewhere, such as at newegg, for much less ($800 vs. $1200). Just make sure it's the Quadro 4000 *for Mac*, not the plain Quadro 4000.

[poppy]

I'm using Quadro 600 and I quite satisfy with its viewport pyro preview, particle preview. (still lag when quickly rotate the viewport tho)
However, I'm having problem with its memory. Let's say I'm using realflow with scene that exceeded 5m particles, Windows give me not enough graphic ram error. And since lukeimyourfather mentioned that gaming card give more OpenCL power and more ram @lower price.

The question is
- will Hi-end Geforce be better(eg GTX680)? Or should I go for Quadro 2000? I still believe Quadro do better in this realtime viewport stuff, but it need more ram. My funding couldn't go for Quadro4000 .
- If I stick with my good-o-Quadro600 for preview, is it possible to installing another Geforce(s) just for pyro OpenCL?
- Or change main hdd to ssd will give better price:preformance upgrade?

Most of my work is R&D. Houdini volume Cloud, particles, instancing, Realflow. and looking into pyro (and My machine is the fastest one in studio, so often used for rendering lol)

my current spec
i7 2006k 3.4Ghz OC to 4.5GHz
32G ram
Quadro 600
system    -WD Black 500G
sim cache -WD Black 2TB
Houdini 12
Realflow 2012

thanks

[malexander]

poppy, on 07 May 2012 - 09:23 PM, said:

I'm using Quadro 600 and I quite satisfy with its viewport pyro preview, particle preview. (still lag when quickly rotate the viewport tho) However, I'm having problem with its memory.

Don't upgrade to the Quadro 2000 then, as it has the same 1GB of memory that the 600 has. The 4000 has 2GB and the upper models 2.5GB and 6GB, but as you've mentioned they are exorbitantly priced.

I believe it's possible to use a second GEForce card for OpenCL, though I haven't tried it myself. There is a Houdini enviroment variable to specify the compute device (HOUDINI_OCL_DEVICENUMBER), which you'd set to 1 instead of the default 0.

In regards to the GEForce 680, availability is very poor and the price reflects this (if you can even find one to buy). The 580's are better at compute anyway, and you can find many 3GB models out there.

[leifdk]

let me see if, i get this right.
for a learner/hobbyist as me.
A good gaming card, whit a lot of ram.
Is to prefer compared, to a nvidia quadro.
And get a cuda cores.