11 replies to this topic

[cloudfx]

I am trying to get a desktop to expand studying time more at home after work.
Beside everything else, is Radeon or Geforce good match for houdini?
Or any recommendation of desktop?

[Erik_JE]

Definitely Geforce or Quadro if you can afford it. In summary go for Nvidia card even tho they are currently the devil regarding laptops.

[AWOUB]

Now old Quadro cards is cheap. For example quadro 4600 on ebay costs 100 baks. So is it worth it? Will be any benefit for H12 viewport? And what about SLI-mode, somebody test it?

[malexander]

AWOUB, on 03 July 2012 - 06:17 AM, said:

Now old Quadro cards is cheap. For example quadro 4600 on ebay costs 100 baks. So is it worth it? Will be any benefit for H12 viewport? And what about SLI-mode, somebody test it?

Houdini does not use SLI.

A 4600 should run the GL3.2 viewport alright, though its 768MB of memory will limit the size of scene that you can effectively create before bogging down. And OpenCL sims are pretty much out, as they require lots of memory. At $100 though, it's pretty attractive.

[cloudfx]

malexander, on 03 July 2012 - 08:19 AM, said:

Houdini does not use SLI.

A 4600 should run the GL3.2 viewport alright, though its 768MB of memory will limit the size of scene that you can effectively create before bogging down. And OpenCL sims are pretty much out, as they require lots of memory. At $100 though, it's pretty attractive.

How about Radeon? is that  going to bring any defectiveness on Houdini? viewport?

[Erik_JE]

cloudfx, on 03 July 2012 - 10:22 AM, said:

How about Radeon? is that  going to bring any defectiveness on Houdini? viewport?

What I said before. Don't go ATI. The higher end Firepro works cards work fine but when using lower end Radion cards you are really on your own. I'd suggest buying a GTX 580. Lots of people have had great success with this card.

[miguelvfx]

Hello, just a quick question. I'm currently using intel integrated graphics and I'm looking to buy entry level gaming cards. I'm only looking to get the cheapest card with ddr5 memory which is gt 440/gt630. I could extend it to gts 450. My question is, is the rule get the best card possible or, for these kind of cards, it wouldn't matter much anyway? Thanks

[moondeer]

for macpro users, netkas has posted successes with the GTX670 and 680.

[malexander]

miguelvfx, on 03 July 2012 - 09:23 PM, said:

Hello, just a quick question. I'm currently using intel integrated graphics and I'm looking to buy entry level gaming cards. I'm only looking to get the cheapest card with ddr5 memory which is gt 440/gt630. I could extend it to gts 450. My question is, is the rule get the best card possible or, for these kind of cards, it wouldn't matter much anyway? Thanks

It really depends on the scale of the scenes you think you'll be producing. A GTS 440 should be able to handle scenes of a couple million polygons without too much trouble. However, if you start venturing into scenes with tens of millions of polys, dozens of volumes, or huge numbers of particles, you may find it starting to bog down. It comes down to a tradeoff between money and your time in those cases.

[altbighead]

malexander, on 04 July 2012 - 05:40 PM, said:

It really depends on the scale of the scenes you think you'll be producing. A GTS 440 should be able to handle scenes of a couple million polygons without too much trouble. However, if you start venturing into scenes with tens of millions of polys, dozens of volumes, or huge numbers of particles, you may find it starting to bog down. It comes down to a tradeoff between money and your time in those cases.

Hi Mark,I am also about to build a new homestation.without going the quardo route, what will you say the best bang for the buck in Geforce line from your experience?.will be doing a lot of volume sims.
thanks

[cloudfx]

malexander, on 04 July 2012 - 05:40 PM, said:

It really depends on the scale of the scenes you think you'll be producing. A GTS 440 should be able to handle scenes of a couple million polygons without too much trouble. However, if you start venturing into scenes with tens of millions of polys, dozens of volumes, or huge numbers of particles, you may find it starting to bog down. It comes down to a tradeoff between money and your time in those cases.

Ended up getting i7 3rd gen with GTX 660 2GB DDR5. Hope that was the right choice to run simulation + viewing lots poly/particle in the viewport.

[malexander]

altbighead said:

Hi Mark,I am also about to build a new homestation.without going the quardo route, what will you say the best bang for the buck in Geforce line from your experience?

For volumes (lots of them or very large volumes at high quality) you want fragment shader power. So you're probably looking at something like the GEForce 550 at minimum, and the more VRAM on it, the better. I've seen 2GB 560's around for just shy of $200.

However, the 560 has a bunch of different variants - the SE (288 cores @ ~750Mhz), vanilla (336 @ 810MHz), Ti (384 @ 820MHz), and the Ti 448 core (@732MHz) - making me wonder who's doing the marketing at Nvidia right now. The sweet spot seems to be the plain, letter-less 560.

cloudfx said:

Ended up getting i7 3rd gen with GTX 660 2GB DDR5.

Do you mean 670? The 660 hasn't been released yet.