Why does Houdini require only quadro officially?

[magneto]

Hi,

Is this because quadros are higher quality thus have less issues compared to gaming cards both in hardware and drivers?

Reason I ask this, all gaming places I have been were using gaming cards simply because they are more affordable and good enough for 3d. I even know some guys in the IT department making the purchasing decisions and they think even top end gaming cards are too much in regards to price vs performance. Why pay 2x to go from GTX 680 to GTX 690? (Not sure if that's the price difference for these models).

Also Houdini is perfectly capable of 3d modeling, and be used in a game pipeline. So would it not make more sense to lower the graphics requirement to gaming cards like other 3d apps?

Just wondering, not trying to criticize

Edited March 30, 2013 by magneto

[symek]

I think it's about politics. Houdini supports consumers cars obviously. During 10 years of my joy with Houdini, I had maybe 2 Quadros around. The official statement says, SESI can't guarantee Houdini will work on consumers cards, and in case of conflict in code, it will handle professional's interests first. There is good example of it now, when 310 Windows drivers are broken and Nvidia won't fix it for GForces until 319 or so (but Quardos to be fixed 'imminently' ). If SESI was meant to support GForces, logical step is to change Houdini code to go around the bug, which is not feasible thing for any company.

On the other side, SESI seems to be completely aware that they can't advertise the software running only on professional grade cards, and so they support it unofficially even in days of Houdini 5.5 which was all about Quadros/firepro pipelines.

More or less.

ps I mean there are companies saying we support only Quadro, and they mean it. You can't even start their apps without one of a kind overpriced peace of silicon inside

Edited March 31, 2013 by SYmek

[magneto]

Thanks Symek, that was a good piece of knowledge. It's good that you know the history but also can comment on this, as I wasn't aware this was a sensitive issue

[sanostol]

same here, geforce is fine, but it is a but it is a good idea to keep a working driver version. sometimes driver updates break some things

[Skybar]

Using a Geforce here as well. Works fine with Maya too even though Autodesk only supports pro-cards. I don't know how it is with SESI, but from what I've heard Autodesk denies any support (if you are having trouble) if you aren't using supported hardware - it's your own fault for it not working, so to speak. I think thats why my school for example uses Quadros, to get the support, rather than getting more power cheaper with Geforces.

[malexander]

SESI gets official support from AMD and Nvidia for their professional graphics products, so it's sort of a trickle-down effect. This support includes pre-release hardware and drivers for verification and post-release maintenance of the drivers. We don't, however, get consumer cards early, so it's possible early adopters can run into issues.

For example, the AMD 7000 series came out nearly 8 months before the FirePro W series based on this generation of GPU, and there was a show-stopping bug with OpenCL and GL in Houdini that caused the driver and possibly system to hang. This came as a bit of a surprise and we had to reactively attempt to work around it (I believe by disabling CL support for a while). We received FirePros early, were able to fix several problems with the drivers and Houdini before they were released, so from a user's perspective everything went smoothly.

As for the recent Win8/GEForce hang issue, there is no workaround that can be made on our end, other than a simple recommendation that users keep to driver 306 or less. When it's up to the driver developer to make the fix, this is about all we can do. Often they fix the problem in both drivers, but there is no guarantee.

The focus for consumer cards is almost exclusively gaming and video playback. This means they optimize for the latest games and cater to game developer's needs, which may be different than ours. Since drivers are incredibly complex beasts, this can lead to regressions that affect our software. We've had cases where everything's worked, but suddenly was very slow after a driver update (and, as mentioned above, cases even worse than that).

As a result, pro-card users tend to have a smoother experience than those with consumer cards. While these sorts of problems aren't overly common (maybe 1-2 a year), we really can't recommend consumer cards for production knowing this -- because even once a year is really disruptive to schedules that are almost always very tight. That's why the System Requirements has this to say:

Non-workstation cards, such as GeForce, Radeon, and Intel integrated graphics can be used at your own risk. They may be used for learning and personal use but are not supported: you may experience display problems, slow performance, and the software may exit unexpectedly.

We certainly don't receive any kickbacks from nor are obligated by Nvidia or AMD to promote professional cards. We're simply trying to look out for the best interest of artists in production. We do attempt to address all driver issues with the software, and have made great strides in the past few years attempting to make the viewport more friendly to all drivers. With new graphics cards and drivers coming out on an almost monthly basis in the consumer space, I'm sure you can see how difficult supporting and certifying them would become.

Less importantly, there's also the features of the pro hardware - more memory, more stable engineering to ensure prolonged operation, and stuff like quad-buffer stereo and faster transfer rates, FP64 performance, etc.. However, this is really up to the end user to decide if these features are worth the extra money. That's why Houdini doesn't lock out consumer hardware - we know it'd be pretty hard to afford to learn otherwise. In the end, if you decide to go with a consumer card, we'll still allow you to do it -- just at your own risk.

[magneto]

@Sykbar: No Autodesk definitely doesn't deny support. I never had any issues with support in regards to graphics card for Max or Maya at any gaming studios.

@Mark: Thanks a lot. I see your point. That's definitely a lot more hassle to handle on your end because of Nvidia and AMD. Out of curiosity, if you wanted, woud you be able to convince Nvidia/AMD to send you official support for consumer cards too? For example by claiming Houdini is also a gaming, video-playback related app? Not saying you should, just wondering if they would be able to disprove this.

Nvidia seems like more ignorant from what I heard over the years in regards to support, and the Linus' remark I have seen a while ago, which I am sure you have seen too

Also higher end gaming cards are certainly very expensive IMO, so it's unfair they lump it all together with the cheapest gaming cards, and give you a lousy support when you pay so much.

[old school]

It's NVIDIA that tips things in this way. They have two paths for their drivers: games vs professionals. You choose this stream based on the card you buy: GeForce vs Quadro. That's how Nvidia presents options to the consumers.

GeForce drivers are aimed at games and the drivers are optimized for games. Nvidia will update GeForce drivers to enhance certain games titles prior to games shipping to boost performance so that the game mags and sites give favourable reviews but don't expect to get any confirmation from Nvidia. As I say, when there's a new release of Halo for example, watch the driver releases a month prior to that title from Nvidia. It's always interesting to see how the drivers change around a release of Halo and how it always coincides with an increase in support related driver issues for GeForce cards and Houdini for those users updating drivers.

I would consider GeForce drivers to be volatile and you will have to test specific driver versions with the software that you run. When you find a version that works, there are a few threads on Sesi and OdForce forums that you can update to keep the community informed and up to date. If you have a graphics crash with your GeForce cards, then still submit the crash report to Side Effects as there is an interest in having things work for most users as even most high end workstations ship with GeForce cards and not Quadro's (most HP workstations for example).

Nvidia conveniently has made it almost effortless to upgrade and downgrade driver versions. Whenever you see such a polished tool in general, ask yourself the question why.

Quadro drivers on the other hand are updated more conservatively, hopefully leading to more stability on the CG apps side of things.

Hopefully the higher end Nvidia GeForce cards will see more driver support for CG apps along with games in the future.

It's pretty simple if you look at things this way. No politics or conspiracies. Just what it is and what options NVidia gives to the CG community at large vs the much larger and more profitable games industry.

[malexander]

@Mark: Thanks a lot. I see your point. That's definitely a lot more hassle to handle on your end because of Nvidia and AMD. Out of curiosity, if you wanted, woud you be able to convince Nvidia/AMD to send you official support for consumer cards too? For example by claiming Houdini is also a gaming, video-playback related app? Not saying you should, just wondering if they would be able to disprove this.

I suppose we'd have to make the strong case that we have a gaming production tool that would require realtime GEForce support. I'm not sure that we're quite there yet It'd have to be legit. I would not want to do anything to jeopardize those important partnerships.

[Mr. Green]

Just a thought here, you can force the Quadro drivers to run on a GeForce card and they work brilliantly. I do this on my computer at home and doing so solved countless errors in Maya to the point that Maya was unusable before I did that.