MADjestic Posted October 26, 2005 Share Posted October 26, 2005 Hey, folks, I am planning to upgrade soon and I am somwhat stuck at choosing a propper video card. Is it really worth paying 1000$ more for a professional card? What do you get for that money? I visited nVidia site but still I don't get why should somebody pay 1000/2000$ more. I've checked other forums but didn't find a reasonable discussion/comparison. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael Posted October 26, 2005 Share Posted October 26, 2005 unless you're really pushing extreme stuff you don't need to buy a $2K graphics card... look through these forums (and the ones at SESI) for discussions on graphics cards... you'll find lots of people who do just fine with low-mid range workstation class cards hth Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MADjestic Posted October 27, 2005 Author Share Posted October 27, 2005 unless you're really pushing extreme stuff you don't need to buy a $2K graphics card...hth 22155[/snapback] Well, it may sound naive - but I do plan to play a big boys' game and I want it to be serious. Thus stuff I plan to use intensively is particles (and prolly lots of them), voxels and high-poly geometry and I want that stuff to be as plain in the viewport as possible. I also want to use the Video Card for hardware shaders in Houdini - and thus they should both look good and be fast (for things like sprite-texture(different noise types) rendering)... I dunno - something like that. Can I go along with a serial card for tasks like that or I should really look into Pro. Workstation Class cards? Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael Posted October 27, 2005 Share Posted October 27, 2005 if you have a good idea of the kinds of things you're going to be doing I'd shoot SESI an e-mail and ask what cards they have tested etc... can't hurt to go direct Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krets Posted November 3, 2005 Share Posted November 3, 2005 Well, it may sound naive - but I do plan to play a big boys' game and I want it to be serious. Thus stuff I plan to use intensively is particles (and prolly lots of them), voxels and high-poly geometry and I want that stuff to be as plain in the viewport as possible. I also want to use the Video Card for hardware shaders in Houdini - and thus they should both look good and be fast (for things like sprite-texture(different noise types) rendering)... I dunno - something like that.Can I go along with a serial card for tasks like that or I should really look into Pro. Workstation Class cards? Thanks 22178[/snapback] I've worked with both the 7800 and the Quadro FX 3450. Houdini does fare better with the pro card, but only when it comes to UI elements. Also not using a quadro in a linux environment has proved troublesome in the past. nVidia might have done better with the latest driver revisions. The pure triangle power and the full hardware shader language capabilities are quite favourable on the 7800, which is quite cheap in comparison. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MADjestic Posted November 3, 2005 Author Share Posted November 3, 2005 Thanks for the reply, krets Houdini does fare better with the pro card, but only when it comes to UI elements. 22334[/snapback] What do you mean by that? Buttons get refreshed faster? And did you try some heavy stuff - like lots of polys (a couple of millions) or lots of sprites/particles and such? Is there any significant difference? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krets Posted November 3, 2005 Share Posted November 3, 2005 What do you mean by that? Buttons get refreshed faster? That is what I mean. Also interacting with the 3d scene you will see some improvement in the overlay items. The quadro's have hardware antialiased lines ( not the same as fullscreen anti-aliasing ) and logical operators that will allow overlay items on 3d objects. Both of these items will cause a performance hit on a standard geforce card, though is is slight. These items won't display quickly. 50-100ms here and there can add up making your system feel like it is not performing well. And did you try some heavy stuff - like lots of polys (a couple of millions) or lots of sprites/particles and such? Is there any significant difference? Having lots of polys on the screen, there was little difference. Spries though, I never tried to max out. Though I can not see why they would perform any differently. Both of these cards are good performers, so it is a tough choice. You will definately feel your money with the quadro. If you can afford the small performance hit, the money saved when buying a geforce is well worth it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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