Workstation Cards - Where do I find comparisons?

[garyangle]

Is there any forum that would cater to the workstation blue-collar crowd?
I need a good workstation card that will do some heavy lifting.

Thanks,
Gary

 

[mpjesse]

google "quadro and firegl benchmarks"

there's only 2 respectable brands of workstation chips out there- nVidia and ATI. nVidia makes quadro and ATI makes FireGL.

i personally prefer the Quadro. I have a QuadroFX 700 Go in my lappy. it owns.

if anyone suggests Matrox to this fine gentleman- i'll shoot them.

-mpjesse

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

if anyone suggests Matrox to this fine gentleman- i'll shoot them.

Not after I shoot you first for saying THIS;

there's only 2 respectable brands of workstation chips out there- nVidia and ATI.

You're forgeting 3DLabs!

The Realizm line are damn fine cards with far better performance than last generations Quadros or FireGL cards (new Quadros and GLs still to be widely available).

The Realizm200 often outperforms the far more expensive Quadro and FireGL cards.


PS, Matrox is the leader in 2D not leader in 3D, so for a 2D editing station you'd still be better off, for typical 3D workstations, the 3 others all offer better solutions.

 

[garyangle]

Please! I use my card to make a living! Viewport performance is a misery for me!!!

Go ahead and cheer for your favorite, but please ask them to catch up with the rest of the system. Video card performance is in the ice age!

I work in the 3D modeling, heavy poly industry and HATE all video cards because there isn't any R&D effort toward workstation graphics that benefits 'content' authors.

For ATI and Nvidia, game cards bring in 10X the revenue of workstation cards. Workstation card progress is being driven by gaming cards for the first time! Workstation cards are being released following gaming cards.

PCI-e is in its infancy and SLI is a stop-gap. There is talk of 'Cell' and 'parallel' processor GPU solutions but, for the professional, there's nothing going on!

Thanks,
Gary

 

[RichPLS]

I use the X800XT-PE for LDD. It is a memory and resource hog.
I believe the best for civil engineering/surveying drafting is just that, a mid to top end gaming card.
I just got an X1800XT, curious to see what it does in LDD.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

:roll:

Go ahead and cheer for your favorite, but please ask them to catch up with the rest of the system. Video card performance is in the ice age!

3DLabs isn't my favourite but they have solid cards, but always it depends on the specific app and your price range as to which is best, perhaps try being specific in the future if you have no patience for the preamble.

You don't want advice that's fine, but save the fanboi accusations for the gaming forums. I was just making sure you looked at more than the narrow horse and pony show of the gaming world equivalents since you weren't specific about WTF you were looking for.

So instead of linking to the comparos I have bookmarked here at work, I'm just going to smile and wave.
:roll:

 

[garyangle]

I work on a small network of 5 machines. I use 3DS Max and do architectural visualization / animation.

A few years back I built a system around an ATI Fire GL4. It was hot then and expensive...+ - 1700.00USD, card only. It did well but not spectacularly well and its drivers didn't make the jump from 2000 to XP.

Disillusioned, I built 2 new dual AMD systems, using 2 cheaper, high-end Nvidia gaming cards. The gaming cards didn't seem to have the muscle for the viewport when working with scenes over 500K polys (most of the time it's around a million). The old Fire GL4 was better but not by much.

My newest system is a Dual Core AMD using a midrange workstation card, the Nvidia Quadro FX 1100. I chose it after the Fire GL4 fiasco.

My comments are just me, experiencing "cold feet" when thinking about another high-end card that will only give me marginal viewport performance for a lot more money.

SLI sounds good but I was just asking if Cell or parallel cards are near or what. I read a great article concerning workstation vs. gaming cards in the December issue of 3D World that pointed out that gaming cards are pointing the way for workstation cards by preceding them with new GPU offerings.

 

[RichPLS]

2-D polylines and entities do not benifit from pro. CAD cards. I use drawing sizes up to 20megs. Volume computations, design, 3D views, and have no problems with speed when drawing, since most is controlled by the CPU processer, not the GPU processor.

 

[legioss]

I test Maya and I can tell you that while ATI may be able to match NVidia in the speed race, their drivers are the bottleneck.

I am using a Quadro 3450 and it is rock solid. I also have a Quadro 1000 at home and it's performance leaves much to be desired.

I understand your apprehension regarding the purshase, and I think you should look at this comparison of Nvidia's own cards ( http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_11761.html ) and you will see that the 3450 has nearly double the preformance of the 1400.

I use it daily for maya and often have huge game levels loaded up and notice more of a general sysem slowdown rather than a GPU related slowdown.

 

[RichPLS]

Is he using Maya? I never saw him mention it... but he mentioned 2d polylines.

 

[legioss]

He did not say he was using maya, however I was giving my experience regarding graphic card use and maya. 3dsmax is in the same catergory as maya, and so similarities can be drawn.

And I did not notice any mention of polylines in his posts, they were only in yours. But he did mention polygon counts.

 

[garyangle]

Thanks for the kind reply.

I can't avoid the high-end card any longer. The muscle onboard the Nvidia cards must be good now.

I agree that the drivers that I've used from Nvidia are far superior to the ATI! It's funny that you mention ATI not keeping up with Nvidia due to driver issues.

Poly is for Polygon. Lots of them are unavoidable even if you are an efficient modeler.

Years ago Autodesk bought Discreet/3DS Max and now has recently purchased Maya. Autodesk promises not to touch Maya management or app and that it isn't trying to kill off Maya. I hope that means some added compatibility somehow.

Thanks, I'll get the big Quadro and just get back to work.

 

[legioss]

We are still waiting for the final word as the aquisition is not complete. It will probably not be completed until the middle of next month. So far, some things have been confirmed as changing like benefits and such. But this is more of an alignment of benefits as opposed to removal of benfits.

They have told us all along that our Product Development Group would remain untouched, but in the end it is just a waiting game.

Wish me luck.

 

[godmodder]

The thruth is, most workstation apps use the CPU far more than the GPU, so that should be the bottleneck.

 

[Crashman]

Every so often, Tom's Harware does a review...

Check out game cards. Really. Not the high end ones specifically...some professional applications work better with the 6600GT than the 6800GT for example.

And when you figure out that midrange game cards are about as close as you'll get to high-end professional cards, looking at the price difference, then start looking at reviews that feature SPEC Viewperf 8.1 in the benchmark set.