ATI or NVIDIA for video rendering

[alaa]

Hello.
please I want to know which brand has the fastest cards for rendering.
Also if anybody can post some benchmarks and recommend a specific card.
Thanks

 

[saint19]

Few days ago was the GTX295, now is the HD 5870....here is the benchmark form the last one, look the price and your budget and buy the GPU that ajust to your requeriments and budget.

 

[hunter315]

What are you rendering? Does your program support stream? CUDA? OpenCL? Its impossible to make an accurate recommendation without knowing what programs you will be using. Some support CUDA making nVidia the best choice, others support stream making ATI the better option. Its all about the programs you use.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

^5 +1 what hunter315 said.

Until you list the specific software you will be using and the specific type of rendering you will be doing, then a valid recommendation cannot be made. We may also discover that what you want to do is cpu intensive rather than gpu intensive.

 

[alaa]

the softwares are autocad and 3ds max.
the specs of the pc are:
MB: GIGABYTE X58-Extreme.
CPU: Core i7 920.
Ram: OCZ triple channel ddr3 (2gbx3).
PSU: GIGABYTE ODIN PRO 800WATT.
I already bought 2x sapphire HD 4870 Vapor-x 2gb, but I read that nvidia is faster in the rendering, so 2x gtx 275 would be better, what do you recommend ?

 

[nachowarrior]

You're probably much better off with a workstation card, as standard gaming graphics cards can produce problems in a 3d rendering en\/ironment and don't ha\/e support for all of the features that some rendering programs use, therefore it shows up on the screeen all effed up. I'm not up to date on workstation cards so you should probably go to newegg first, find a few cards that fit in your budget then google search some performance specs on them. I'd pick a few from both teams if you want a good purchase within your budget range. Generally ati has the best bang for the buck on the mainstream side, i'd assume they do on the workstation side as well, but as stated pre\/iously that all depends on how those cards work with your preferred programs

 

[kbits]

Also, be aware that a better graphic card will not speed up any raytracing or final rendering, only the realtime view in the software you use.

 

[saint19]

the softwares are autocad and 3ds max.
the specs of the pc are:
MB: GIGABYTE X58-Extreme.
CPU: Core i7 920.
Ram: OCZ triple channel ddr3 (2gbx3).
PSU: GIGABYTE ODIN PRO 800WATT.
I already bought 2x sapphire HD 4870 Vapor-x 2gb, but I read that nvidia is faster in the rendering, so 2x gtx 275 would be better, what do you recommend ?

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For the software is better nVidia, buy 2x gtx275 or if your budget is enough, 2x gtx285.....but MAKE YOU SURE THAT YOUR MOBO SUPPORT THE SLI....

 

[kbits]

Look at this chart:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/quadro-fx-4800,2258-10.html

The GTX280 just can't compete with a workstation card, but hardware wise they are pretty much the same. It's all in the drivers. If you can softmod your card to a quadro and install appropriate drivers, then you'll unlock some (maybe not all) of the performance of a quadro. But then again, this might break support with some games (quadro drivers aren't optimized for those).

It's a bit of hits and misses, and this is what you pay for when you buy those high end workstation cards: High end performance and compatibility in professionnal softwares without all the hacking and testing.

The question is, do you really need a better card? It will gives you better feedback when interacting with the content (moving, rotating objects or views) and gives you real-time representation of useful stuff like bump maps, etc. However it will not speed up your final render.

I highly doubt SLI would bring anything worthy to the table for CAD and 3D software (maybe I'm wrong here though). I'm not even sure quadro drivers support it. I would check before considering it.