Best consumer graphics card for Maya, 3DS Max, Nuke

[videogmark]

I'm building a PC for college. I will be using 3d Programs such as Maya, 3Ds Max, Nuke and many other Adobe Products. I've been reading that it may be best to go for an Nvidia card due to the CUDA cores.

I was also reading that the gtx 580 runs very well with these kinds of programs. But I really need someone knowledgeable to let me know for sure.

If possible, I'd like to avoid purchasing a professional graphics card (Quadro, Firepro) for price and gaming purposes. But if these cards really make a difference, I need to know.

Hopefully someone knowledgeable can help me out!

 

[Trist_58]

I have never actually used a pro card for design, but I can say that I am happy with the performance of my GTX 580 3GB in 3DS Max 2013.

It seems to be commonly known that the Kepler series cards don't handle Autodesk apps too well. For the time being, anyway.

I would go for a 580 unless you are are prepared to wait for the software to catch up.

The only disadvantage I can see in using gaming cards is that if it's prolonged GPU rendering you are doing then consumer cards tend to run a little hot.

Good luck.

 

[Deemo13]

I heard also that the new Kepler (600 series) does not perform well with GPGPU tasks. The new Radeon 7k series is also a good choice as well as the 580.

 

[RS1no2047]

I would advise going with a low-level pro graphics card for these tasks because they will likely do better than a gaming card. You can just switch which one you plug into when you're doing professional graphics work.

 

[videogmark]

Best answer selected by videogmark.