Re: graphics board recommendation

Date : Sat, 3 Jun 2006 11:43:55 +0200
To : <XSI(at)Softimage.COM>
From : "Tim Leydecker" <BauerOink(at)gmx.de>
Subject : Re: graphics board recommendation
An addon,

could well be that the Quadro FX 1500 is closer to the 7600 GT
card range, I may have mixed that up, in that case, the 7900GT
would of course have a better price/performance ratio than the
FX 1500. I find it sort of difficult (guess that´s what marketing
is all about) to identify the gamer vs. pro counterparts of the
nvidia based cards currently. Some of the QuadroFX cards
still belong to the older chipsetrevision the 7800 GTX comes
from, while others are allready based on the 7900 GTX chipset
family. I can´t point out which is what. That said, I´m happy with
my 7900 GT card.

Cheers

tim

P.S: One way to discern the 7800´er flavours from the 7900´er
flavours is to compare the productimages, as most cards use an
nvidia reference design (with just minor designtweaks to the fan´s
printing) that should at least give you a hint.


----- Original Message ----- From: "Tim Leydecker" <BauerOink(at)gmx.de>
To: <XSI(at)Softimage.COM>
Sent: Saturday, June 03, 2006 10:43 AM
Subject: Re: graphics board recommendation



Hi James,

just recently bought a 7900GT card, had some driver problems
using the current WHQL certified nvidia driver for when having
XSI (5.1) and Maya (4.5/6.01) open simultaneously.
Installing the 9.x.x. series betadrivers solved this.

Am pretty happy with it, shaded mode is very fast, been able
to handle geometry in the 250 000 -750 000 triangle range
for cleanup and refinement without lag. Unfortunately, this
didn´t apply to "wireframe in shaded" and wireframe mode.
Experienced significant slowdown when setting that. Umh.
Funny enough, NURBS wireframes are very fast (on Maya)
while NURBS in shaded gets very slow. Pretty much the same
inverted way everything else is between XSI and Maya :-)

Price of the card, ~300 Euros including taxes and shipping.

The pro counterpart for the above card would be the QuadroFX 1500,
chipwise they should be pretty identical but the pro card has a different
driver. If you can, either give the quadro a testdrive or see if you´d be
willing to shell out an extra ~200 Euros for that card. Right after I had
ordered my 7900 GT (slightly overclocked), the cheapest Quadro FX
1500 would have cost ~475 Euros (oem, bulk). I´d have taken that then...

Can´t comment much on the ATI cards, we have some at our lab,
there´s no serious glitches anymore as there where with earlier driver
builds but I can´t really say which model or drivernumber that´d be.

Hope that helps somewhat,

Cheers

tim

I´d buy another 1-2 (greyish, stripped down) renderslave(s) instead of
putting the money in a top of the line graphics card, but that´s preference.






----- Original Message ----- From: "James Dc (Gmail)" <james.decolling(at)gmail.com>
To: <XSI(at)Softimage.COM>
Sent: Saturday, June 03, 2006 9:51 AM
Subject: graphics board recommendation



Howdy list, im just about to get a new card and wondering what people are
finding good these days.



Choices are -



Nvidia 7800 / 7900GT / GTX

QuadroFX 3450 / 3500

FireGL 7100 / 7350



Normally I don't look at ati, but right now their prices are pretty good.



So I guess the questions is - does XSI make use of the Quadro series as much
as say Max / Maya do? I know back in the ol soft3d days a pro was the only
way to go, games cards were just too slow.



Also, should I bother with SLI at all? (I run dual monitors, so I think I
cant, it'd just end up being 1 card per screen right?)



Lastly.is there a XSI benchmarking test somewhere? Specbench have tests for
Max / Maya + numerous cad apps..but not sure which score relates to xsi
performance in anyway.



Cheers



James,




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