3D Workstation GFX cards - Quadro etc

[dannyboyo]

I'm getting more and more into learning 3D modelling(just started learning Maya) and reckon it'd be worth my while getting a low-end workstation GFX card, like a Quadro 500.

Thing is, I've only one PC, and I also do like my gaming. I'm by no means a die hard gamer on the constant persuit of that extra FPS, but I do like half decent quality!

So my question is, can you run games reasonably well with a workstation GFX card like a Quadro 500??

Cheers, Dan

[chris watton]

Dan, don't be suckered into buying these hugely extortionate Quadro et al cards, I almost was, (I also do 2 and 3-d graphics on CAD for a living)
I found out that, because the latest graphics cards (anything from the ATI 9700 onwards or similar Geforce cards) are more than capable of doing the CAD work, in fact a lot of the high end workstations now use these cards instead of the 'dedicated' CAD biased cards.
Also remember that a lot of these CAD software packages have to account for the lowest commen denominator regarding PC spec, as a lot of companies still have rather ancient PCs, and it would be marketing suicide if all of the CAD customers had to upgrade their hardware in order to use the software!
If you get, say, a 9800 or later graphics chip and you have a good CPU (2.8-3.4GHz if Intel, and 1GB of memory), you will not go far wrong with any CAD package, and still enjoy all the benefits of gaming, like I do

>> Edited by chris watton on Sunday 22 August 09:27

[stuh]

dannyboyo said:

I'm getting more and more into learning 3D modelling(just started learning Maya) and reckon it'd be worth my while getting a low-end workstation GFX card, like a Quadro 500. Thing is, I've only one PC, and I also do like my gaming. I'm by no means a die hard gamer on the constant persuit of that extra FPS, but I do like half decent quality! So my question is, can you run games reasonably well with a workstation GFX card like a Quadro 500?? Cheers, Dan

Or you could use a clever bit of russian software that converts your Nvidia graphics card into the equivalent quadro model

I use 3DS Max and my wireframe performance for spline modelling is increased 3 fold by Riva Tuner

www.nvworld.ru/docs/rt_e.html

[Bodo]

dannyboyo said:

So my question is, can you run games reasonably well with a workstation GFX card like a Quadro 500??

Basically, as already indicated, the Quadro chipsets are GeForce chipsets, but the latter one with one feature disabled: hardware-accelerated OpenGL. It's just disabled in the drivers iirc, so hardware should be the same (at least it was in GF2 chips; you only had to resolder one resistor in order to make the card identify as its quadro equivalent to the driver!)

Quadro cards are a lot more expensive, in order to pay for the driver development, and for market positioning.

Back to your question: the Quadro500 is basically the same as the GeForce FX5200 (NV34), and every game that works well with that one will do so too with the Quadro500.

Re. the need of the Quadro chipsets, I have experienced that basic 3d operations work well on games-cards, however performance as in large assemblies (hundereds or thousands of parts) in MCAD, or real-time rendering does only work with appropriate hardware.

Not exactly the same requirements as in Maya, but I use Pro/Engineer (MCAD) in my workplace (together with almost 300 other Pro/E users), and the current standard for x86 workstations is Quadro500 for low end, and Quadro1000 for high end (until PCIe is established). Colleagues that need more performance use SGI UNIX workstations anyway.

I don't know the complexity of your Maya work, but I'd wait to invest in expensive hardware until you earn money with 3d content creation.

As for a similar software package www.blender3d.com (open source, but renderers not as good as Maya's), they report that GeForce cards work well:
www.blender3d.com/Support/index_old.php?sub=GraphicsCards#gfxcompattbl