Graphic Cards Graphics applications...

[astrix]

I know most people here are gamers, but do look at it from my point of view It's going to be used for stuff like Maya, Photoshop, 3dsmax some times, and general computing most of the time, but not gaming.

Budget: 7-8 k. Well, since I'm spending quite a lot on my system if the performance gain is a lot I'll shell out max... 9k.

What I've considered uptill now: Geforce 6600 128mb, and Geforce 6600 256 mb.

128mb I'm getting for like 7.5k and 256mb for 9k.

What difference does the extra graphics RAM make?

Any other card which would be good for my budget and purpose?

 

[Rockyme2002]

@56mb for storing textures...btw get a quadro or tht league if u can

 

[nikhilesh]

If your use is to run 3D modelling applications then it is wiser to go for a Quadro based workstation card.If you still want to go with the 6600 series than the 6600GT is 40%-50% more powerful then the normal 6600.The XFX 6600GT costs 11.5K .

Edit:I didn't read about your budget.I think the 6600 is your best option at that price.

Seniors please help.

 

[Shripad]

well, here is a bummer.
You dont need powerful graphic card for this. You need quadro if you want to make use of hardware rendering features. So get the card like 5900 that will softmod into quadro FX. This will help more than plain 6600 which as of now does not have softquadro.
Also most of the time you will be using software rendering. And for that you need a powerful CPU, so CPU should be your biggest concern and not GPU unless you have money to buy quadro.

 

[Blade_Runner]

Yup a 5900 >> Quadro mod or a 9800 >> FireGL will do..........

 

[astrix]

How much does the 5900 cost, approx? I'm happy to be spending less Yay.

Also, I'm getting a PCIe mobo.

 

[Shripad]

Well if you are getting PCI express motherboard the 5900 is out of question.
Its AGP mainly. there was PCI express version with bridge chip but Nvidia canned it and only continued PCX5300 and PCX5750.
these are hard to fine.
In that case go for the cheapest PCI express card and powerful CPU.
If you dont plan to game at all then go for PCX5300, its cheapest available at around 5K.
If you want to do casual gaming then go for 6600 vanilla 128MB.

I hope I helped. There is lots of confusion regarding the graphic card and these graphics suit. The graphic card makes little or no difference in most cases. Quality of software render remains the best in Maya and 3Dsmax, and it needs juicy CPU.
Quadro will help speed up the hardware render but its of no use if you are not professional or looking for best possible output.
Photoshop has nothing to do with graphic card, its all CPU and memory there.

 

[astrix]

Yes funkymonkey, you helped. That really cleared some things up!

I'll definitely be looking into the cards you mentioned. Incidentally, I'm getting the A64 3200+, I think that should be able to handle it I know Intel's are generally recommended for graphics but I wanted all-round performance as well.

 

[Aces170]

^^ Not to forget the A64 3200 with the right mobo OC's like a dream, in case you want more juice. Funky's is absolutely right, if you had an AGP based system, then a 9800 pro softmodded to a FireGL would be your best bet. Also do remember hardware rendering reduces CPU usage.

 

[astrix]

Isn't there any PCI express card which I'll be able to 'mod' into a Quadro / FireGL? There's really no point getting AGP at this point of time

 

[Chaos]

Well the final output in 3dsmax/maya and other dcc apps has nothing to do with graphics card. But to create the insane 1M poly models, you do need a good graphics card. Without a good card, it'll be really really frustrating to create the content. If your buying an AGP system, get a 9800pro and mod it to firegl... its just a plain bios flash. For a pci-e system, get a 6600gt or something but it won't be half as fast as the firegl. the difference between the normal and workstation versions of the cards is that some features like two sided lighting, line antialiasing and stuff is disabled on the gaming versions of the card.

 

[Shripad]

its not the card, its the drivers. Drivers for quadro makes this stuff possible. Hardware wise its exactly same chip and same card. Bios just tells windows which drivers to load.
And for AGP softmoded 5900XT/NU to quadro FX will be much faster than firegl X1/x2 mod on Radeon 9x00 series. many benchmarks have proved that.

 

[Chaos]

its not the card, its the drivers. Drivers for quadro makes this stuff possible. Hardware wise its exactly same chip and same card. Bios just tells windows which drivers to load.
And for AGP softmoded 5900XT/NU to quadro FX will be much faster than firegl X1/x2 mod on Radeon 9x00 series. many benchmarks have proved that.

Not entirely accurate. The Quadro is the NV35GL/NV38GL chip. The geforce is the NV35/NV38. I'm not sure what exactly the difference in the chips are but the chip is definitely not the same. Also certain resistor positions on the pcb are changed in a quadro. You can move these and hard mod a gf to a quadro. read an article long back about it.

 

[Shripad]

Entire new line of quadros which was released for last gen. that is Quadro FX series was exactly same chip and same PCB layout. Same was the case for Quadro 4.
They do mark the chip differently. Those are graded chips.
They mark NV40 and NV45 as different chips but we do know they are same chips but of different grade.
Quadro PCB layout is same. There was a resistor difference on NV40GL but it was there to prohibit the use of quadro bios and nothing else. But folks out there found the way around that one too with modified bios and then rivatuner patch.
They do use higher quality capacitors and other components on these cards, they are ment to be under stress 24x7 so thats the reason for that.
But other than that no difference in hardware or PCB layout.
Small modifications are there to prevent people like us modding our cards to quadros.
Our desktop GPUs are capable of doing things than quadro card does. Nvidia has disabled these features in the drivers. New drivers make it harder even. From 7X.XX series only 76.41 lets you fully modify your card to quadro. rest do not.
There was entire comparison of PCB in one thread over at nvnews, i will try to post the link after digging up that thread again.