Graphic Card for 3d design

gazzae · 20-04-2005, 08:21

Hi all,

I'm not really an expert on graphic cards so excuse me if this is a silly question. But will a card thats designed for 3d gaming, be much cop at 3d design?

This is the card I'm looking at - http://www.connect3d.com/products/agp_x850xt.htm

Its going to be used mostly for AutoCad and 3d design work. Its a PCI Express x16 card, there doesn't seem to be a lot of this type of card about.

Thanks

Gareth

Richard M · 20-04-2005, 08:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by gazzae

Hi all,

I'm not really an expert on graphic cards so excuse me if this is a silly question. But will a card thats designed for 3d gaming, be much cop at 3d design?

Of course it will, a card like that will be able to handle whatever OpenGL apps you throw at it.

Stuart · 20-04-2005, 08:41

Quote:

Originally Posted by gazzae

Hi all,

I'm not really an expert on graphic cards so excuse me if this is a silly question. But will a card thats designed for 3d gaming, be much cop at 3d design?

This is the card I'm looking at - http://www.connect3d.com/products/agp_x850xt.htm

Its going to be used mostly for AutoCad and 3d design work. Its a PCI Express x16 card, there doesn't seem to be a lot of this type of card about.

Thanks

Gareth

That cards is fine if you are just starting out, but as time goes on, you may need to switch to a full workstation level card, such as ATi's FireGL series. I haven't used one, but I have been told the advantage is that the workstation cards render things more accurately than the gaming cards. This makes sense, if you play a game, you are likely to be too busy to notice little touches such as the brickwork on the wall you have just passed is a texture and therefore flat.

The downside is that Workstation graphics cards are incredibly expensive (not seen the prices of those cards recently, but generally, workstation cards tend to be priced at ÃƒÆ’Ã†â€™ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â€šÂ¬Ã…Â¡ÃƒÆ’Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ãƒâ€šÃ‚Â£1000 and above).

gazzae · 20-04-2005, 08:48

Would this be a better card than the one above?

http://uk.insight.com/apps/productpr...t_id=ATIOG5084

zoombini · 20-04-2005, 08:51

I'd go for more RAM, the more the better.
128mb is good, 256 is better.

When you get to the modelling & full drawing displays more will make it much faster to display.

gazzae · 20-04-2005, 08:56

I'd like a FireGL with 256 but they are out of my price range. Was wondering if what scastle said about it being a workstation card and rendering more accurately than a gaming card would make up for having less RAM. The PC will have 2GB of RAM, don't know if this will make a difference.

altis · 20-04-2005, 08:57

Not all ATI Fire's are expensive...

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...roductID=87636

...and some more here:

http://www.scan.co.uk/search/search....fire&Submit=Go

gazzae · 20-04-2005, 09:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by altis

Not all ATI Fire's are expensive...

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...roductID=87636

Thats a AGP card though, I need PCI-Express X16

Aragorn · 20-04-2005, 09:14

If you are an NVidia fan, the Quadro range is their CAD offering :
http://www.scan.co.uk/search/search....adro&Submit=Go

bmxbandit · 20-04-2005, 09:26

i've got a lowly (by todays standards) GeForce 2 GTS, and autocad absolutely flies under OpenGL... unless you're doing seriously complcated work (i.e. .dwg files in excess of a couple of meg) then i can't imagine you need to spend much.

what other apps are you planning on using?

gazzae · 20-04-2005, 09:31

Quote:

Originally Posted by bmxbandit

what other apps are you planning on using?

Solidworks

Stuart · 20-04-2005, 09:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by bmxbandit

i've got a lowly (by todays standards) GeForce 2 GTS, and autocad absolutely flies under OpenGL... unless you're doing seriously complcated work (i.e. .dwg files in excess of a couple of meg) then i can't imagine you need to spend much.

Actually, sort of related to that. I've been using 3D Studio Max for a while, on a variety of machines with various Nvidia and ATI Radeon graphics cards. The only time the 3D perfomance of the card affects the app is when viewing the "perspective view", which is rendered quickly in 3d each time you change something. When you opt to render an image or movie, 3DS Max seems to use the CPU. I could be wrong though, it may well use parts of the Graphics card to accelerate the render.

bmxbandit · 20-04-2005, 09:52

gaming 3D cards are a lot better than they used to be at piping data back in... see if you can find any specviewperf benchmarks wth different cards

is this or this any help?
__________________

Quote:

Originally Posted by scastle

Actually, sort of related to that. I've been using 3D Studio Max for a while, on a variety of machines with various Nvidia and ATI Radeon graphics cards. The only time the 3D perfomance of the card affects the app is when viewing the "perspective view", which is rendered quickly in 3d each time you change something. When you opt to render an image or movie, 3DS Max seems to use the CPU. I could be wrong though, it may well use parts of the Graphics card to accelerate the render.

could be reverting to software GL, for some reason? drivers arent always 100% compatible...

gazzae · 21-04-2005, 10:12

I went for the FireGL card in the end as according the the Solidworks site the FireGL model had passed all the tests whereas the Radeon had passed but with some limitations.

Thanks for all the advice!

keithwalton · 21-04-2005, 10:22

The difference between radeon's and firegl's is entirely in the software, the core logic, gpu's the lot are identical. The quality of the components used do tend to be higher and more validated. But the large cost increase is because they can charge that much and get away with it.

Alot of ati card's can be 'softmodded' to run on firegl drivers and they recieve the special driver functions that go with it.