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An age old question: Quadro or GeForce
October 25, 2010 - 1:29pm
- 2845 reads
Hi all,
I'm putting together a workstation for game contents creation (80%), hi rez architectural rendering for printing and walk thru animations, plus video editing (20%). Workstation specs is pretty straight forward, i7 950, Asus P6X58D-E, 12GB RAM, Windows 7 64bits...etc. But I get stuck on choosing a graphic card.
According to this thread http://area.autodesk.com/forum/autodesk-3ds-max/installation---hardware---os/asus-geforce-gtx-480-problems-in-3ds-max-2011/page-1/ GTX 400s series have stuttering viewport issue with 3DS Max. I had a similar exprience when I was learning 3DS Max on a 8800GT w XP 32bits, espeically when working with NURBS surface CV. Now I'm using a Dell Precision M4400 with Quadro M770, and there's no stuttering issue at all.
So I've narrowed the choices down to Quadrao 4000 2GB, GTX 295 1.7GB (which many has said it runs well in on Window 7 64bits setup) or GTX 460 1GB as Andy Davies has suggested. Is it true GTX 460 is actually runs better than the first gen of GTX 400s?
Obviously Quadro costs a lot more than GTXs, but it might be worth it if it provides a smoother workflow and faster rendering and video compression as Nvidia marketing team points out. At the same time, why spend more if Geforce does it as well as Quadro. I'm coming from CAD/Solidworks background, and am new to game content field. Please help me decide.
Thanks
Thanks for the quick reply and inputs. Your system is very similar to the one that I'm about to build. So, I'll try GTX 460 first. If it doesn't work out, I'll just ebay it and get a Quadro 4000.
Off the topic, have you guys tried the iRay yet? It's similar to Octane Render, a GPU rendering application. So two 460s would fly on GPU render programs.
Thanks again.
I would love to get a newer quadro and test it out. If anything I would love to try out the video encoding features since I do a lot of encoding for eat3d.
My experience with quadro has been very minimal though. When I was in college I remember getting a brand-new Geforce 3 ($300 or so) and my friend got an elsa quadro for twice that price. The only difference back then was the maxtreme drivers and in our tests there was really no difference. I always thought I was missing out though and found a way to hack the drivers using rivatuner to allow me to install the maxtreme drivers (back then the hardware was the same).
During that time there was a few cool things I liked about maxtreme but not too long after 3ds Max started supporting Direct3D heavily and it really was much better than opengl in every way.
Having said all that, things have changed a lot since then so I really have no idea if quadro is better. From what I know you cant really loose using a newer Geforce card. Perhaps its the kind of work I do, but Ive never had a situation recently where my viewport was lagging so bad that I wanted to go get a quadro to see if it would help (I have a 480 right now). Even with a scene like the dozer or fountain i can view it all with realtime shadows, ao, etc without any problems.
Another thing to consider is the new push with iRay and Quicksilver. iRay as most know is a new GPU accelerated rendered included with 3ds Max 2011 Extension 1. Also quicksilver is a GPU renderer released with 3ds Max 2011. It may end up being worth it sometime in the near future to get a quadro to improve render times. I hope not though because the geforce should be just as powerful according to the specs, it sometimes just comes down to software taking advantage of it.
There is a lot of research needed in order to make an educated decision, but for now I will stick to a <$500 Geforce until someone can prove its worth it to get $1k-$3k+ video card 
Thanks for the input, Riki.
About iray, this FAQ http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/shane/the_iray_faq seems to be suggesting that GTXs would be the beneficiares of iray. Because iray would use whatever CUDA it sees on the machine. Octane Render works in a similar fashion, its tech support suggests a combo of a low end Quadro and high end GTX on the same machine for using Octane Render. With only Quadro is connected to the monitors and using Quadro driver, its renderer will seeks out all CUDAs when it comes to rendering. Some of the users have 480 sli plus a cheapo Quadro set up, it's an interesting approach. Appearantly you can do the same with iray, just don't know how well it works
" Can I mix Quadro, Telsa and GeForce boards? If so, what driver do I use?
Yes. For drivers, you should load the one driving your Windows display. "
quote from the FAQ
In theory, you could have a $200 Quadro for modeling and a 480 or 480 SLI for iray. Unfortunately iray doesn't do Render to Texture 
Very interesting. I did notice in some test renders with iRay that it was rending very fast with my 480. Sounds like another reason to stick with the geforce 
Hi octoyen,
For game asset creation any reasonable gaming rig with added ram (6-8GB+) will more that suffice and are what 99% of game studio use.
I have the following set up:-
The only real advantages to having a Quadro card are that the drivers are certified to work in Max/Maya etc so you are pretty much guaranteed to get no issues that are driver related, but on the other hand they can cost 8-10x the amount of consumer based GPUs.
Whether or not this is worth the price is down to you though
Its also worth noting that the specifications of consumer GPUs are almost always higher than their Quadro counterparts
Quadro 6000
GeForce GTX 480
I have never noticed any GPU based issues with my 460 when using a whole host of 3d/2d applications (ZBrush, Blender, UDK, Marmoset, Silo, Meshlab) and routinely update to the latest Beta/Release drivers but cant comment on the stability of Max.
AFAIK Riki uses a GTX 480...maybe he could chime in as to whether he gets any issues running Max.
Hope that helps!
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