Graphics card for powertranslator

[flipside]

Hi,

I'm looking for a new workstation, and was wondering about what graphics card would be good. I work with imported rhino files in max a lot, and I experience quite slow viewport performance when in wireframe mode. (shaded is really quick, if I uncheck 'edged faces').

Is there any specific data I should check to make sure the card is good with wireframes?

What card would you recommend these days for a decent workstation?

Kind regards,

Wouter

[PiXeL_MoNKeY]

What Graphics Driver are you using in 3ds Max? DirectX is notoriously slow with wireframes, while OpenGL and Nitrous are much better. Unfortunately each graphics driver has its own positives and negatives.

-Eric

[flipside]

Yes indeed, with openGL the shaded mode is a lot slower :-) Will try it again because it's been a while since I tried openGL.

[flipside]

Just tried openGL again, but it made shaded views completely unusable. So I will have to live with the slow wireframe views and try to work in shaded mode mostly.

Any advice on graphics card still much appreciated.

[PiXeL_MoNKeY]

Personally I would go with Nvidia as s lot developers are focusing their GPU acceleration on CUDA, and not STREAM or OpenCL. Also, Physx and iray will only be GPU accelerated by CUDA as they are technologies owned and developed by Nvidia.

I would get a GPU that matches you system hardware, ie if you are using a consumer i5/i7/Phenom go with one of the 500 GTX series card. However, if you are running Xeons or Opterons I would go with a Quadro.

I would stay away from the 590 and 580x2 as they are 2 cards combined in one and that means you will get half the full memory for GPU acceleration. The 580 GTX 3GB is probably the best bet, or one of the 580/570 GTX 2GB (depending on your budget).

-Eric

[flipside]

Ok thanks a lot for your input!

[nPower_erik]

Hey flipside,

I would look at a 3ds Max specific forum and see what they say. PiXeL_MoNKeY knows what he is talking about as he has some great forum knowledge as well as up to date information on Max's current release issues and what plays nicely with Nitrous, the new display driver.

Unfortunately, 3ds Max is the platform pushing our graphics so I'd say the short answer is what works well for 3ds Max, works well for us.

Erik

[nPower_erik]

Hey flipside,

I also found this which might be interesting to look at if you haven't purchased yet. Its a link to a nice review of some current cards in different tiers of quality.

CG Channel - nVidia versus AMD