Posted this already on CGtalk but didn't get an answer.

So I try it here. Need really advise by people who own a quadro if it pays off.

I want to upgrade my system with a professional graphic solution at least because I'm sick of this choppy viewports with my GTS 8800.

So I looked at the Quadro FX 4800 but I'm unsure if it's worth the 1200,- euros (at least here in Germany its the price).
Other option would be a 2048MB GTX285.

I do game-art freelancing and architectural vizualisation.
I use photoshop, 3dsmax 9 (but will upgrade to 2010 in a few months) 90% the time.
I'm also considering a mudbox license because I see a growing demand in this sector. The 2009 Demo ran smooth in sculpting terms. When it comes to texturing a high-res mesh its choking a bit.

My scenes got a lot of high-res textures and polycounts are from 200 tris for a prop (where the Quadro won't benefit much of hehe) and 900.000+ tris in worst case if i do an exteriour scene. No billions of polies.
Most time the choppy viewport rendering and chokcing is bugging me really hard. FPS drop there to 3-10 in certain situations. Like if I have a lot of gorups in the scene of a FSDD modifier.

Current Specs are: Quadcore CPU with 8GB Ram and x64 Vista setup.

Which card would you guys recommend here? A little game here and there would be nice to be playable too. Big memory GTX or a 1,5GB Quadro?

geforce, for sure, too much money buying a quadro, unless you want to render very high things in realtime for medical presentations, cg prototype etc.

I bought a "professional card" once, and it doesn't seem worth the money especially if you want to play games as well. it wasn't a quadro though. From what others have told me and what i read it's not worth it.

My PC came with quadro on board (it's a BOXX) and apart from a dramatic increase in the response time on certain actions in photoshop and maya which may be caused by increased RAM and CPU power, it's not all that different to my geforce. For most things a high end commercial card looks a better option (Games are not great on the quadro)

~P~

I dont play a lot. Often I only fire up the editors for asset testing. Or if i do a realtime-visualization. but this depends on a gaming-card as well.

How much does a BOXX cost praxedes? I'm considering a dual-Xeon workstation for maxwell renderings but i guess building my own rig is the cheaper option.

Unless your name is Marek Denko, you don't really need to think about getting a BOXX, nor dual-Xeon for rendering imo.

A Boxx is flippin' pricey and much as I love it, I didn't need it and shouldn't have bought it :P I could have got a topend PC for probably £1000 less and still been happy. Still, I guess I'm pretty future-proofed spec-wise. That's my consolation

~P~

£3k BTW!

From what I've read in 3D World magazine, there is not much difference in HARDWARE between a professional card and a high-end consumer card. The difference is in the support you receive, and the drivers. The pro cards are highly optimized for OpenGL.

I'd say if you're doing freelance game art, you're probably going to be using directx most of the time, so you're probably better off getting a nice consumer Nvidia card. I have a GTX 285 that I'm very happy with.

Or not.

You can get good Dell quadros in ebay for less than 300 euro. A mate bought a new oem quadro fx 3700 for 260 euro (vat and transport included).

You should know that all depends on the software you use. For some applications for 3d like 3ds Max and CAD programs, a quadro is like a need if you work professionally. It's not the same to work with quadro or without quadro. Anyone who says a quadro is like a gamer card, is because he never used a quadro.

The main difference is PERFOMANCE, not support... you got a card for work, designed to work with DCC/CAD aplications and not to play. If you want to play, you must look at the top of quadros, because it would be the equal to the top gamer. That's not something we can't do easily hehehe.

Opengl in "pro cards" is optimized, but also for Directx. 3ds max works under Maxtreme if you use a quadro, and the opengl driver died long time ago, all is Direct 3d. The use i give to my quadros, are directx mainly, except for modo (opengl).

I own a gtx 285 with an extreme OC from zotac, and the perfomance in Max, compared to a quadro 3500 (6 genetarions older) is a huge shit hehehe. But, in contrast, in modo, with a simple 8400gs i get the perfomance i need ^^ (less than 30 euro), it's a program that doesn't demands too much videographic. The same happens with too many programs, especially domestic.

At the end, if you are going to work under max, or a program like Catia or autocad, to work without a quadro, is something bad.

For "standard use for 3d", like mudbox, zbrush, modo, some base meshes in max, maya, etc. you don't need a quadro if you don't surpass the limits of gamer videocards.

Games are not great on quadros if you are using a mid range card from 2 years ago, for sure hehe, but if you play with a new top quadro.. is all better.

Originally Posted by hyrumark

From what I've read in 3D World magazine, there is not much difference in HARDWARE between a professional card and a high-end consumer card. The difference is in the support you receive, and the drivers. The pro cards are highly optimized for OpenGL.

I'd say if you're doing freelance game art, you're probably going to be using directx most of the time, so you're probably better off getting a nice consumer Nvidia card. I have a GTX 285 that I'm very happy with.

I believe there are guides to soft-mod a Geforce to run the Quadro drivers

update: here's one. I've been thinking of building a new system and I might give this a try.

My G92 Chip can't be soft-modded. Was the first thing I tried.

Some other guys told me they got a GTX285 and max was running very smooth with even a 3 million polygone mesh inside.

Whats about this opengl thingie? I don#t use it anymore in max.Is it still a lot in use by professionals?

I'm really wondering why people are telling different things all the time hehe.
Since I work as well with game-engines and offline rendering I hink I will buy a 2GB Vram GX285 for around 300€.

I also disagree that a Xeon CPU doesn't make sense. Take the Benchwell scene from Maxwell renderer. My quad 9450 renders this scene in around 20mins. A dual Xeon does in 5mins. Thats a lot time if you do a small flythrough or have to pre-vis for a client.

I don't know another dual-CPU setup except the professional Intel/Amd Cpus.

For the money you spend, you'll see more value buying a better CPU or better+more ram, before you would see a drastic difference in a good gamer card vs quadro.

Also quadros are poor when it comes to real game related work, running 3d engines, realtime shaders, etc etc stuff that is actually relevant to game work. If you need better anti-aliasing on your wireframes in max, get a quadro =P

Originally Posted by Blaizer

You should know that all depends on the software you use. For some applications for 3d like 3ds Max and CAD programs, a quadro is like a need if you work professionally. It's not the same to work with quadro or without quadro. Anyone who says a quadro is like a gamer card, is because he never used a quadro.

Its funny that you talk about professional work, and doing game related tasks as if they are mutually exclusive. Most people on this forum who are professionals, use applications that are... OH guess what? VIDEO GAMES! So game performance can be a HUGE factor in professional performance. If you're doing level design or something of that nature, then a "unprofessional" gamer card would be a much better deal, for both price and performance.

If you're an engineer using CAD programs, or possibly doing film work, i think you have a pretty good point about quadros, but most people here are in the business of making video games to one extent or another. So its silly to try to say that the two arent related.

have a quadro 4800 or sommit at work and i am distictly not impressed, yes it can push a few polys.....but shaders, im not convinced that its any better than a gaming card if not worse, and considering the gaming card setup you could easily afford for one of these bastards, which i havnt tested the best im comparing to a year old setup..... which might cost you 500 squids at most, personnally i think they are very over-rated

also i think alot of gaming tools, editors whatever work better on gaming cards.

i would really like to know quadro vs game cards shader perfomance

if you are doing character or even vehicle work then yes a quadro might be good but for env work, i feel like ive gone backwards on a quadro...... althought screen res is nice and stable, and doesnt seem to hit performance at all

I had a quadro, I wasn't impressed at all either. It would play games just not very well. It dealt with editors and 3dsmax about the same. I couldn't get a decent viewport speed out of it save its life.

I also had a lot of trouble testing my stuff out in game. Our engine runs on two rocks and a paper clip but I would get horrible FPS, which makes it hard to view and critique animation. That could be a comment on our engine or it could have been an ill suited card for the job, dunno, don't really care. All I know is, it all cleared up when I got a new system that was running a geforce.

The headache and money aren't worth it.

If you need better anti-aliasing on your wireframes in max, get a quadro =P

I havn't it even activated hehe. I like this aliased look in my viewport for some reasons.
You leveldesign argument is a really good one because all my viszualisations are based on a realtime engine. But I didn't took it into consideration.

Then I will head for a GTX285 with 2048MB VRam for best performance and sell my 8800GTS.
If i start more and more professional work in architectural viz rendering I will also upgrade to a powerfull dual-cpu solution. Maybe next March / April.

Have to buy a realtime engine license before which is not the cheapest...


Thanks guys 'n gals.

I've got the Quadro FX 1700. It's awesome for high poly work and large textures. I haven't had any probs with it.

Originally Posted by EarthQuake

Its funny that you talk about professional work, and doing game related tasks as if they are mutually exclusive. Most people on this forum who are professionals, use applications that are... OH guess what? VIDEO GAMES! So game performance can be a HUGE factor in professional performance. If you're doing level design or something of that nature, then a "unprofessional" gamer card would be a much better deal, for both price and performance.

Not all the professionals here work in videogames... and less doing maps ¬¬

Perfomance is not a problem if you have the newest quadro, but as you said, a quadro is not a big deal. Perfomance could be a problem for game content if you buy a cheap and old quadro 4 generations older... Try a new quadro fx 4800 or 5800 (here we have shops and we are invited to try the workstations), that's better than a gtx 285 ^^. In ebay you can buy a new oem quadro fx 3700 for less than 280 euro, when its market price is more than 750-800 euro.

My old quadro, a fx 3500 (it's equivalent to a gforce 5900 if i'm not wrong, not sure now), and run games even faster than a 6800 ultra (500+ euro). With games like quake 4, the 6800 can't handle the ultra high setup when the quadro 3500 have zero problems .

furthermore, with that old old quadro, i work better in Max than with my newest and uber cool Zotac GTX 285 Amp edition (OC 700+mhz). With 4gb of ram in my old computer i can handle in Max more than 20 million of polygons (with more ram it could handle more); the new computer with the zotac... is a shit in Max, you can't have a nice exported model from Zbrush on its highest level, and less, a scene with a high amount of polygons. Max literally die.

If you're an engineer using CAD programs, or possibly doing film work, i think you have a pretty good point about quadros, but most people here are in the business of making video games to one extent or another. So its silly to try to say that the two arent related.

Of course, for that reason i said that: "For "standard use for 3d", like mudbox, zbrush, modo, some base meshes in max, maya, etc. you don't need a quadro". Heavy work with 3d can't be done easily with a gamer card, it's not the same to work with or without quadro. It's silly to buy a quadro when you won't be using its true perfomance.

Well, in my experience, i can say that with a gamer card you can't work in a scene with 20 million of polygons in Max. And if you work doing infoarchitecture, a quadro can save a headache hehe.

If you don't surpass the limit of 2-4 million of polygons in Max, a quadro can be a waste of money.

Also, all depends of the programs you use.

i used a quadro once it performed marginally worse than the run of the mill 150 $ gamer card of that time


... its a scam don't do it !

Not all Geforce or Quadro cards are created equal, a lot depends on the manufacture. If I stuck a Ferrari battery in a Ugo and called it Ferrari I'm pretty sure its not going to make much of a differance.

I'm not into hardware like I used to be, but I'm not sure buying a card from these guys who have trouble putting a site together is the best move... Maybe buying a off brand is factoring into your comparison? Maybe its not that your quadro is so awesome... but...

Also quite a few 3D viewports run pretty much like a game engine does, if I understand them correctly. They're all different and its hard to speak universally about all of them. But without specific drivers or specifically written apps, to take advantage of the quadros features they might not take full advantage.

It's not always about pushing raw polys but textures and lighting also.

I also think more credit should be given to autodesk for opening max up and allowing it to handle more, their quadro specific drivers did boost my quadro a bit, but not really into a realm I would want to go back.