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CGTalk - Help! Dual SLI Maya Rendering Questions: Nvidia Quadro fx 3700 vs. ATI FireGL 7700
Hi Maya Professionals,
Ok.
I need some advice.
I am a longtime Maya user but my current version is 2008 Unlimited on 64 bit Vista.
I have an older OpenGL professional rendering card and I am looking to upgrade my workstation to a newer one.
There are two midrage cards that have come out in the past 4 months or so that seem to offer great value because they seem to hang with or even outperform the highest end pro cards on the market due to the newer generation chips in them.
I have been a Nvidia fan for a number of years and have generally rendered with quadro fx cards however the new mid-range ATI FireGL v7700 outperforms all of the nvidia pro cards in Maya benchmarks by about 25% (including the highest end quadro 5600 which is triple the price!) (http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vi...l-quadrofx.html) and (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews...ation,1995.html).
That is significant enough for me to consider switching to ATI.
However I have some questions first before I go with the ATI FireGL v7700 over the Quadro 3700.
1.
I read somewhere that Nvidia cards and drivers support two card rendering through SLI.
Meaning I could buy two Quadro 3700s and SLI them together for double rendering performance.
Is this true? (or is SLI just for gaming performance?
Or does SLI work with the pro cards too - to double the rendering performance??) I also read that ATI cards do not allow you to dual render with two cards....is this true too?
2.
If it is true that Nvidia cards do dual rendering then would it be better for me to spring for two Quadro fx 3700 cards and have them work together (costing me close to $1000 on ebay for both) or would it be better for me to get the one ATI card v7700 that outperforms the all quadro cards (mid and top range) by 25% which I can get on Ebay for about $600).
WWMPD?
(What would Maya Professionals Do?)
Please advise and comment on what you would do and also feel free to comment on your individual experience with each brand and or those specific cards if you own them.
Thanks in advance for any help you can give.
Andrew
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I would also like to know if anyone has had experience with this Firegl card.
I currently own a Quadro 4500, and I've always been a fan of Nvidia, mostly because of optimized Opengl drivers, but benchmarks prove ATI the winner this time.
I would like to know how stable this card is with Maya, because speed is useless if instability is an issue.
I hope someone around here has given this card a shot.
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Just remember that your processor is used to render and not your video card.
The speed of your video card isn't really going to affect your rendering speed.
Your navigation in your view port will be fast but not your rendering speed.
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Quote: : Just remember that your processor is used to render and not your video card.
The speed of your video card isn't really going to affect your rendering speed.
Your navigation in your view port will be fast but not your rendering speed.
Thank you so much for that clarification.
Forgive my ignorance.
So these ATI benchmarks are more based on the speed of being able to move around large scenes and move around textured and lights etc before rendering??
If that is the case that is ok because my old card has trouble with the bigger scenes.
But can you still answer my question about Nvidia SLI with two pro cards?
In theory will it double my performance moving around scenes if I use two 3700 fx cards?
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Lol. I assumed you where talking about viewport rendering all along.
The only way you will take advantage of rendering through the video card is through hardware rendering or gelato.
SLI will not be of any advantage in Maya.
In some apps it will though, but not many.
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With nVidia and CUDA, video card assisting final rendering isn't far away.
Actually I was surprised that nVidia didn't announce anything during Siggraph.
But it won't be long, fingers crossed.
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My post from three hours ago never made it to the forum here...
Great.
seems it got lost in a hiccup.
okay, again:
read this document here carefully (pdf):
http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro_geforce.html
it explains why a professional CAD card is a total different story than a gamer card.
Check out multiple windows, line antialiasing and so on and so forth.
you'll find out that for very large scenes ( 5 to 15 million polys or more), there is a true difference visible in the performance against gamer cards.
Scenes up to a million polys may not give you much less performance on a gamer card.
the drivers simply are totally differently written and cannot be compared.
concerning twin cards:
ati:
i had a question wired directly to an actual ati developer and he answered me that there's no way (yet) to run dual ATI fireGLs under maya.
nvidia:
just last week at siggraph, i asked one one of the hardware engineers at the nvidia booth about twin quadros under maya.
Also he said that the last thing he heard about this was that it's not supported to have two quadro 5600s or similar running together under maya.
also think about it that the market for maya users that would need the extreme performance of two highend professional cards is so small that autodesk may not really develop on their side either.
* * *
so to be honest, just stick with a good gamer card or even a professional card for the next two years and wait until GPU raytracing with CUDA or on a similar platform actually gives you software to render with on GPUs instead of all the software we have atm that renders still on CPUs.
maybe you heard of gelato by nvidia, it's free now, which may be a sign there's something else coming !
hope this helped.
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I have an Ati card, fireGL 7600, wich It has the same gpu than 7700, and the performance of this card in Maya is really awesome, but the driver has some bugs if you are woirking with Maya ,specially some crashes with the hight quality render viewport...
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I have built machines for myself and everyone I work with.
I would not buy an overly expensive video card.
I spend far more time waiting for the cpu, so I bought a Quadro 1700 and a dual quad core.
If I were you, I would buy a dual skull trail (overclockable dual socket motherboard) and a couple quad cores.
Add some water cooling and overclock those puppies to 4ghz+.
Then, after that, but what ever videocard fits in your budget.
I have to say I would much rather have a fast CPU and a quadro fx570.
The only people this wont apply to is those who do strictly animation and also are using real time rigs.
I have high hopes that we will see a cuda based renderer soon.
But I wouldnt buy hardware based on that hope.
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Quote: : I have built machines for myself and everyone I work with.
I would not buy an overly expensive video card.
I spend far more time waiting for the cpu, so I bought a Quadro 1700 and a dual quad core.
If I were you, I would buy a dual skull trail (overclockable dual socket motherboard) and a couple quad cores.
Add some water cooling and overclock those puppies to 4ghz+.
Then, after that, but what ever videocard fits in your budget.
I have to say I would much rather have a fast CPU and a quadro fx570.
The only people this wont apply to is those who do strictly animation and also are using real time rigs.
I have high hopes that we will see a cuda based renderer soon.
But I wouldnt buy hardware based on that hope.
Everyone - thank you so much - all of your insights and experiences have helped me big time.
Especially the gentleman that spoke to nvidia and ATI at Siggraph..
I am working on a large airport scene and I do need faster movement around the scenes with textures on etc.
And thanks for the info about the dual cards.
Now I know that that is not the way to go -that you don't get the dual performance.
And yes my next machine is going to be dual quad cores so that will definitely work in concert with a newer pro card to improve performance overall
Thank you everyone!
It really helps!
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Always glad to help !
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