Architect need help to choose Graphiccard

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mk
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Architect need help to choose Graphiccard

Post by mk » Mon Apr 25, 2005 4:55 am

I am building a system for a friend who is an architect.

He will be using the system for creating 3D graphics - mainly virtual presentations of buildings.

The system is based on an AMD Athlon64 3000+ and a gigabyte Ram.

I am unsure what GPU to choose. He won’t do any gaming and the rendering of light and angles is done by the CPU. So how much power will he need?

Will he be all right with one of these two cards? Or does he have to aim higher. Is there a lot of difference between the two cards performance wise?

ATI9550: http://www2.abit.com.tw/page/dk/graphic ... adeon+9550

ATI9600: http://www.sapphiretech.com/vga/9600.asp

Thanks for helping

------------------------------------
EDIT: The CPU is an Athlon64 3000+, by accident I posted it as an XP, now edited.
Last edited by mk on Mon Apr 25, 2005 6:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

niels007
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Post by niels007 » Mon Apr 25, 2005 5:47 am

3D applications often use OpenGL, in which case ATI isn't the best sollution for speed with their consumer cards. So if you're going for a 'gaming / consumer' card you might have better performance and compatibility with Nvidia.

It all depends on the complexity of his work. If its fairly basic, you will be surprised how complex a scene my Geforce 4 ti can smoothly rotate on screen at 1600x1200. If I was to design a building with furniture, people, plants etc all in 3D, then I'd need a professional 3D card like the Quaddro or 3Dlabs sollutions. I would also ditch the XP3000 in favour of a fast AMD64 or P4, seriously considering a dual cpu system.. Rendering isn't the strong point of an old Athlon XP. It is also a task where multi threading (dual core / dual cpu) helps a lot.

The graphics card just has to be good enough to allow modelling / changing / panning / zooming views at >4fps. That depends on many things..

So if it is fairly simple, any geforce Fx or 6200 will do. If its really serious, I'd invest in an equally serious pc.

mk
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Post by mk » Mon Apr 25, 2005 6:29 am

thanks for the answer.

I looked into some FX cards at the same pricerange and they are all on "Toms Hardware's" "Cards to Avoid" list.

they are supposed to be slower than ATI.

From Toms Hardware:
GeForce FX5200 (non-Ultra), FX5500, PCX5300 (PCI Express)

Pros- DX9 support, cheap
Cons- Very slow, buy this card if you want to play DX9 games at slideshow speed, most of the 64 MB versions come with 64 bit memory which can make it as bad as GeForce4 MX420

GeForce FX5600 Ultra rev1.0/2.0

Pros- DX9 support, fairly good DX8 performance (rev2.0)
Cons- Poor DX9 perforamance, Radeon 9600 Pro and faster cards are much better for both DX8 and DX9. Not good value for money
Cards above these are too expensive.

Any comments on this?

Rusty075
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Post by Rusty075 » Mon Apr 25, 2005 6:42 am

That stuff from Tom's is talking about gaming performance, which is worse on workstation cards than regular cards. They trade DirectX performance for OpenGl performance.

Neils is dead-on about the importance of OpenGl performance. As someone who messes with this stuff everyday I can tell you firsthand that coupling even the fastest CPU with a wimpy GPU is going to make things painful. A lot of the rendering is CPU intensive, but the ease of modeling is often more dependent on the graphics subsystem than the CPU.

I'll also second his suggestion to go with an A64 system....Socket A is a dead horse at this point, leaving little or no upgrade path. He'll get better value out of an A64/PCI-e system. And I'd consider 1gig of RAm to be the bare minimum I'd put into a new workstation. Double that if you have the budget. EDIT: Just noticed your edit...ignore the above paragraph (except for the RAM part) :lol:

In terms of what card to buy, remember that for the most part, the "workstation" cards from Nvidia and Ati are now nothing more than their "normal" cards with tweaked drivers.

If money was no object, I'd say look at the FX 1300.

If money is sorta tight, look at the Ati V3100. It performs fairly well compared to the FX's, but its less than 1/3rd the price.

If money is super tight, pick out which cards from Ati and Nvidia are in the budget, based soley on price, and then find reviews of them where they are tested with OpenGL based benchmarks (like 3DMax). Pick whichever one on your short-list of affordables is the highest performer.

ChucuSCAD
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Post by ChucuSCAD » Mon Apr 25, 2005 7:02 am

What Rusty said.

Also being an architect and playing with this stuff on a daily basis I have to also mention the importance of large amounts of disk space required for swap space and temp space for various projects. This space does not have to be on a super fast drive or raid but does need to be there. The working drive does however have to be fast.

Also on the monitor front Dual monitors is almost a requirement. Yes you can get by with one but 2 is preferred.

chucuSCAD

JoeT
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Post by JoeT » Mon Apr 25, 2005 6:10 pm

There is another messure to keep in mind. Accuracy.

I can tell you from experiance in both 3dStudio and Adobe After effects that the stock cards from Matrox, ATI and Nvidia all suffer from a slight inaccurate display.

I've used the workstation end of both ATI and Nvidia (the Nvidia Quadro line and the ATI FireGL line and both are more accurate than their Gamer/home user versions)

Actually the "low end" of the FireGL and Quadro lines can be found for reasonable prices. As well 3dlabs makes excellent cards for CAD / 3d / OpenGL work. Although I have no experiance personally with their products I have collegues that speak highly of them.

Now it should be noted that while these cards are a bit slower than their gamer equivelents what they display is what the final outcome should be. The best example I can give is an After Effects OpenGL project I worked on recently. The card on one machine where I was working looked all fine and dandy but when I moved to the render box which had the nicer video card I noticed all the textures were off a pixel. And thats something you can see on a dvd when it's against a bright background.

So me. I recommend shelling out the extra few bucks and get the workstation version.

Joe.
ps* I totally agree with ChucuSCAD. Dual monitors is a MUST.

NeilBlanchard
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Post by NeilBlanchard » Tue Apr 26, 2005 2:30 am

Hello:

I work for an architect, and I build computers for architects. Here's the card I would use:

Image
(click on picture to go to NewEgg's page for this card)

I would also recommend using two DVI input 19" LCD monitors, like the ViewSonics.
Last edited by NeilBlanchard on Wed Apr 27, 2005 4:13 am, edited 1 time in total.

x1m
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Post by x1m » Tue Apr 26, 2005 4:06 am

If you can afford it, take a 9800pro, and use modded drivers to turn it into a FireGl X2. The 9800pro is a well priced card, the only thing you would miss is dual dvi.

VERiON
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Post by VERiON » Tue Apr 26, 2005 11:17 pm

i agree with the above posts.

3D card with good openGL implementation is REALLY helpful not with rendering per se (cpu intensive), but with the 3d modeling (making 3d objects, rotating scene, moving objects). You (your friend) will suffer more from slow/poor 3d modeling than from slow rendering (i.e. you can render complex scenes overnight).

Go for the nvidia quattro or ati fire GL. Modding ordinary Ati and nVidia cards into fire GL or Quattro is the cheapest and most effective way to get great 3d modeling card.

But remember it is also illegal (just like copying game or program from friend). FireGL and Quattro bioses and drivers are the most important part of its design and intelectual properity that you pay for (premium price), and the fact you can download it from net does not mean that they are for free. I don't know if you care, but it is good to know.

m0002a
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Post by m0002a » Wed Apr 27, 2005 1:35 am

NeilBlanchard wrote:I work for an architect, and I build computers for architects. Here's the card I would use:
Nice pic, but what card is that?

NeilBlanchard
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Post by NeilBlanchard » Wed Apr 27, 2005 4:13 am

Hello:
m0002a wrote:
NeilBlanchard wrote:I work for an architect, and I build computers for architects. Here's the card I would use:
Nice pic, but what card is that?
Click on the picture -- it links to the NewEgg page for the XFX GeForce 6600 page, and you can see the specs and other pictures... :wink:

mk
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Post by mk » Wed Apr 27, 2005 9:38 am

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I am surprised how helpful and educating this great forum can be.

He would properly have ended up with a 9550 had I not asked for help here. Now he will get a FireGL X2. And it won’t cost him much more. This is definitely a better solution.

As for ChucuSCAD's concern for a large enough amount of disk space I will use a Maxtor DM10 160GB, SATA. He can always fill in more and lager harddrives is necessary.

Thanks again

By the way does anyone know if an ordinary 9600 GPU can be softmoded in any way (for gaming)?

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