GTX performance over long periods of time (vs. Quadro)

[benherron]

Hi, this is my first post...a friend has informed me you guys are the best people to ask about GTXs.

Im a 3D modeller using Autodesk Alias and rendering HD images and animation through Bunkspeed, plus other 3D apps. Looking to upgrade my graphics card for bootcamp on my mac pro.

Looking at under £200 so thats generally the Quadro 600 or most of the GTX 2xx/4xx range.

I know the GTX's have more cudas and ddr5 over ddr3, but also aware that rendering uses CPU over GPU in most cases so that isnt the be all and end all of the arguement.

My main worry is leaving a GTX running for 60+ hours rendering when rendering animations. I dont really want it to die after a few weeks and potentially damage the computer with the huge amounts of heat generated.

From what ive read the Quadro only uses 40watts, so my question is does anyone have experince running GTX cards for long/extended periods of time without any issues. Im not a gamer so no idea whats the max people would game for?!

Hope you can enlighten me,
Many thanks Ben

 

[Gtiracer]

Hi, this is my first post...a friend has informed me you guys are the best people to ask about GTXs.

Im a 3D modeller using Autodesk Alias and rendering HD images and animation through Bunkspeed, plus other 3D apps. Looking to upgrade my graphics card for bootcamp on my mac pro.

Looking at under £200 so thats generally the Quadro 600 or most of the GTX 2xx/4xx range.

I know the GTX's have more cudas and ddr5 over ddr3, but also aware that rendering uses CPU over GPU in most cases so that isnt the be all and end all of the arguement.

My main worry is leaving a GTX running for 60+ hours rendering when rendering animations. I dont really want it to die after a few weeks and potentially damage the computer with the huge amounts of heat generated.

From what ive read the Quadro only uses 40watts, so my question is does anyone have experince running GTX cards for long/extended periods of time without any issues. Im not a gamer so no idea whats the max people would game for?!

Hope you can enlighten me,
Many thanks Ben

Ill be honest with you Im not a hard gamer but I know my cards get fairly warm when gaming for a couple hours or so I keep a little temp display in the top left corner so I can always glance at them.

With rendering you are actually stressing the CPU a lot too so the best thing you could do (if feasible) is make sure all wiring and airways are tidy and adequately cooled. Putting the PC in a cool place (like by the window, even if just temporary) would help with those long render times.

It may be worth a test run on a GPU/CPU stress program like furmark (has been known to cook cards, so be careful) or Prime 95 / 3d mark11 which stress the GPU/CPU to the absolute limits so you can see how stable they are and what sort of temps you reach.

 

[Marine Iguana]

My GTX470 and 260's are on all day for the last year and a bit going at 100% all day and night not had a failure yet

 

[cmndr_andi]

Hi there, there are quite a few here that use their gaming graphics cards for high-intensity, long duration distributed computing projects (folding@home, seti@home etc.) so I'm pretty sure that if you get a decent gaming graphic card with a good cooler and your case has decent airflow then running your card for a long time won't be an issue.

As for which card to get, this part of the alias 2012 redme is very interesting:

The Alias family of products are tested on specific hardware configurations using workstation class hardware in conjunction with video drivers made available by Nvidia or AMD, depending on make and model of graphics card. For Windows, supported GPU's are restricted to Nvidia Quadro and ATI FirePro level graphics hardware as listed in the Qualification Charts. For Mac, supported GPU's are restricted to Nvidia Quadro and GeForce and ATI Radeon™ level graphics hardware as listed in the Qualification Charts. Intel® Integrated Graphics based cards are not supported and will result in poor performance and incorrect display results.

Any chance you can run Alias on your mac pro in OSC instead of bootcamp? It will give you access to much more powerful graphics cards if your budget is ~£200. I believe AMD runs openGL stuff better than current Nvidia cards -so if you go down this line I woudl suggest a 5000 or 6000 series AMD card that works with your mac pro. Have a look here (here is the windows one to compare). Based on that, my suggestion would be a HD 5870. With a mac pro can you just put in one like this in or do you need a mac-specific version?

 

[benherron]

Cheers for the quick replies

I do use Alias on the mac side, it's jsut not as resolved or reliable as the windows version annoyingly, plus Bunkspeed only runs on windows, so for the odd bit of photoshop and video editting my 7300gt is fine for the mac os.

Bunkspeed is the main program that will be rendering with and they only support Nvidia/recommend Quadro, and the latest SHOT uses Cuda cores....so although a 5770/5870 would be nice, i'd prefer Nvidia tbh.

Nice to hear the GTXs are happy running 24/7, does any particular model perform better for 3d/rendering or is it as big as your budget can go situation?