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best card for 3d modelling?

bazmo

bazmo

bazmo

Associate
Joined
6 Oct 2008
Posts
57
Hi, My current graphics card (4870) is currently dying a slow death so I need to replace it.

I'm completely torn between getting a gtx570 or one of the new 6950's. I was pretty set on the 6950 but now the MSI 570 has been put on a 'this week only offer' for £270.

Although I game quite a lot (at 1650x1080), my main need for the power is in programs like 3dsMax and Mudbox. This is where it gets confusing....

It seems that the general concensus is that these programs prefer NVidia, but, they also love having loads of Video memory, which clearly favours a 6950... I just can't decide!

In addition to this I quite fancy the idea of getting into the 3D thing at some point.

Anyone got any advice? :confused:

Cheers!
 
The extra memory on the 6950 will help, and it's quite a bit cheaper. However, simply modelling in 3D doesn't actually need a powerful GPU to display the viewport, so a lot of GPUs will be fine for 3D modelling. I used a 4850 for 3Ds max for quite a while and it was fine for it, I'm on a 2GB 5870 now, but I can't say I notice the difference really.

For GPU accelerated rendering though, via OpenCL, AMD cards seem to do considerably better than nVidia ones at the same price points: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4008/nvidias-geforce-gtx-580/16 check the "Compute: SMall Lux GPU" image, that's 3D rendering using a GPU, the 2GB of RAM should come in very handy for that type of work.
 
Ati will have cheaper 3d on the future. For your general need i would say that bpth cards are equal. I would go 6950 because it has more mem and is cheaper in the long run. Check ur psu first. Make sure you have 600w +
 
hmm thanks thats actually helped quite a bit! :)

3dsMax is actually fine with my current card - it's Mudbox where it really struggles (it basically becomes unusable with very high poly models).

So will a 6950 be capable of playing games in 3d? I'm a bit confused because you get those Nvidia 3d glasses kits, but there doesn't seem to be an ATI equivilent? What exactly do you need other that a 120hz screen?
 
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