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graphics card for graphic design/rendering/processing?

paul777

paul777

paul777

Associate
Joined
30 Jun 2006
Posts
15
hi guys,

im a newbie here looking for a graphics card for running and rendering stuff in photoshop, illustrator, 3d max, after effects, premiere all at the same time. im looking at spending £200 - £300. all the gfx cards seem to be aimed at games if someone could give me some elite cards for this job?

cheers
paul
 
A lot of the rendering process when it comes to 3D stuff is a lot more dependant on the CPU rather than the GPU. Having said that, you might want to look at the NVIDIA Quadro range or the ATI FireGL range. But I would be inclined to spend more on the cpu and less on the gpu.
 
You would probably need to spend big bucks to get a good hardware based render card that would make a difference, as mentioned focus on the cpu, you could maybe even try and nock up another cheap pc and use it in a network/render farm setup.
 
Agreed with the above idea. Try and build a buy a cheap dual core/Hyperthreaded or dual cpu rig, and use it as a render farm. This way you can send the project to be rendered on the other machine, whilst contiuning to work on your main machine. Ive had some annoying situations, where I havent been able to use my pc for 4-5 days, as its been rendering solidly.
 
we cant afford to build another pc for rendering, just need it to handle high poly max scene. is it worth investing in a low range NVIDIA Quadro (as they look pretty expensive) than say a card from the NVIDIA 7900 series?
 
do what i did with my 6800nu, unlock it so it becomes a Quadro FX 4000. unbelieveable speed increase in 3dsmax and maya.

shame my 6800nu is now dead.
 
Cyber-Mav said:
do what i did with my 6800nu, unlock it so it becomes a Quadro FX 4000. unbelieveable speed increase in 3dsmax and maya.

shame my 6800nu is now dead.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah you can do that, forgot about that. :)

Hang on i thought id already posted in this thread. :confused:
 
paul777 said:
we cant afford to build another pc for rendering, just need it to handle high poly max scene. is it worth investing in a low range NVIDIA Quadro (as they look pretty expensive) than say a card from the NVIDIA 7900 series?
Click to expand...


You're much better off saving that £200-£300, and spending it either on a better cpu (What spec computer do you have now?) Or try and pick up a computer for £300 off the bay. My mate recently picked up an old rack mount server, with dual Xeon 3.4ghz, 2gb ram SCSI320 harrdrives etc for about £400. If you could find a bargain like that, it would be ideal. Just getting a cheap Quadro is really not going to make much of a difference at all. As for poly count, my 2x6600gt's in SLI managed several million polygons with textures in 3D studio max. And even if you are working with that many polygons, you should be working with layers and individual assets. Its the rendering that brings your computer to its knees, and that where the cpu is king.
 
Hi guys,

I am planning to build 1 machine for use for designing and rendering. I am still new and got a bit of help from a friend:


Intel Core 2 DUO Extreme Edition X6800 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.93GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-130-IN)

Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)

Antec SLK3000B Midi Tower Case

2 of Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4 TwinX (2x1GB) (MY-108-CS)

Asus P5W DH Deluxe WiFi (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-152-AS)

Enermax Liberty 620W ELT620AWT ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU (CA-024-EN)

Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 80GB ST3808110AS SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-051-SE) (one hard disk for Windows and Program Files)

Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB ST3500641AS SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (HD-049-SE)


This total comes to £1490.10. I still need to add a graphics card without going too near to £2000. What card should i get, just a NVIDIA 7900?

Would appreiate your thought and help on this :)
 
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