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ADVICE REQUESTED - Going Pro (or, is a Professional Graphics Card worth it?)

jerriecanjerriecan Posts: 470
edited December 1969 in The Commons

I'm in the market for an upgrade. My PC's graphics card is dying, and various other components are quite outdated, so I'm trying to piece together a new rig, for both rendering (mainly DAZ, maybe other applications if I'm feeling adventurous) and some light gaming (Fallout: New Vegas and Borderlands 2). The case and power supply are in fine shape (power supply is less than 18 months old, 1200 W Thermaltake).

The plan is to replace the motherboard, RAM (upping it to 32 gigs from 8), processor (upping to i5 series from Core 2 Extreme), and maybe the hard drives and optical drives, but the main issue is the graphics card. The person advising me on the rebuild is suggesting a professional graphics card - the AMD FirePro V5900 100-505648 Workstation Video Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16814195106

My question is, is this useful for DAZ rendering? Would the money spent on this be better spent elsewhere? What good would this card provide over a gaming graphics card, if any?

I could really use your advice before sinking a major investment into this. Thanks for your help! :)

Comments

  • DaveyWDaveyW Posts: 17
    edited March 2013

    I would say the AMD FirePro would be overkill for DAZ Studio alone, as it relies mostly on CPU horse power and LOTS of RAM if your rendering large images, the GPU is used only for the preview.

    Without knowing what other programs you plan to use, I don't know what graphics card you would be better off with, but I'd certainly give cheap consumer GPU's like the 7850, 7870 or even an 660 Ti a look first then move up if needed.

    Post edited by DaveyW on
  • jerriecanjerriecan Posts: 470
    edited December 1969

    I also use Photoshop CS3, and that's about the extent of the graphics applications I use. I might try my hand at Hexagon or Bryce, but that's about the extent of it.

  • SickleYieldSickleYield Posts: 7,629
    edited December 1969

    Bear in mind that unless you're using Reality or (in future) Octane, your graphics card has zero relevance to the time or quality of your renders (DAZ's native 3Delight renderer uses the CPU). I wouldn't skimp on the graphics card for that reason, though; you never know if you might be interested in these renderers later on. Also, I use my work machine for gaming, too. :D


    I have an Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 and it is completely adequate to my current needs (watching movies, playing Skyrim, etc.). This is because at present I render only in the native 3delight and I have a core i7 3.33 ghz processor. I'm not sure if a workstation GPU won't be a better idea if I ever switch to Octane, unlikely as that seems at this point; I'm fairly sure I won't be switching to Reality.

  • Kaleb242Kaleb242 Posts: 344
    edited December 1969

    Personally I prefer NVIDIA GeForce cards instead of ATI since they support CUDA for GPU rendering... I just got a new machine with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX with 2 GB of video ram and it's been really amazing with DAZ Studio 4.5 and Octane Render for Poser Pro 2012.

  • agent unawaresagent unawares Posts: 3,513
    edited December 1969

    Kaleb242 said:
    Personally I prefer NVIDIA GeForce cards instead of ATI since they support CUDA for GPU rendering... I just got a new machine with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX with 2 GB of video ram and it's been really amazing with DAZ Studio 4.5 and Octane Render for Poser Pro 2012.

    This exactly.

    I am practically killing myself right now because my laptop has an ATI card instead of NVIDIA; it was something I had never thought about when I bought it.

  • ServantServant Posts: 756
    edited December 1969

    I will also swear by NVIDIA. I have an older GPU and it still does well for both DAZ and most other applications, including games.

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 40,571
    edited December 1969

    ...nVidia's Quadro line is basically geared towards the high end CAD and 3D apps that also take advantage of GPU assisted rendering. I was actually looking into the 4000 as I am learning Blender which has the Cycles Render engine that can take advantage of GPU assist.

    Workstation grade GPUs are "beefier" than the consumer models as they are made with better components since they are required to handle peak workloads for extended periods of time to meet the demands of professional graphic production environments (which is why they tend to be more expensive). In short, they are more durable and reliable and will have a longer service lifetime than consumer/gaming grade GPUs.

    One advantage of the Quadro line is they tend to consume less power (and therefore generate less heat) than the GTX series.

    If you just plan to use Daz Studio or PoserPro I agree, it would be overkill. If however, one is also looking into a third party standalone render engine that supports GPU rendering, or moving up to a pro grade app that does, then it might be a worthwhile investment.

  • jerriecanjerriecan Posts: 470
    edited December 1969

    Thanks for all the replies - I'll look into the options suggested so far. :)

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 1969

    Kyoto Kid said:
    I was actually looking into the 4000 as I am learning Blender which has the Cycles Render engine that can take advantage of GPU assist.

    Cycles works quite nicely with any of the Geforce series cards, too...the Nvidia Cuda/OpenCL cards cover almost all their current and many past offerings. So GPU rendering alone isn't enough of a reason to bump up to a workstation class card. There are other advantages...as was mentioned...the heat/power savings, the 'better' rated components and so on. Also some apps, like 3DsMax, won't use the GPU functions of the 'consumer' card, without a lot of fiddling around (Blender will).

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