Graphics card for gaming & 3D design

[onedsla]

Hi - I was wondering if anybody knew how suitable the Geoforce FX 5600 cards would be for 3D design (ie video editing for adverts) in addition to games.

Would having 256Mb rather than 128Mb make much difference?

Thanks

[judas]

I have a 256mb FX5600 in my new PC and to be honest it isn't much better that the 128mb Ti4400 I had before for gaming. How much better the performance will be depends on what card you have already though, and what other components are in your PC. Can't comment on the video editing as I haven't used it for that yet. However, you can get a 256mb FX5600 with an analogue video capture port built in from MSI quite cheap.

[MEMSDesign]

Not tempted by ATI's FireGL or Nvidia's Quadro FX chipsets? Jolly expensive, but these are the serious workstation video cards.

[pdV6]

judas said:

I have a 256mb FX5600 in my new PC and to be honest it isn't much better that the 128mb Ti4400 I had before for gaming.

Most likely you haven't yet bought any new games (if they exist yet!) that take advantage of the new features the card has.

You'd only really notice a difference playing a new game on your old card and then switching to the new card.

[cacatous]

Personally my next card is going to be an ATI.

They have superior 2D quality for day to day work, full DX9 compatibility (Unlike the nVidia GeForceFX cards) and you can get ones with TV Tuner/Capture capabilities (All in Wonder)!

Go for the 9600 PRO with a good sub 20ms 17" LCD screen and you're laughing!

[judas]

pdV6 said:

Most likely you haven't yet bought any new games (if they exist yet!) that take advantage of the new features the card has. You'd only really notice a difference playing a new game on your old card and then switching to the new card.

You obviously haven't seen the shelves in my computer room These observations come from testing using 3D 2003 Mark and a variety of DX8 and DX9 games

[pdV6]

[judas]

[cacatous]

[WildfireS3]

I do 3D graphics as well as video editing and have to say for video editing the in thing is the Matrox Parhelia. Can't beat it for image quality. To be honest I'm a bit disapointed with Nvidias current offerigs and if I had to buy a new card for both gaming and work I would go Radeon 9800 or 9800 Pro.

At work I use a Quadro0 900 GXL, wich is great, but far too expensive for a home user.

Besides a graphics card is bottle necked by the speed of the overall system. CPU FSB RAM etc.

[Bodo]

I can't see a reason to buy hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics devices, such as Quadro, FireGL, 3DLabs, etc -chipsets, when not professionally working with CAD or MCAD with large assemblies or local high quality rendering.
After all, most of these chipsets are nearly equal with their sister "gaming" chipsets, but their drivers do not use the full capabilities, when the card identfies as such.

IMHO, the best buy for desktop applications using graphics power would be to pick a midrange card from the GeForce/Radeon/etc. offers.

[WildfireS3]

Bodo said:

After all, most of these chipsets are nearly equal with their sister "gaming" chipsets, but their drivers do not use the full capabilities, when the card identfies as such.

This is not true of the GeForce 4, despite what is said. I managed to get my Ti4400 to register as a Quadro 4 750 GXL, but it ran really slow and wouldn't re recognise as a GeForce, had to format it.

My Quadro at work is signifigantly faster than my Ti, for work.

[Bodo]

WildfireS3 said:

This is not true of the GeForce 4, despite what is said. I managed to get my Ti4400 to register as a Quadro 4 750 GXL, but it ran really slow and wouldn't re recognise as a GeForce, had to format it. My Quadro at work is signifigantly faster than my Ti, for work.

I've once had a GeForce2, which I converted to a Quadro2 by resoldering two resistors. The PCB then had 3.3V at the pins, the Quadro cards used to have, and hence identified to the driver as 'Quadro2' and had full Quadro features.

Online magazines tried to find hardware tweaks for the same job on GF4 cards, but didn't find any.
Nvidia probably removed the ease to tweak the hardware easily, by changing the PCB layout and the driver/card recognition for Quadro4 relative to GeForce4s, in order to get the full return for their development work on the workstation driver features. Would have been to easy, if every could save £££s for a simple solder iron job

I've heard rumors, that there is a hacked driver for GeForce4 cards to use as Quadro4, but can't imagine how this should be recoded.
Everybody at work talks about that russian hacked GeForce driver, but nobody has actually ever had a copy

[onedsla]

I went for a Gainward 5600 256Mb in the end as I got a really good price (£95 inc vat!). I can get hold of a Matrox video editing card (albeit with only 32meg) for free, and it's PCI so if the FX is that bad, it'd be easy enough to switch. It's really more for games anyway or I wouldn't even consider Geoforece FX.
cheers for the advice

[chris watton]

I have bought the 256mb version of the ATI 9800 Pro, and it is used for both gaming and CAD/rendering work. I cannot fault it on both counts, games are very fast on maximum quality settings, and rendering times in open GL are blisteringly quick too! I do have the Intel 3.2 CPU and 2x512 MB of Corsair PC3200 ram to go with the card though, but I have heard that the better the CPU, the better the higher end graphics cards perform.
I did consider buying a dedicated 'workstation card' like the Quadro range, but I have noticed that newer workstation solutions are now including mainstream GPUs, instead of the stupidly over expensive (and arguably lesser performing) specialist cards, as the higher end mainstream card no have more power than most will ever use with current software.