graphics cards for 3d max rendering...

[goca]

Hey guys, ive gota a pretty good computer but my graphics card is a bit shitty its a Nvidea Geforce 6800. They dont even sel those anymore, lol.

As im gonna be working in 3d max and maya on my computer shortly ive found that my Graphics card takes a million years to render mentlray and cool stuff like that, so i need a cool graphics card that will render quite nicely but that doenst cost that much... anyone got any ideas...

 

[freestyler105]

The 7600GT is a great card for the price. This is a good deal, especially if you do mail in rebates:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130017

 

[mammikoura]

well actually since he has a 6800 the 7600GT won't be that much better.
As for 3ds max with 6800, well I don't know why you have any problems. I have a 6800GT and it works fine, could be faster though. And I'm really not into the more advanced stuff, I just do simple stuff with 3ds max.

Anyway, how much do you want to spend on the new vid card?
Which psu do you have?
Any gaming or just 3d stuff?

 

[goca]

I live in the uk, so im willing to spend about £100 which is around $200 give take a few, and my psu is a AMD 64x2 3800, not looking for gaming really, i got a nother pc i can use for that. i was looking at the nvidea quatro graphics cards they are more based on rendering in art programs rather than gaming but they are verry expensive...

 

[freestyler105]

The only better thing about the Quadros is that they are rigorously tested to be very accurate, and because of this the price is much higher. They use basically the same hardware as the GeForce cards. GeForce cards are made to be optimized for gaming. The only thing that would justify buying a Quadro is really if you do 3D rendering and such for a living.

$200 won't get you a good Quadro. A GeForce 7900GS would be good though.

The AMD Athlon X2 is your CPU. The PSU is your power supply unit. It's the thing you plug into your wall. Do you know how many watts yours is rated at?

 

[mammikoura]

I'm pretty sure there really aren't any cards for £100 that would be worth it.
The 6800 is about the same as a 7600 (the 7600 is better, but the difference isn't that big), so I see no point in spending the money on something like the 7600GT when you already have a 6800.

 

[goca]

lol, my bad i should know the difference between psu and cpu, wans t paying attention, lol. my psu is a new one and its a 600w, had to replace it cos olld 500w burnt out when i upgraded mobo. as you said the geforce are optimized for gaming, is there any way to over-clock it and optimize it for 3d rendering?

 

[mammikoura]

well yes there are ways to overclock it. As for optimizing for rendering, not that I know of.

If you want to oc it then read through the threads here (there should be a few guides on the guide/reference thread) and ask if you have any questions.

 

[goca]

a nother quick question, what hapens to graphics cards when you put two in sli mode do the two graphics cards work like twice as fast as one or does it just slightly speed up some processes?

 

[mammikoura]

well it does speed things up quite much. However it's not 2x the performance, maybe something like closer to 170%.

And not all programs support sli, so in those programs the performance boost you get is not as big as it is with the programs which support sli.