Professional Graphic Cards

**Juli26** · July 04, 2011, 04:52 PM

So, I intend to build a new PC in August/September because I need it to work with CAD programs. The problem is that I don't know what graphic card should I get. Well, I know I should get a Quadro card from Nvidia or a FirePro from Ati but I don't know which models would fit me (and my budget of course)

The programs I will be using will be Autocad, Archicad, 3dsMax, Revit, Maya, Photoshop etc

CPU will be Intel core i7 2600k and the PC will be built around it.

Now what I am asking for is a list of professional Graphic cards sorted by their performance in those applications and their respective prices because I have no idea which are the new cards in circulation and I would hate to buy something very expensive just to find out that I could have bought something cheaper and better.

Also I have another less important question. I would like to ask if a SSD would make a difference in performance and if it's worth it to buy one so I can install the system and the programs there.

Of course rep will be given to anyone who gives me an answer.

**Crazyeyesreaper** · July 04, 2011, 06:30 PM

you dont really need a pro series gpu

i use 2x 6970s and i work with Maya, 3DS Max, Mudbox, Zbrush,

Photoshop currently prefers Nvidia hardware, but im partial to AMD due to the larger Vram buffers for less, with Mudbox.

overall

that said professional market is a bit well screwy for GPUs even low end models from a few years ago are $150-200 ill take a look and see what i can find but i need a budget to work with overall for the GPU itself.

**Juli26** · July 05, 2011, 07:50 AM

Budget can be anywhere from 0.1$ to 1500$ only for the card but the price needs to be justified with the performance. I mean I could buy a quadro 4000 for 700-800$ but if the 2 x 6970s perform better I would get those. I could buy as well a quadro fx4800 but that is an old model and if I can't utilize it at 100% I don't see why I should. At the same time I'm hearing people say that a quadro fx1800 is the best in my case because it performs equal to the quadro fx3800 and quadro 4000 as long as I'm using the programs I mentioned and I'm confused now. Also I don't know how the fire pro cards compare to those.

**Crazyeyesreaper** · July 05, 2011, 03:11 PM

fire pro are about the same as nvidia but as you can guess overall its a pain in the ass with professional lvl gpus

in all honesty there nothing more then regular gpus with looser ram timing aka worse timings = less stress on the chip means longer life, and they have much better customer service then generic gaming gpus.
Nvidia card DX11 support its essentially an overprice GTX 460 but do to driver optimizations for the Quadro cards it performs better then a 460 in the apps you will be using but will perform far worse when gaming compared to a regular 460

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814133382

AtI v7800 is essentially a 5850 with 2gb of Vram again higher vram means its better for 3d Rendering and apps like Mudbox but Nvidia

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814195098

in terms of price performance and support

Id take the cheaper Nvidia card

**Devilmaypoop** · July 05, 2011, 03:22 PM

Originally Posted by Crazyeyesreaper

Id take the cheaper Nvidia card

But the AMD card is so goddamn sexy.. *drools*

**Crazyeyesreaper** · July 05, 2011, 05:17 PM

yes yes it is but its still a 5850 with tweaked design so $140 5850 xtreme vs Fire pro at $600 + lol well you get the idea

it is sexy tho, and would be a nice upgrade for my 3d rendering i just could never bring myself to buy a dedicated professional gpu, not with the move to Open CL, and Direct Compute making all gpus performance power houses in extreme parallel computing,

but yea id still take the Nvidia card

Nvidia has better support in Adobe Products then AMD does hands down, not to mention CUDA is more wide spread then AMDs STREAM which is now dead and whatever there new platform is i cant remember the name, right now for straight up power AMD still wins but Nvidias better support means it wins where it matters.

with gaming gpu its price performance, in terms of proffessional lvl gpus its all about application support, in that senario Nvidia is better.

**Juli26** · July 06, 2011, 04:58 AM

Thx for the reply. I'll give you rep again after I spread some.

Also, what about a SSD? Would that be a big improvement over the normal Hard Drives in those applications if I install them and the operating system on the SSD?

**Crazyeyesreaper** · July 06, 2011, 01:17 PM

no ssds would not bring any improvements

extra ram will but when it comes to batch rendering etc, in a 3d app no an ssd wont help if anything running maya 3ds max and doing say an animation which outputs each still frame well writing those still frames to an ssd takes up a write cycle now imagine doing this all the time, it will wear out an SSD over time, where as a mechanical drive you can batch render delete then batch render again with no real issue.

SSD is usually just good for loading up apps quicker and getting info from the HDD quicker, when working in 3D apps that info is stored in system memory which is faster then any storage you can think of