graphics cards etc

tungsten

i am lookin for some advice on purchasing a graphics card that will handle 3d max/Viz and other 3d modelling programmes and that will hndle openGL okay. price no object. Basically i have been offered a computer for work and need to give them a spec for parts to buy.
Any advice/recommendations greatly appreciated.

airetam_storm

Theres a million posts on this in here and tweaking/modding.
Money No Object Short Answer: nVidia 6800 GT/Ultra
Lower down the line: nVidia 6600 GT

ATi do some good cards but for openGL support, stick with nVidia

tungsten

thanx!

duridian

Those cards that were mentioned are only for playing games on. They aren't the sort of card you should get if the programs you mentioned are what you use in your job. (I very much doubt your going to be using Doom3 at work)
If money is not an obstacle then what you should be looking for is something like a Nvidia Quadro FX3400 .
These cost nearly 2 or 3 times what the top gamers card costs. Here's an example of the card I mentioned. A cool £929.91 Sterling!!!
The only crowd in Ireland that I know of doing Quadro cards is Elara but their prices for GFX cards are way off so I can't recommend that really.
If they are building a new machine by you selecting the components, then you should also specify that the pc should have a PCI-Express graphics, no point getting AGP if you are being alllowed to get the best, and PCI_E being the new technology is the more logical choice. The card I linked to above has a PCI-E interface. It is important that you get a GFX card and motherboard that are compatible, so beware of the AGP and PCI-E thing. Good luck with it.

zuma

Go for the Quadro range of cards.
http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadrofx.html
http://www.pny-europe.com/uk/quadro_home.asp
They are designed for CAD as well as what you work on.
For something more easily sourced and probable cheaper go for a:
NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX.

tungsten

thankx for the help guys...better tell work the bad news...ie the wallet is needed big time

jozi

What sort of card would be suitable for cad, for doing house plans.
At the moment we have p3 700mhz machines with i think a nvidia tnt 32mb card.
Would i be right that anything will really do, except intel extreme gfx?

J-blk

For doing fairly simple house plans, pretty much any contemporary graphics card will be fine - it's only when we start talking MCAD design and DCC (think aircraft engine schematics, instead of house plans, as an example) that a truly "professional" graphics card would be needed. As Duridian said, in that league, forget about GeForce or Radeons - instead, you'd be looking at Nvidia Quadro series boards, 3DLabs VP or Realizm series boards or ATI FireGL cards (IMO, the weakest contender of the top three) - Matrox also still plays in the "big boys" market, but only for 2D really... Of course, a top level Realizm 800 retails from $2000 upwards...

As mentioned above though, for simpler work and depending on what you need, a mainstream/gaming card would be fine - especially considering you have been using an old TNT. I casually use 3DS Max with my ATI Radeon 9800XT and it's more than fine for what I need - and 3DS Max can be a lot more demanding than the majority of CAD apps out there...

jozi

Thats sound enough ill let my boss know anything that doesnt have a celeron or onboard gfx will to, celeron is prob fine but hey why not get a decent cpu while he's at it i'll be the one using it

Never realised that the gfx cards where that expensive, and i taught spending 300+ was much :cool:

DemonOfTheFall

You can do a minor software mod to turn 6800 Cards into Quadro cards. Quite a few articles around the net on it.

Long story short you get a (near) perfect quadro card for a small fraction of the price.