3DS4 users...

[SteenkyBastage]

first off... this is specifically geared toward 3d studio max users, so i do hope this is okay to post in this section. sorry if it's not.

i am looking to put in a new ogl video card for use almost exclusively w/ 3ds4. i would like to know if any users here have any experience w/ how well 3ds4 works with some of the more "budget" versions of video cards as compared to higher end ones.

ex: i am looking into elsa gloria ddc as a "budget" version. i consider high end to be the fire gl series and the wildcat type cards. however, i would like to not have to shell out the 1500 bucks or more for a video card, if 3ds will work well with a lower end ogl workstation type card.

altho i know the radeons, and gf2/gf3 support ogl well (and even dx8 in some cases), i cant see them performing at near the results of a workstation class card.

so, if you've used any of these, or other similar items. please let me know how well 3ds operates with each one, and what your ideas/recommendations are.

thnx

[Ebola]

i always thought 3dsmax and most of the 3d programs were cpu intensive and not so much video card intensive. dual athlon mps might be a better investment.

[Ice_Gargoylle]

chk this 1 out, i was lookn at these myself, but cudnt afford them...i dont know how intense ur scenes are, but this shud be able to handle most of it..

and u are right my ati8500 dont do diddly for 3dmax...i think this card at the link comes in around 700 or so..3dlabs (http://www.3dlabs.com/product/oxygen_gvx1pro_index.htm)

just chked out the ati firegl 8800..goes for 700 retail...but i wud specutlate that the performance isnt quite up to snuff w/ the 3dlabs boards. but u'll have to find some articles for that. It is a new gpu tho, might do very well.

[SteenkyBastage]

Originally posted by Ebola
i always thought 3dsmax and most of the 3d programs were cpu intensive and not so much video card intensive. dual athlon mps might be a better investment.

yeah, in rendering it's all processor/memory.

what i'm looking for ogl card for is for it's 3d acceleration. when laying out your scene (geometry) you have a choice of open gl (by your video card) or software (by your processor). software uses up your cpu, but an open gl accelerated video card can actually handle all the geometry in the layout and display it much faster and without slowdowns like complex scenes with software viewing does. (this really only helps when you're laying out your scenes and building your objects, it doesn't do anything for final rendering)

btw, i am already looking into a dually amd system, just no good boards w/ all i need/want on them yet.

ice... i'm looking into the firegl cards, as well as a few others. they are slick. i was just hoping someone had experience with the sub $1000 "budget" cards and might be able to explain to me how well they actually perform. so far, my choice is the elsa gloria ddc, as it is specifically optomized for 3ds and costs $675 at newegg.

[Ice_Gargoylle]

hola bastage...

i have no experience w/ these boards, although i have seen a wildcat demo'd, thats it.

u might want to look into the venders in your area..there are a couple here in indy that i know of, so u shud be in luck...authorized dealer...They might be able to demo them for u since they are a larger investment and u cant buy them over the counter so to speak.
Another thing, there might be a animation club or somethin u cud get hooked up w/, or a sigraph chapter, we have 1 here at school. I was also in a 3dmax club that was held every month w/ all professionals sittn around shootn the *____*.

I had no idea a gloria was that much..WOW.

just make sure the board u get has a agp pro slot, cuz if u get dualies, u wont be upgrading that to often. I got dual tualatins, they do excel. but what wudnt x2;)

btw, my 8500 does real well at modeling, i droppped a "mech" into max at about..hhmmm.. around 132k polygon count, np workn w/ it at all. s w/ f display.

[SteenkyBastage]

hey ice, thnx for the reply.

yeah, the current mobo i'm looking into is the asus one, it doesn't have agp pro. but since it doesn't have mounting holes for my waterblocks, i'm having to hold off (or find a new way to mount my waterblocks) for something different.

just a couple quick q's about your 8500... are you using heidi (software viewports) or opengl?

and if ogl, can you get good results and move around w/ several lights, and lots of polys (setting it to smoth + hilights and putting the textures in your scene)? or any luck with large particle systems?

most scenes i setup (using heidi software viewport rendering) cause the viewport to lag behind. for example: i start rotating the view, and then let go of the mouse when i get it to the rotation i want, but the viewport lag causes it to keep moving for a second or so because i was actually seeing the results of a second or two ago.

my chessboard scene is 3 lights, 164K polys. and i have a real hard time with these type scenes in moving and adjusting views. plus i cant get a close idea of what it looks like (texture/lighting wise) from viewport, so i have to render every change i make to see the differece.

[Ice_Gargoylle]

ya i use hiede...i cant get the gl drivers to, and niether can my school..so i gave up on um.

i really dont have any probs w/ the lag tho, not now atleast.

when i dropped that mech into max w/ my old onboard rage lt pro 8 mg, it did that...but ill have to c what goin on now, i cant seen to find the bastage anywhere;) I really dont use max that much anymore, web stuff and multimedia:)

[SteenkyBastage]

since i (hopefully) got all the 3ds user's attention anyhow...

www.3dbuzz.com (http://www.3dbuzz.com)

is a nice site for learning. i'd have to say their forums are about as nice as the ones here (not quite), but they dont have a ton of people like we do.

[CrackedSKull]

i want to build a computer for 3ds too, but like mentioned above, It would be a better investment to go with dual cpus, and lots of ddr ram, and make sure to overclock it. Get a good gf3, or 8500, and that should be fine, oh remeber the newer gf3's, and 8500's are going to have 128mb ram, so that should be good improvemnet I would think for Max.

[SteenkyBastage]

hey crackedskull,

yeah, upgrading processors and ram wont do much for the problem at hand. the problem at hand is complex geometry & 8 lights needing full opengl support from a video card, not the "gaming" support that consumer cards have.

i already do plan on upgrading to dualy mp's, in the future. but until a suitable board comes along... i'll be happy with viewports that can update in realtime :D

the new gf3 & 8500, even with 128mb of ram, unfortunately dont actually get used with 3ds4 until they make some dedicated OGL drivers (i'm sure the cards could work if the companies wrote the drivers for workstation use). i have read reports of people getting the old gf2's and hardware hacking them so that the ogl support is enabled, and then were able to load the workstation drivers to get a boost, but i would prefer to just have an official supported card and not the hassles/lack of waranty.

[Ice_Gargoylle]

yup, unfortunately, a decent workstation will cost a small fortune, just for the v card. They are incredible for manipulating scenes. The mainstream cards can not perform at a professional level. If ya read the specs on some of um, u'll be lost in 1 second. glint rasterizing, wtf is that;)
If 3d is in your future, it is money well invested w/ trade up programs to make new hardware more affordable.
And really i dont think a new gf4 or 8500 will perform good w/ gl drivers, they just dont have the architecture to handle heavy scenes.
And for memory, the memory stores information, it doesnt proccess it, its all in the gpu, i am interested in how the 8700 and 8800 gpu will perform for ati in a real 3d environment. It still has all the bells and whistles of a 8500.

Hey bastage, i know intel doesnt fare well in here, but intel based mobo's for dualies are around w/ about every option u can think of, plus agp pro slots. My mobo is a workstation board for p3's, has sdram, up to 4 gig, raid, ata100, lan, the whole nine yards, and i love it. 1 thing, i cant oc it, no options. But hell, i got dual 1.26's, who needs to oc. Also i wud think about rdram, can handle far more info for intensive apps.

[SteenkyBastage]

hey ice,

yeah...my intentions are to save the extra cash from buying dual mp system over a dual xeon system and with it buy the elsa gloria ddc.

things i cant find in a dualmp board yet (has to have all of these)

1) overclocking ability

2) pci64/66

3) mounting holes for waterblocks around the sockets

asus was soooooooo close

the asus mobo has 1 & 2, but not the mounting holes :mad:

the tyan tiger mpx has only 2.

the tyan thunder has mounting holes, but no oc'ing (plus it's ungodly expensive)

plus max4 performs much better with mp's than it does xeons. this may have changed with the 4.2 patch...it included a p4 optomized patch, but haven't heard if it actually does much.

if the asus had worked, i would have been able to purchase an entire base system (dual mp 1.8+'s, asus mobo, 1gb DDR, & gloria ddc) for around 1600. dual northwood 2.2's would cost me 1160 alone :D and unfortunately the p3's, altho performing better than p4's, aren't quite on the same level yet.

i would have definitely considered my next upgrade to dual intel, then amd came on the scene and changed my mind :)

[Ice_Gargoylle]

ya i looked for everything i wanted, and ended up w/ the supermicro p3tdde, i didnt have alot of cash, as this was a totally new system(needed everything), and amd had some boards, but not w/ everythiing i wanted. I had a real hard time finding this 1. The xeon boards are all server boards, no agp(that i saw), and there was no 478 dual board. Ill keep my eyes peeled for ya.
ya when ya start gettn into 64/pci's, the boards com w/ some ultra dual full automatic wide as crapola scsi stuff, gets u[p there quik($), not to mention the dang scsi drives u gotto buy for it

[Ice_Gargoylle]

ok i tested my 8500. 92k polygon count no light:(, but it ran flawlessly in viewport.

[SteenkyBastage]

(on mine) when you have no lights it defaults one light. so you probably had a light you didn't know about (otherwise the scene would be black).

did you use software or ogl viewport rendering? if it can handle ogl, i'd consider getting one of the new radeons with 128mb of ram. then i dont need two systems... one for playing and one for real stuf :)

[Ice_Gargoylle]

ya no lights = defualt light(1). And it was software, not gl, i cant get it to work, and really dont wanna try

[SteenkyBastage]

yeah... that's my point. software doesnt use your video card to render the viewports, it uses processor power.

opengl video cards are rendered via viewport. that's why i'm giving up my trusty old vodoo5 here sometime soon...