{"id":3838,"date":"2014-01-09T17:09:31","date_gmt":"2014-01-09T22:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jerslife.com\/word\/?p=3838"},"modified":"2014-01-11T16:06:42","modified_gmt":"2014-01-11T21:06:42","slug":"video-cards-pro-3d-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jerslife.com\/word\/video-cards-pro-3d-work","title":{"rendered":"Video Card for Professional 3D Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Time to upgrade the video card and it’s been a tough decision.\u00a0 “Professional 3D card” like nVidia’s Quadro versus a consumer grade gaming card like the GeForce cards.\u00a0 Is there a difference?\u00a0 There’s a lot of debate out there, but it ultimately depends on the budget and how the card is going to be used.\u00a0 I’m a professional 3D animator who does quite a bit of character work in packages like Maya, but I also do some FX work in Houdini and some digital sculpting in 3D Coat.\u00a0 Houdini and 3D Coat can take advantage of the CUDA cores and according to this thread in the 3D Coat forums<\/a>, the CUDA performance has been degraded in recent releases on the GeForce cards. They seem to be settling on the Geforce GTX 580.<\/p>\n

After much research, I’ve decided to replace my Quadro 600 card.\u00a0 It has been reliable and doesn’t consume much power, but the frame-rates are killing my eyes.\u00a0 I’ve opted for the Geforce GTX 580 w\/ 3GB of RAM.\u00a0 Cost me $260, used on Amazon.\u00a0\u00a0 The other option I was considering was the Quadro 4000 w\/ 2GB of RAM…\u00a0 but I would have had to talk a seller down from $450.\u00a0 Considering the benchmarks<\/a> and the stats below… well… I’m going to take a gamble on a “non-professional” card.<\/p>\n

Quadro 600<\/a>
\nRAM = 1GB
\nCUDA = 96
\nmem interface = 128
\nmax power = 40w<\/p>\n

GeForce GTX 580<\/a>
\n$389 (or $225 used)
\nRAM = 1.5GB
\nCUDA cores = 512
\nmem interface = 192
\nmax power = 244 W<\/a><\/p>\n

Quadro K4000<\/a>
\n$763<\/i>
\nRAM = 3GB
\nCUDA cores = 768
\nmem interface = 192
\nmax power consumption = 80W<\/a><\/p>\n

Quadro 4000<\/a>
\n$665 (or $430<\/i> used<\/a><\/b>)
\nRAM = 2GB
\nCUDA cores = 256
\nmem interface = 256
\nmax power consumption = 142W<\/a><\/p>\n

Quadro K2000<\/a>
\n$423<\/i>
\nRAM = 2GB
\nCUDA cores = 384
\ninterface = 128 bit
\nmax power = ?<\/p>\n

Here’s some links to some of the Quadro vs GeForce debates.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.tomshardware.com\/forum\/332498-33-evga-quadro-2000-4000<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.tomshardware.com\/forum\/386333-33-quadro-geforce-autocad-solidworks-sketchup<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/3d-coat.com\/forum\/index.php?showtopic=14766<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Time to upgrade the video card and it’s been a tough decision.\u00a0 “Professional 3D card” like nVidia’s Quadro versus a consumer grade gaming card like the GeForce cards.\u00a0 Is there a difference?\u00a0 There’s a lot of debate out there, but it ultimately depends on the budget and how the card is going to be used.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[502,18,35,64,66,69],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerslife.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3838"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerslife.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerslife.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerslife.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerslife.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3838"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerslife.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3851,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerslife.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3838\/revisions\/3851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jerslife.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerslife.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jerslife.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}