1GB Gainward 9800GT

[samir883]

Hi can anyone help me out with regards to the Gainward 1GB 9800GT Bliss (Golden Sample). Seen it on Scan for around £112.

I'm building my new rig which will be used for 3D character animation using Maya and a lot of watching films not really playing games on PC. I'm finding it hard to pick a graphics card. Don't want to spend a lot of money and if there is something someone can reccomend then i would appreciate it loads.

Whether this one is a good pick or there is an alternative. Maybe the 8800GT series, i was looking at them initially.

[staffsMike]

Very little difference between the 8800 and 9800 GT. I did a build some time ago using the 640MB 8800GTS of old (not as good as the 8800GT) for 3D work etc.. might have even been maya and it seemed to go down very well with the end user

So with that in mind I'm sure the Gainward would be perfectly up to the job. ATi's HD4850 is also around the same price, I have no idea which would be better for your tasks though.

[samir883]

Well up until now i have been using 3DsMAX on a dell dimension that is like 6yrs old and probably has a 64mb crappy graphics card so any update would seem great to me. Just not sure about compatibility issues. Heard a lot about lags in the viewport and stuff. All i need is a decent card be it Nvidia or ATI which is fairly cheap but does the job. Maybe a 512Mb 8800GT is more than enough, only thought about the Gainward as it is 1GB and 9800GT which is a more higher end card.

[colmo]

Maybe the ATI 4670 512mb would be more in line with your needs - consumes little power when not in use (which will be most of the time), should be quite quiet (there are some fanless versions), excellent HD video capabilities and is an adequate games card. It should be just over £50.

Does Maya make use of video-card processing, or is it entirely dependant on the CPU? That may make a difference.

[shaithis]

One of the Quattro cards would probably be best for Maya 3D modelling......

They were quite expensive last I looked at them, plus I am not sure what the current state is regarding converting ordinary nVidia cards to Quattros is........although it always used to be possible very easily.