Which Graphics Card

[zep]

Hi Guys,

I'm thinking of setting up a new computer rig for myself and have come to a bit of a stumbling block when it comes to the graphics card.
I'm a bit of a novice so i'll apologise now if anything i say is obvious or irrellivant.

Just to summerise my plans...
I'm a 3D animator and trying to set up a decent system for my work. My dad is a serious gamer and has just built himself a computer (on a budget) earlier this year which i intend to basically copy with a few upgrades here and there to avoid any compatibility issues etc.
His computer is as follows...
Motherboard - Asus Striker Extreme S775 nForce 680i ATX Audio Lan
Processor - Intel Q6600 Core2 Quad
Memory - 4gb Kingston Hyper X
Graphics cards: 2x XFX 7900GTX 512mb DDR3 in SLI configuration
He managed to put this together with second-hand parts for around £600 incl. all the extra bits and pieces.

I'm planning to copy the setup but upgrade the memory to 8gb and the 2 graphics cards to 8800 series.

The thing i'm stuck on is whether to go for 2 8800 GT or GTX.
I've been reading lots of forum posts and reviews and it seems to me that the overall opinion is that the 8800GT is nearly as good as the GTX but a lot less money. The thing is, all the reviews seem to only consider the 512mb GT and not the 1024mb version. As my understanding is a bit basic you'll have to excuse me for asking how much of a difference does that extra 512mb make to the performace? Or is the fact that the GTX uses 324bit technology that puts it above the GT in the perfomance stakes?
The thing is, I'm looking at buying second-hand to keep the costs down to an affordable level so whereas if I was buying new i'd be swaying towards the GT due to price, in actual fact the GTX is only slightly more expensive than the GT 1024mb second-hand (about £10 more on average) and around £20 more than the 512mb version. I don't know weather this is because there seem to be many more GTX versions about second hand or because price gaps just drop on second hand parts.
Anyway, considering the prices are quite similar would it be worth paying that little bit extra for the GTX? or is it not worth it considering i'm going for an SLI setup?

Thanks for you patience, and any thoughts would be welcome.

[Cichlidash]

I would say it depends on your budget really as to what card to go for. The 8800's are great cards but the Ati 4850 will beat it I belive and can be picked up with luck between £110-130 new.
Of course then you have the 4870's and the 260 which will totally outclass the 8800's again but will cost around £160-200 depending on what deals you can get.
The extra memory will only really come into play at very high resolutions so the answer as to if the 1gig is worth the extra cash comes down to what resolution you want to play on. Also you may find that the 1 gig version's memory can be clocked lower than the 512mb so unless you work in high resolution can actually be a bit slower. Sorry I can not give a direct answer as to which is better to get but I would favour the higher memory because it just would make the machine a bit more future proof.
I would examine the 4850, 4870 and 260's as another option though.

[Infinite]

Welcome to Hexus =)

I think your 1 year behind in the graphics card world =P

The CPU is fine if you are looking to get one exactly the same.
I'd recommend getting a P45 motherboard instead of any nVidia one.
I dont think you need 8GB of RAM, 4GB will do just fine, 800mhz 6400 stuff is the best value (get 2 x 2gb kits), remember to get a 64bit OS (Vista)
As graphic cards goes depending on your budget, 130 would be ATi 4850, 180 would be ATi 4870 and above 220 would be a nVidia 260GTX (216 cores).

All of those graphics card would easily beat your dads Sli setup performance in any games/test.

[zep]

Thanks for the reply.
I'm actually not a gamer - don't have any spare time unfortunately
I'm building the machine for work - which is 3D Animation. I'm not really sure how much of a difference this makes. My main concerns are building a machine that is quick to render and quick to generate particle/cloth/softbody simulations, as well as a machine that can easily cope with performing lots of tasks and running several applications at once.
I can pick up a second-hand 1gb GT for about £70 or a GTX for about £80 so thats about £20 more for the GTX once i've bought 2 of them. Being a novice I don't really know exactly how the different specs will influence the performance of my high-end 3D applications.
Unfortunately I can't afford to be right up-to-date so a year out of date will have to do for me! I really can't afford much more than £80 per card. (Unless anyone would like to give me a large sum of money!??)

[Pob255]

sorry, I spotted this earlier but haven't had a chance to answer untill now.

Which 3d software package are you using?

You are right on the cpu, a q6600 will be very good, I'd overclock it as well.
and 8gb of memory, 4x2gb of pc6400 800mhz is your best option.
although you can get away with less, depends on how complex your 3d scenes are.
If you do go over 4gb then you'll need a 64bit os to use it, vista 64bit is generally best as driver support for xp 64bit is patchy.

on to 3d cards, for actual rendering it will have no effect as it's all done on the cpu, what they will improve is the "view port" ie the views you use when actually making 3d models and animations.
If you already have that sli motherboard and can get hold of a 8800gtx for £80 or a 8800gt 1gb for £70 and can get a pair of them then sli is a route to consider.

However a single 8800gtx would be very good for what you want.

Also make sure you have a good psu and you may want to get a fast sata hard drive, not a raptor but a good sata2 drive, they are noticeably faster than IDE drives, 250gb will cost you £35-40

if you've not got that motherboard yet and don't plan to go for sli, then look at a p35 or p45 chipset board.

PS what screen size are you using and are you considering multiple monitors?

[vmong]

sorry dont know if there is much point making an entirely new thread. but what is the best FANLESS card out there? i have got a 24 inch TFT with DVI.
i realised that cards with fans are stupidly quiet. also i have an antec p182 with 3 case fans so inside should be really quiet?

[Pob255]

sorry dont know if there is much point making an entirely new thread. but what is the best FANLESS card out there? i have got a 24 inch TFT with DVI.
i realised that cards with fans are stupidly quiet. also i have an antec p182 with 3 case fans so inside should be really quiet?

Well it would of been better to post on a thread which was relavent, ie one asking about a quite or passive card

For reference most stock coolers are quite, although ati card with stock coolers tend to run hot.
Nvidia deffinately have one up on ati for there stock coolers, which are far better.

You need to look at ether replaceing the stock cooler or finding one with a passive cooler.
I'd also look as some of the better quite non-stock cooler that still have fans. (becarefull some non-stock coolers sacrifice low noise for lower temps.)
9800gt i-Chill is a very good example. http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149065

[zep]

Hi Pob255. I'm mainly using Softimage XSI and occasionally 3DS Max. My 3d scenes are often very complicated so I think i will try to get 8 gb of pc6400 800mhz. I generlly work on 3D for broadcast so I work with very high-res models and textures and often lots of them per-scene.
I was considering getting a couple of 500 gb sata drives as my current setup of 2 250gb satas fills up extremely quickly when i've got a couple of projects on the go.
As for my screen - i'm not running anything huge - just a 22" wide at 1680 X 1050 and a second screen 19" wide at 1600 x 900. For the time being i'm going to stick with it (to keep my cost down) but at some point in the future i'll want to upgrade so i'd like to keep the setup a bit future proof.

Thanks for the input guys.

[Pob255]

Couple of things,

I seem to remember that you cannot run 2 monitors on Sli
You should still be able to use 2 monitors on two seperate cards just not SLi (I don't think you'd want sli any way)
Depending on how you set it up a 8800gtx to run one monitor and a 2nd lower performance card to power the 2nd monitor would be a good idea. (ps 19" resolution is 1440x900 widescreen or 1280x1024 non-widescreen, unless you've got some really odd monitor)

I seem to remember that the 8800gtx is very good for 3d work, (the 8800gt 512mb was just behind the 8800gts 640mb for gaming not the gtx)

Personally I think gameing cards are currently the best option low cost for 3d work, between them ati and nvidia killed off good professional and now the professional cards they make are very substandard.

Deffinately get a q6600 a decent cooler and overclock it
Same as 8gb memory (800mhz is fine, will allow a good overclock on a q6600 and is low cost)

[vmong]

Well it would of been better to post on a thread which was relavent, ie one asking about a quite or passive card

For reference most stock coolers are quite, although ati card with stock coolers tend to run hot.
Nvidia deffinately have one up on ati for there stock coolers, which are far better.

You need to look at ether replaceing the stock cooler or finding one with a passive cooler.
I'd also look as some of the better quite non-stock cooler that still have fans. (becarefull some non-stock coolers sacrifice low noise for lower temps.)
9800gt i-Chill is a very good example. http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149065

ok so i got the 8800 GTX for £70 (good price?) and it works perfectly ... but it doesn't feel that much wow compared to my 8600GTX, its less jumpy and a little better.. however could the limiting factor be that i am still on XP??

[zep]

Couple of things,

I seem to remember that you cannot run 2 monitors on Sli
You should still be able to use 2 monitors on two seperate cards just not SLi (I don't think you'd want sli any way)
Depending on how you set it up a 8800gtx to run one monitor and a 2nd lower performance card to power the 2nd monitor would be a good idea. (ps 19" resolution is 1440x900 widescreen or 1280x1024 non-widescreen, unless you've got some really odd monitor)

I seem to remember that the 8800gtx is very good for 3d work, (the 8800gt 512mb was just behind the 8800gts 640mb for gaming not the gtx)

Personally I think gameing cards are currently the best option low cost for 3d work, between them ati and nvidia killed off good professional and now the professional cards they make are very substandard.

Deffinately get a q6600 a decent cooler and overclock it
Same as 8gb memory (800mhz is fine, will allow a good overclock on a q6600 and is low cost)

Thanks for that bit of info - something i hadn't really considered and completely changes my whole plan as i use 2 monitors on a day-to-day basis. Gonna have to rethink things. (I had a bit of a memory block with the res of the 19" - your right 1440x900. Oops!)

My mistake on the performace of the GT and GTX - I was reading about the cards on Wikipedia and what it was actually saying was the GT 1gb version was slightly behind the GTX - it just didn't make that completely clear.

Considering i'm now probably looking at NOT using Sli coz of the dual monitor problem then I'm wondering if it is worth spending a bit extra on a single graphics card or even upgrading the motherboard.

I've had a quick look fore some more info on the web and have come across something called a dual-purpose 2D/3D graphics chip. Am I right to think that a card with this chip will offload some of the processing to the Graphics card making the rendering process faster? Or have i got the wrong idea?

[Codeine]

The new nVidia drivers (180.48 Vista x64) can now run 2 monitors on SLi, I myself can now happily watch 720p on my LCD whilst playing a game on my TFT. Well done nVidia, I sorely needed this option, was sick of disabling SLi to watch video and game at the same time

[Fraz]

I'm a bit confused over 3D rendering - I thought it had little to do with the graphics card. As far as I know (which isn't saying much) on 3DS max the rendering is all done by the CPU right? If that's so, you might want to consider an Core i7 setup, as it's a lot better at rendering than a Q6600. Clock for clock, I think a Core i7 is about 60-80% faster at doing 3D rendering tasks than a Core 2.

Evidence:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...px?i=3448&p=17

[Fraz]

Or you could make one of these if you're really serious

http://helmer.sfe.se/

[Pob255]

Cool wasn't sure if that was driver limited or the new x58 motherboards only

EDIT:

Or you could make one of these if you're really serious

http://helmer.sfe.se/

Ooooo render farm in a single box, I like it

[zep]

Codeine - that's good to know (thought i'd heard something about that) although i'm umming and erring about the os at the moment.
I've heard that Vista actually runs slower than XP (although this may be wrong - sometimes you don't know who to believe) and also I use Softimage XSI software and throughout the forums I frequent I keep seeing people moaning about problems in the software caused by Vista. I wonder if nvidia is going to do a fix for XP 64bit?
On the other hand if Vista allows dual-monitor sli then that's a big advantage. I just need to feel confident that my business is not going to be loosing money coz i'm spending half my time working around Vista issues.
Fraz - Cheers, I'll be looking into that as an alternative. (the i7 i mean - the other setup is a bit ambitious for me )