Quadro vs Geforce?
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At the office we've had Quadro FX cards. 3500,3700.
The question recently cropped up: is a cheaper GeForce card good enough?
We're an architectural office. The key software we use are AutoCAD 2010, Revit 2010, other AutoCAD based solutions, Photoshop CS4 (and InDesign and illustrator) and Sketchup.
How will we notice the performance difference?
Geforce is designed for games, while Quadro for workstations, right? -
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/quadro-fx-4800,2258-10.html
Hopefully this helps. There is also talk of being able to convert a GeForce into a quadro. Not sure I like the idea of poking around a jacking up a brand new card though.
Scott
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Thank you. Just the kind of info we needed!
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@thomthom said:
Thank you. Just the kind of info we needed!
Is it? I'd really like to find out, once and for all, which card is better, in say a Mac and a PC. Most Mac's come fitted with Geforce types, or in the case of the Mac Pro at the high end, an ATI Radeon HD 4870- which despite the brilliant claims, is still classed as a "gamer" card. In no Mac is there a Quadro FX type card- not even in the high end models. But I find the performance better on this Mac which has an ATI X1600, and I stopped using my HP workstation, because the Macbook was far better in displaying models, despite the HP being fitted with an NVidia FX1400 with an equal 128mb of VRAM.
And if SU only really uses one single core, what is the point, apart from rendering, of a high-end graphics card? I've got two NVidia Geforce 8500 512mb cards here- ready to be stuffed into a new PC I'm making for home, but when I tried swapping out the Quadro FX 1400 128mb card in my old HP workstation, I noticed absolutely no difference in performance.
Ideally there should be two identical architecture machines running side by side, Mac and PC, but what CAD would you throw at them? Solidworks' eDrawings I suppose, because eDrawings runs on both Mac and PC, but I guess they would have to be reading from a 100mb + file or whatever? SketchUp too. I would choose these two apps, because the PC version has been written in the .NET framework, and Cocoa Objective C++ for the Mac.
Hmm.... I wonder?
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@tfdesign said:
And if SU only really uses one single core, what is the point, apart from rendering, of a high-end graphics card?
SU using an single CPU core, what does that matter for the graphics card?
And in any case, SU is just one of the apps we run at the office.@tfdesign said:
Ideally there should be two identical architecture machines running side by side, Mac and PC, but what CAD would you throw at them? Solidworks' eDrawings I suppose
We don't have Mac at the office. We use all PC's - and the applications I mentioned in the first post.
And ATI is out of the questions. I got one in the computer I'm sitting on now. ATI Radeon HD 4??? And I've had a number of glitches and problems with SU model - which is not present in any of our nVidia based computers. Seems that ATI doesn't play all too well with OpenGL.
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Oh dear, Sorry Thom, this wasn't really anything to do with your question or your office for that matter, and that's why you have given strange answers!!
My fault.
I should have asked the question in a new topic, but I found the link to Tom's Hardware (not our hardware!! 
) rather interesting. -
Tom,
you are going to get the biggest benefit of a quadro card on Photoshop over all the programs you noted. Just be very careful when upgrading drivers. We had to actually step back a few driver version due to glitches. We finally found a very stable version in 7.15.11.7823. We are running the 4gb FX5800. It is a blazing fast card but not for those without a hefty budget.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_quadro_fx_5800_us.html
The nice thing is you will be able to take advantage of the new programs harnessing the power of the CUDA programming.
Let me know if you need anything else as we researched the purchase of these quite extensively.
Best regards,
Scott -
Good to hear. We decided to keep on buying Quadro cards for our workstations. And I should be getting my ATI card replaced soon as well.
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My only complaint about the fx5800 is it can whine under heavy load. We wear headphones the whole day so it is not bad unless you take them off. It sounds like an old tv going bad. We emailed them and they said that it is a known issue under load but that most customers do not push them to those extremes...whatever that is supposed to mean.
Scott
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That's annoying.
I've not had that sort of problem with my old 3500.
But at home with my 6800 and 8800 the ambient noise level was so low that I heard the GPU fans notably. So I got some third-party new fans that silenced them. ahhComputer noise is all too often not considered. I often wonder why people put up with much of the noise they generate.
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No noise problems with the FX 4800 either. I have been using one for some weeks now. It's probably overkill for standard CAD work, maybe overkill for SU, too, but the 3D windows in BIM apps seem to like it.
Anssi
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I guess quadro fx have a deep acceleration effect on SU.
I use at my office an Old workstation (6 years) which kills all the recent dell precision we have bought on sketchup... The only difference is a quadro fx1400 with professional drivers...
I'll give you tomorow some precisions about the specifications of each computer.
As far as I know, Nvidia quadro with professionnal drivers are really better than Geforce for Autodesk application, CATIA, Sketchup and other CAD program... And a major part of this difference is due to driver's professionnal optimisation.
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@minguinhirigue said:
As far as I know, Nvidia quadro with professionnal drivers are really better than Geforce for Autodesk application, CATIA, Sketchup and other CAD program... And a major part of this difference is due to driver's professionnal optimisation.
Yea- from that link at Tom's Hardware it was illustrated well by the comparison of the Geforce and Quadro that used the same chipsets.
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There is also some stuff on the web about making a geforce into a quadro with some tweaking and sodering. From the sounds of it the gtx cards are only slightly different than a quadro.
Scott
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I bought a Quadro with my new computer, and since so many specs have changed compared to my old computer, I can't say with certainty that it's better. But in my research, I read that, as opposed to what an earlier post said, that Photoshop craves a fast processor and tons of RAM, and couldn't care less about the graphics card. I bought the Quadro because it made sense to me that SU and my CAD program would benefit from a GPU that's tailored to all the on-the-fly rendering of 3D objects. And I can certainly say I see an enormous improvement in orbiting with shadows turned on!
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@youemailme said:
But in my research, I read that, as opposed to what an earlier post said, that Photoshop craves a fast processor and tons of RAM, and couldn't care less about the graphics card.
When was that article written then? Photoshop utilising Hardware acceleration is new to CS4 I think.
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Tom you are correct. CS4 can be GPU hungry and having a decent card for large imagery can make the difference.
Scott
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