Help with GPU choice

guyds1

That was my first reaction too
I expected to see a much smoother sketchup with that quadro card and cpu, but unfortunately it isn't
Sketchup can be very very slow on that system and even "not responding" or even crashing.

And that's the reason why I also asked whether the cuda cores and/or stream processors are important, because that's apparently not so good with the Quadro 600 (i.e. only 96 CUDA cores)

mitcorb

Well, I just tried to edit my comment to include that your rendering application(s) is part of the equation for selecting your GPU. This is what puts the card to work.

guyds1

Ok, I understand that the rendering application is also an important factor for the GPU choice, but my first and main concern at this very moment is the speed/usability of sketchup itself, which is unfortunately not always very satisfying at the moment.

For the rendering application I haven't made a choice yet, because the prices vary from completely free to several thousands of dollars (while each rendering application has its pros and cons of course).
Currently I am using both Kerkythea and Maxwell render free, but I am also considering Thea render, Maxwell (licensed pluginn because studio is too expensive at the moment), Artlantis Render, IRender nXt and Indigo Render.

Are there already any details available about sketchup 9 ? Will it benefit from CUDA cores ?

mitcorb

Quote: "Are there already any details available about sketchup 9 ? Will it benefit from CUDA cores ? "

No telling what Sketchup9 will offer. My guess is it probably will not. And there may be others around here who could be testing 9 right now, but may not be at liberty to say. I am not one of them.

guyds1

Ok, I'll have to wait and see then

Nevertheless I decided to order the GTX-560.
Thanks everybody for giving your feedback.

BTW, I noticed that the GTX-560 (at least the Asus version) is even larger than my 8800 GT.
Combined with the dual-slot layout this means that I'll have to offer 3 of my 6 sata ports

guyds1

FYI: I just received and installed my new GeForce GTX-560 and did some tests with it and I am very pleased with its performance so far
Sketchup seems to work very smooth now and the lines are much sharper than before.

As an indication:
Windows Experience Index gave me a 6.9 for my 8800 GT while I get a 7.5 for the new GTX-560.
And I just noticed that my Quadro 600 on my other, more powerfull system only gets a 6.6

jgb

I dunno what problems you all had with ATI.

I had an older ATI card (ATX form 500mb) and it seemed flawless in SU and other graphic apps. Fast enough for all but the largest models panning.

Then my motherboard lunched and I replaced it, and the GPU with a newer NVidia (2GB) card and had weeks of frustration getting it setup correctly. All the colors were off, and no lines were as crisp as the ATI.

I tweaked multiple times, and defaulted at least twice. I've now settled for a near default setting, but I often get photos that are too dark, and need lightening up, which was very rare on the ATI. None of my SU materials look quite right and the lines are still not crisp like the ATI was. But it is good enough and I am used to it now, and it is faster panning large models than the ATI.

sonder

Nvidia all the way. I've had nothing but problems with ati cards and sketchup. I have the gtx560 and it works great.

hellnbak

I just ordered this card from Newegg. Good choice, bad choice? I'm not concerned with rendering, only SU.

mitcorb

I found this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_500_Series
In case you wanted to look at it. This page also links to other model numbers/series. The device you ordered is a branded, or repackaged nVidia unit. I do not know what that may mean at the end of the day, other than they would be like a vendor/ distributor.

guyds1

@unknownuser said:

Nvidia all the way. I've had nothing but problems with ati cards and sketchup. I have the gtx560 and it works great.

Do you have the regular 560 or the TI version ?
What are your system specs ?

As I said before sketchup works much smoother with my GTX560 in comparison to my previous 8800GT, but now that my model is growing I'm starting to see some slowdowns from time to time when I set the faces to "shaded with textures".
Fortunately it's nothing dramatic yet, but my model isn't halfway...

(FYI: I have no 3d trees or other "heavy" 3d objects in my model)

guyds1

@hellnbak said:

I just ordered this card from Newegg. Good choice, bad choice? I'm not concerned with rendering, only SU.

As my GTX560 is a huge improvement in comparison to my 8800GT, I would expect this 570 with 2560MB RAM ( ) to perform very very good.

hellnbak

Well, I've installed my new card and have been putting it thru it's paces all day, and I must say it has made a huge difference in SU's performance. No more sluggishness when moving the model around, shadows come on almost immediately, and everything in general seems to be snappier.

Just so you know, this was my old card ---
EVGA 01G-P3-1373-AR GeForce GTX 460 SuperClocked Video Card - 1024MB GDDR5, PCI-Express 2.0, Dual DVI, Mini HDMI, SLI, DirectX 11, Fermi w/Limited Lifetime Warranty with Registration

and my new card ---
EVGA 025-P3-1579-AR GeForce GTX 570 (Fermi) HD 2560MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

In all fairness I must say that for some time now I've suspected my old card was getting tired, so the change may in large part just be due to having a new, fresh card in place. I'll probably never know for sure, but for now I'm very happy.

Now if I could just put one of these babies in my laptop