pixelplucker Posted September 17, 2014 Share Posted September 17, 2014 Burned out my old Quadro 3700 a few months back and been using a Geforce GTX 470 which is starting to leave trails and struggling to support 2 displays. Anyone have a suggestion on a new card? Up for ATI or Nvidia, looking for something with at least 1gb mem and under $300. I was looking at a couple of the FireGL's but not sure what is comparable to the slightly older Quadros. Don't want to pick something up that AM will struggle with. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted September 17, 2014 Hash Fellow Share Posted September 17, 2014 I buy cheap sub $100 cards and I've been OK with 2 displays but mine are just the 1280x1084 variety. One problem... my card is OpenGL3.3 but still has to use the CPU fallback in the SSAO plugin which is quite slow. I don't know why that is or what other spec I should look for to avoid that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pixelplucker Posted September 17, 2014 Author Share Posted September 17, 2014 My system is older, but I believe I do need the lastest OpenGL support since I do use 3d Coat at times. Anyone using ATI or the FireGL's here? Might jump ship on Nvidia. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fuchur Posted September 17, 2014 Share Posted September 17, 2014 I use an AMD HD 7850... very good card – performing well and is quite inexpensive. Today I would recommend an AMD HD 7870 OR if you want to go for the newer cards get an R9 285 or R285x or R280. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-r9-285-tonga,3925-14.html FireGLs or Quadros really are only worth the money if you are using software, that has special drivers for them (3d Studio Max / Max is one I know of... ). In general, if you are going for OpenCL (!= OpenGL) you should get an AMD card (they are performing better on that and are in general a little cheaper for the same performance) if you need CUDA, you will need a Nvidia-card. If you do gaming, do not get a FireGL or Quadro (they do perform at most equal to their gaming counterparts... more often worse and are much more expensive.) If shader-apis are not that important for you (which is often the case if you are not gaming) you may get a better performing card for less money from the generation before the current one, which will only have less shaders, etc. If you are using Linux, you should better get a Nvidia card, since the driver tend to be more stable for that... (although that seems to get less important since AMD has focused more manpower on that part now too). All in all I do think, that AMD/ATIs do better with A:M, but I am not sure about that... Steffen got an AMD card (I think a AMD 290x or 290x2 or something like that...). My 7850 does perform very well with my two 1920x1200 Displays (Dell U2412M, good IPS-displays for a reasonable price) even when playing games and of course when using A:M. Hope this helps a little. See you *Fuchur* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pixelplucker Posted September 18, 2014 Author Share Posted September 18, 2014 Thanks, looks ill go snag an ATI card in the am for AM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jibjab Posted September 18, 2014 Share Posted September 18, 2014 I'd go with a 750ti if you're looking for a budget Nvidia card that doesn't need a huge 500w power supply. It will run with a standard 300-400W psu I think, and doesn't require external power connectors. Plus it's about $150-ish I think? If none of that is a concern and/or you have a bigger budget, ATI makes nice cards in the $200 range, I think you can get a 7870 or 7950 pretty cheap now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pixelplucker Posted October 7, 2014 Author Share Posted October 7, 2014 In a pinch I took the ATI card from my game machine (6900 series) and put it in my workstation and it works really nice. Replaced the one in the gaming machine with another ATI (r9 200 series). The R9 is really fast but power hungry and runs pretty warm when pushed. Nvidia card I had in was a gtx 470 which ran so hot you couldn't touch the back. Workstation has a 650w ps so hooking that up wasn't much of an issue Though I liked Nvidia and used them for many years I am really surprised that the ATI run so well. Bang for the buck definately look at ATI. Also ran SMART and found both my hard drives were at the end of their life with about a third left and lots of read/write errors. I moved my apps and boot to an ssd and all my jobs and documents and desktop to a standard 7200 rpm terabyte drive that was fairly new. Machines running better than new. Guess I have to expect this since its probably 6+ years old. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.