Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

Build me a super duper PC for €2500

Options
2»

Comments

  • Options
    #32
    kfish2oo2
    Registered Users Posts: 274 ✭✭kfish2oo2


    ScumLord wrote: »
    Should he not be looking at one of the Nvidia quadro cards?

    Quadro, FireGL whatever - professional workstation cards are usually (but not always) identical to much cheaper gaming equivalents. The difference in price is attributed to the vastly more complex drivers (which also tend toward OpenGL, rather than DirectX), compatibility with professional software solutions and sometimes faster memory. Reliability is also a key factor, and so professional cards tend to be designed for much longer usage cycles (several years rather than just one for gaming) and so have more refined cooling solutions and robust components.

    However, the price cannot be justified unless in a corporate or professional environment. The workstation cards are designed for very specific and specialized purposes and therefore cost accordingly (just look at the Adobe software solutions - the price is so high because the intended purpose is so narrow). Freelancers or small companies will often get by on gaming cards to cut costs, and with technology like CUDA and Stream (or whatever the AMD equivalent is called) making their way into consumer grade cards, support for more complex operations like 3D modelling and rendering is ever growing.

    The main issue for the OP is that, while the hardware might be identical or extremely similar, performance in games will not be anything close. Workstation cards will suck at it, because their drivers are geared much more towards OpenGL (which is what most 3D packages use).

    He'd be better off getting a gaming card(s) because its vastly cheaper, has more applications and will allow him to buy better components that compensate for the lack of professional workstation drivers (ie CPU and RAM). Building an average computer with a workstation card is pointless, because the less powerful components will bottleneck the card.

    Also, there are certain consumer level cards that can be flashed to run workstation BIOS - and some AMD cards have a dual BIOS switch, so its an option the OP can explore.


  • Options
    #33
    partyatmygaff
    Registered Users Posts: 10,992 ✭✭✭✭partyatmygaff


    There's a slight but noticeable difference in image quality between a render produced by a gaming card and a render produced by a workstation card. You can see this sometimes in 3D renders. Those produced by a consumer graphics card may have strange slight artifacts that you won't get on a professional graphics card. I'm not sure if the reason is hardware or software but nevertheless there is a difference of some sort. Gaming cards are designed for speed and decent quality. Workstation cards are designed for speed, accuracy and faultless quality.

    There's also the difference in reliability. A gaming card isn't designed to be able to be run continuously. Workstation cards however are expected to be able to run at full load for hours if not days on end.


    So in short... if your job centres around 3D modelling then get a workstation graphics card. If not, stick to a powerful gaming graphics card.


  • Options
    #34
    ScumLord
    Registered Users Posts: 28,789 ✭✭✭✭ScumLord


    kfish2oo2 wrote: »
    Quadro, FireGL whatever - professional workstation cards are usually (but not always) identical to much cheaper gaming equivalents.
    I've always wondered, the only experience I have had with them is a Pc we got at work to run autodesk inventor which had a quadro card.


  • Options
    #35
    Serephucus
    Registered Users Posts: 7,180 ✭✭✭Serephucus


    partyatmygaff wrote: »
    There's a slight but noticeable difference in image quality between a render produced by a gaming card and a render produced by a workstation card. You can see this sometimes in 3D renders. Those produced by a consumer graphics card may have strange slight artifacts that you won't get on a professional graphics card. I'm not sure if the reason is hardware or software but nevertheless there is a difference of some sort. Gaming cards are designed for speed and decent quality. Workstation cards are designed for speed, accuracy and faultless quality.

    There's also the difference in reliability. A gaming card isn't designed to be able to be run continuously. Workstation cards however are expected to be able to run at full load for hours if not days on end.


    So in short... if your job centres around 3D modelling then get a workstation graphics card. If not, stick to a powerful gaming graphics card.

    Valid points. I'd say though unless you're doing mission-critical stuff, you're probably fine with a gaming card. Now, I've never used a Quadro/Tesla card, so I don't know about artifacting/weirdness with rendered shots.


  • Options
    #36
    kfish2oo2
    Registered Users Posts: 274 ✭✭kfish2oo2


    I've done a few renders, and honestly I have never noticed artifacting from my gaming card, nor the colleges Macs (which also use gaming cards, rather than workstation cards), even at 4k resolution. I think the artifacting issue would be more case specific to particular rendering packages, as some are designed specifically for workstation architectures while others are more friendly in terms of general compatibility.

    I will say though, that workstation cards very definitely produce better results for ray tracing.


  • Advertisement
  • Options
    #37
    D.A.S.L
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2 ✭D.A.S.L


    Hi guys, thanks for taking the time to make your replys, it was interesting reading. It's very much appreciated. I just found out the brother-in-law has built a PC or two, so I'm going to get him to build it for me but thanks for the offer deconduo it was very kind of you.

    I got my brother-in-law to overlook the thread and he seems to think IrishMetalhead's one is the best, so I think I'll go for that one and I think I will throw a BluRay player in just to be on the safe side. We use the main TV for films but it's not too expensive to get one anyway. I'll only be using 2 monitors as I don't have the space for 3. As far as I know a regular gaming GPU will work fine with 3DS Max, but I'll see how I get on with it.

    Thanks for letting me know about IvyBridge, I'd like to wait but this build is on budget, so I'm going to go with it. It should last me 3 years comfortably.

    Thanks again for all your help!


  • Options
    #38
    IrishMetalhead
    Registered Users Posts: 1,185 ✭✭✭IrishMetalhead


    well we all want to see how this puppy turns out so be sure to post pics when it's all done ;)


  • Options
    #39
    shizz
    Registered Users Posts: 1,506 ✭✭✭shizz


    Just wanted to post so that Im subscribed and to get the opportunity to say that I loathe you sir.... Loathe.


  • Options
    #40
    Serephucus
    Registered Users Posts: 7,180 ✭✭✭Serephucus


    Will 3DSMax even use twelve cores? If not, you'll be wasting your money on X79. It's about €300 cheaper to go with a 2600K.


  • Options
    #41
    kfish2oo2
    Registered Users Posts: 274 ✭✭kfish2oo2


    Serephucus wrote: »
    Will 3DSMax even use twelve cores? If not, you'll be wasting your money on X79. It's about €300 cheaper to go with a 2600K.

    It might not now, but support won't be far behind the release of the chips. Programs like 3DS Max are extremely processor heavy and so multithreaded support is usually a priority for the maintenance team. They can already make good use of 6 and 8 core chips.


  • Advertisement
Advertisement