GPU

# 1 27-08-2014 , 08:24 PM

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Join Date: Aug 2014

Posts: 4

Hello everyone,

I have done a lot of reading on GPU's. I have used every 3D card (consumer/gamer) since the 4MB 3Dfx to the 12MB SLI to my last card the R9280X. I have learned the majority of the differences in the pro cards and the reason for most.

I am just getting back into Maya/3ds Max after double digit years of not using the programs. So lets just pretend this is day one for me all over again. Perhaps I have read the answer to my question already and just didn't know the vocabulary.

When using Maya, my concern is regarding the models that I will be creating and animating and moving around the view ports. Not the speed of the rendering of the final animations.

My wife uses Google Sketchup Pro and recently completely a Permaculture landscape design for a client. It wasn't what I would consider a terribly complex scene. Not sure of the poly counts, but no sort of particles or hi-res textures. Without using layers and hiding the majority of the trees and so forth, it was literally unworkable. Moving the mouse to change the angle of view or selecting an object took several seconds to respond. I little reading suggests it might just be the Sketchup program. However, recently sold the R9280x and it is running just off of the Core i5 Haswell's built in HD4600. I realize this isn't much if any of a GPU. My machine is literally the same spec, I built them both at the same time. When running Maya and creating very basic shapes, its quite smooth.

My question (if you made it this far) is when building more and more complex scenes, how much will the system off load to the GPU? Lets say a Quadro card around K4200 or so. Are the GPU's primarily used during final render or do they make a substantial difference in the viewports. I am not a professional so I will not be losing money on render times because...no money to lose. However, I want a smooth user interface while I am learning/working in the program without the slideshows.

For my needs would a consumer card give me a boost if I am not overly concerned with stability or double point precision and just want a useable work space?

Sorry for this awkward question, hope you can help.

Intel Core i5 Haswell (3.0Ghz)
8GB RAM
Samsung 840 Pro SSD
Win7 64
Maya 2015 Student
3ds Max 2015 Student

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# 2 27-08-2014 , 11:05 PM

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Join Date: Apr 2011

Location: Dortmund, Germany

Posts: 229

indepentent of your hardware maya will be slow after some millions of polygons. because maya is just so. you need quadro gpu for all features of viewport 2.0 (which are mostly not necessary). for rendering you need only cpu and ram.

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# 3 28-08-2014 , 12:44 AM

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Join Date: Aug 2014

Posts: 4

Mickhah,

Thank you so much for your input.

There isn't much I can do about the CPU for now, and I imagine it would really make too much difference unless I could step to a XEON and so forth. Do you think the 8GB may be scraping the minimum because I could go t 16GB there if it is worth it.

Thanks again.

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# 4 28-08-2014 , 05:18 AM

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Join Date: Feb 2004

Posts: 2,988

Do you think the 8GB may be scraping the minimum because I could go t 16GB there if it is worth it.

Originally Posted by veganic

It depends. When you open that scene, where is your memory usage at? There's no point in upgrading if you're not hitting what you already have.

The GPU isn't used for much in Maya; it's mainly used for drawing things on screen. You might be able to get different speeds by utilizing viewport 2.0 (default in 2015+) and the legacy viewport. You can also turn on interactive shading, which helps in heavy scenes. https://download.autodesk.com/global/...mber=d30e70078

I came across this which you might find interesting: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/art...eleration-509/

But yeah; switching even to a lower-end Quadro will probably give you a good kick in performance with heavy scenes. If you're not using the machine as a gaming rig, then a workstation card is your best bet; which also has the added bonus that you don't have certain caveats and annoyances that can pop up with Geforce/Radeon cards. Make sure that the card you purchase is qualified, and utilize the tested drivers from Autodesk here: https://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet...anuf=all&opt=1

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Last edited by NextDesign; 28-08-2014 at 05:25 AM.

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# 5 28-08-2014 , 07:18 PM

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Join Date: Aug 2014

Posts: 4

Good reads. I appreciate it. I am going to get started and let the computer tell me when its hurting and go from there. We will see if this 50% off AMD Firepro coupon comes through and maybe get a decent card there.

Thanks for all the help on my first post.

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# 6 28-08-2014 , 08:12 PM

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Join Date: Nov 2003

Location: England

Posts: 19

Times are changing, the land of hardware renderers using the GPU to render your images instead of the CPU is getting closer every day, check out Iray by Nvidia as one example.....This is the future of rendering imho and will eventually be the standard way all renderers work, it makes so much sense to load the renders onto a GPU....still a while away before they really nail it but worth a thought when considering a new graphics card.

Maya 2015 can use both openGL and also DirectX11 so the days of pushing quadro cards and firepro is only going to be for the very top end systems were talking "the best"....these cards are not cheap for a decent one!

You will be able to interactively move around a viewport with any high end gaming card in Maya, I have done this for a few years with heavy scenes + I saved some cash in the process....but to be fair with a very heavy scene even with the best graphics cards you would use use common sense to optimize a scene that makes the viewport more workable with things like bounding boxes , view selection , hiding objects until render, render layers etc instead of trying to manipulate a really high poly count scene all at the same time.

You mentioned memory, I do a great deal of dynamic destruction effects, explosions and fluid/liquid effects and if that's something you will be getting into (great fun) you will want to look at as much memory as you can get your hands on 8G is very usable for many scenes until you start getting more intense along this path then you might want to look at considerably more 16G, 32G, even 64G+ sometimes as it can be really memory hungry with a few simulations running, especially now with Bifrost + Bullet + NHair and fluid effects + Ncloth and NParticles user added image