New graphic card

# 1 28-01-2013 , 07:39 PM

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Hi guys,

I would like to ask you for help about buying a new graphic card. Currently I own nVidia GTX 285 (overclocked BFG version, DX 10.0 supported). However, my budget is pretty limited (just about 200 euro). Is there any graphic card, which fill the requirements about price mentioned above and is better than mine? Is it worth to buy a new one ? All suggestions are welcome.

Thanks
Creck

EDIT: Motherboard used: Asus P6T Deluxe v2

May the good times and treasures of the present become the golden memories of tomorrow.

Last edited by Creck; 28-01-2013 at 09:03 PM.

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# 2 28-01-2013 , 09:16 PM

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What about this one ? https://www.gigabyte.com/products/pro...px?pid=4361#sp

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# 3 28-01-2013 , 10:17 PM

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I think it would depend on witch version of maya you are using as ctbram has said in another thread the GT cards are not supported in the newer versions of maya, have a look at auto desk site to find out witch are supported................dave

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# 4 29-01-2013 , 12:10 AM

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Thanks for reply dave, I can use any version of Maya, as I have student license, but what about performance ? Is it worth the money ?

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# 5 29-01-2013 , 09:54 PM

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Jan, Before you make a decision I want to say that I had a pair of 285's for years and they worked great up until one failed.

EVGA no longer had 285's and they had lifetime warranties so they replaced them with a pair of 480's and I noticed a significant performance decrease from the 285's. The performance hit was incredibly bad with 2-sided lighting enabled. With the 285's I could regularly work with models that have over 50 million polygons before I started to notice things starting to slow down.

They upgraded the 480's to a pair of 570HD's and I have the same performance reduction. It appears that the 285 product line was the last of the nvidia designs that were based on the quadro architecture. It appears there was even a hack to install quadro drivers on the 8800, 9800, and 285 geforce cards!

The nvidia 480 and above have their own architecture now and are now cobbled beyond just the drivers for use with Maya.

However, that being said with 2-sided lighting off the 570's are tolerable. They also support DX11.

I really want to go with 4GB 680's.

I won't consider firepro (or whatever ati calls there commercial grade card) or quadro as they have terrible directX performance and I do play the occasional game on my system and cannot afford two systems so I can have one geforce and one quadro based machine.

Some stuff to consider....

1. maya does not take advantage of sli
2. maya does take advantage of graphics memory so the more you get the better
3. maya does not take advantage of cuda but there are plenty of other graphics apps that do (which is why I want to get a 680 with 4GB and more then double the cuda cores then the 570 I have now)
4. I personally have had very good luck with nvidia drivers and stability but others can say the same thing about ati so I can't really push one design over another.

I had no problems working with Maya and my nvidia geforce cards until maya 2010 when they switched to the new graphics api (I think it's QT). Since then Maya 2010, 11, 12, and 13 have been a nightmare for me. But I may be dealing with other hardware issues. I am still struggling to get Maya stable.

I just recently had the 570HD replacement card die and I am waiting for it to be replaced in fact. So the struggle for me with Maya continues!

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 6 30-01-2013 , 06:14 PM

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Thanks for reply Rick, appreciate that. However, the situation has changed just a little bit as my sister asked me to build her a new PC, so I thought I might give her my current GPU (BFG GTX 285) and the one (ZOTAC GTX 650ti) she is gonna buy will goes to mine desktop. Should I do that?

ZOTAC card supports DX 11 and have higher core and memory clocks I guess. I also took a look on several tests and ZOTAC has slightly more FPS in games.

May the good times and treasures of the present become the golden memories of tomorrow.

Last edited by Creck; 30-01-2013 at 07:29 PM.

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# 7 30-01-2013 , 10:57 PM

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How much graphics memory on the 285 and the 650?

DX performance will be better on the 650 but maya does not really take advantage of DX and Maya does not take advantage of cuda cores.

Moving from the 285 to the 650 is a bit of a give and take as far as Maya performance. The graphics architecture of the 285 is based on Quadro and I have seen a significant drop in performance as I am modeling especially with 2-sided lighting on, with both the 480 1.5GB, and the 570HD 2.5GB card I have now.

However, if you are getting more graphics memory, better DX performance, and the ability to take better advantage of cuda based applications.

I'd say give it a shot and if you run into any performance problems you can always swap graphics cards with your sister.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 8 31-01-2013 , 07:26 PM

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Both of cards have 1GB of memory.

Based on your previous posts it looks like that won't be enough even for projects with more than few millions of polys. However, I'll give it a try...

May the good times and treasures of the present become the golden memories of tomorrow.

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